Category: Intelligence

The foods boosts fluid intelligence, which is the speed at which the brain works.

Eating organic food is linked to a higher IQ.

School-age children who ate more organic food had higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence and working memory.

Fluid intelligence refers to how quickly and effectively the brain processes information.

It is like the raw power of an engine or the speed at which a computer functions.

Working memory, meanwhile, is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.

Better working memory has been linked to improved learning, attention and other vital outcomes.

The higher levels of nutrients in organic foods may account for the boost to IQ, said Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author:

“Healthy diets, including organic diets, are richer than fast food diets in nutrients necessary for the brain, such as fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants, which together may enhance cognitive function in childhood.”

In contrast, eating fast food, exposure to tobacco smoke and overcrowded living conditions were all linked to lower scores on tests of fluid intelligence.

Children’s brains are sensitive

The results come from over one thousand children aged 6 to 11 years old in six different European countries, including the UK and Spain.

The research examined 87 factors that the unborn child might be exposed to, along with another 122 factors that could affect them during childhood.

The brain is still developing in childhood, so it is particularly sensitive to toxicity.

Low levels of toxicity that may have little effect on the adult brain can still influence children’s brains.

Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author, explained the main predictors of higher IQ:

“In our study, we found better scores in fluid intelligence and working memory with higher organic food intake and lower fast food intake.”

As for the predictors of lower IQ, Professor Martine Vrijheid, study co-author, said:

“We observed that several prenatal environmental pollutants (indoor air pollution and tobacco smoke) and lifestyle habits during childhood (diet, sleep and family social capital) were associated with behavioral problems in children.”

Professor Vrijheid said the study is notable for its comprehensive examination of a wide range of variables:

“One of the strengths of this study on cognition and the earlier study on behavioral problems is that we systematically analyzed a much wider range of exposure biomarkers in blood and urine to determine the internal levels in the model and that we analyzed both prenatal and childhood exposure variables.”

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The study was published in the journal Environment International (de Bont et al., 2021).

The reason people with a higher IQ also tend to be healthier could be down to their diet.

People with a higher IQ are more likely to be vegetarian.

In fact, vegetarians could be up to 10 percent more intelligent than red meat eaters, according to some studies.

A higher IQ is also seen among those who describe themselves as vegetarian, but also eat chicken and fish.

The conclusion comes from a survey of 8,170 men and women whose IQ was tested when they were 10 years old.

By the age of 30, 4.5 percent of participants had adopted a vegetarian diet.

Within this group, 2.5 percent were strictly vegan, while 33.6 percent identified as vegetarian despite continuing to eat chicken or fish.

People with higher IQs at age 10, the analysis showed, were more likely to be vegetarians at age 30.

There was no difference between stricter vegetarians (ovo-lacto vegetarians) and those who ate some chicken and/or fish as well.

The findings could help to explain why more intelligent people are also healthier, since a vegetarian diet is better for the heart and for maintaining a healthy body mass.

Do money and class explain it?

Part of the link between IQ and vegetarianism was explained by social status and education.

In other words, individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds are inherently more likely to have a higher IQ and to choose a vegetarian lifestyle.

Nevertheless, even when these two factors were accounted for statistically, the relationship between vegetarianism and IQ remained.

The study’s authors write:

“Might the nature of the vegetarians’ diet in this cohort have enhanced their apparently superior brain power?

Was this the mechanism that helped them to achieve the disproportionate number of higher degrees?

Benjamin Franklin and George Bernard Shaw, both ardent vegetarians, would have us believe so.

According to Shaw in an article published in The Star in 1890, “A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.”

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The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Gale et al., 2007).

Both men and women are more attracted to a person with this quality.

Being funny is a sign of a higher IQ: both higher general intelligence and higher verbal intelligence.

Making people laugh is also linked to greater dating success, with both men and women more attracted to people who are funny.

However, women are more discerning about humour and react to it more strongly.

Men, meanwhile, tend to focus on producing jokes, often to impress women.”

The study’s authors write:

“Humor is not just a reliable intelligence-indicator; it may be one of the most important traits for humans seeking mates.

Of course, mate attraction is not the only function of humor.

Humor can also be used in competing for status with same-sex rivals, reducing social tensions, and other adaptive functions.”

The study involved 400 young people who were given intelligence tests and asked about their dating history.

They were then handed New Yorker cartoons with the caption deleted and asked to come up with their own.

The results showed that, unsurprisingly, verbal intelligence was strongly related to being funny.

However, participants found it difficult to produce strong captions, with most rated as not funny at all.

This shows how difficult jokes are — especially in the medium of New Yorker captions.

Other studies have also found links between intelligence and humour.

In this study, men were especially focused on trying to write funny captions and theirs were rated more highly, the authors write:

“Men were funnier than women on average and produced a larger number of captions, consistent with the sexual signaling hypothesis in which men try (unconsciously) to signal their mate quality through their humor ability, and women are more responsive to and discriminating about humor.”

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The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Greengross & Miller, 2011).

How high intelligence could have a mental cost for some.

Disorders of mood could be the price some people pay for high intelligence.

Psychologists have found that higher childhood IQ is linked to features of bipolar disorder in young adulthood.

The research adds fuel to the debate over the connection between intelligence, creativity and mental health issues.

For the research, 1,881 people were followed from age 8 until they were 22 or 23 years old.

Their IQ was measured along with any characteristics of mood disorders.

The results showed that having ten more IQ points  at age 8 was linked to being in the top ten per cent for having manic personality traits in their early twenties.

Professor Daniel Smith, one of the study’s authors, said:

“A possible link between bipolar disorder and intelligence and creativity has been discussed for many years and many studies have suggested a link.

In this large study, we found that better performance on IQ tests at age eight predicted bipolar features in young adulthood.

We are not saying that high childhood IQ is a clear-cut risk factor for bipolar disorder but rather that there is likely to be a shared biology between intelligence and bipolar disorder which needs to be understood more fully.

Many other factors – including family history of mental illness, childhood adversity, stressful life events and drug misuse – are known to increase an individual’s risk of developing bipolar disorder.

Our finding has implications for understanding of how liability to bipolar disorder may have been selected through generations.

One possibility is that serious disorders of mood such as bipolar disorder are the price that human beings have had to pay for more adaptive traits such as intelligence, creativity and verbal proficiency.

This work will inform future genetic studies at the interface of intelligence, creativity and bipolar disorder, and will help with efforts to improve approaches to the earlier detection of bipolar disorder in adolescents and young adults.”

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (Smith et al., 2015).

Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.

People who can predict the behaviour of others have higher personal intelligence.

Two other signs of high personal intelligence are self-motivation and being able to anticipate desires.

The idea of personal intelligence is broader than IQ.

It involves using intelligence to predict people’s behaviour.

Someone high in personal intelligence is able to analyse correctly their own and other people’s personalities.

People high in personal IQ know how best to deal with other people and how they will react.

Professor John Mayer, the expert on personality and intelligence who came up with the theory, said:

“Think of all the ways we read and interpret the people around us each day: We notice body language and facial expressions to estimate one another’s moods.

We draw initial guesses about personalities based on how people dress and present themselves, and we adjust how we interact with them accordingly.

We run through scenarios in our heads, trying to anticipate how others will react, in order to choose the best course in dealing with a boss, a coworker, or a partner.”

Reviewing decades of research on personality and intelligence, Professor Mayer has found it comes more naturally to some:

“We pick up on small pieces of feedback about ourselves from others, which we incorporate into a fuller and more accurate perception of ourselves.

And we make all kinds of decisions–about work-life balance, the neighborhood we live in, or who we spend our time with–based on what we think will be the best fit for our personalities.”

Professor Mayer concludes:

“People who are high in personal intelligence are able to anticipate their own desires and actions, predict the behavior of others, motivate themselves over the long term, and make better life decisions.”

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The book is called Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives and is published by Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.