Category: Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is linked to success in many areas of life.

People with high emotional intelligence are more successful at work and across many areas of life, research finds.

There are five signs of emotional intelligence, according to one model developed by Daniel Goleman:

1. Self-awareness: knowing your own strengths and weakness, as well as drives and values.
2. Self-regulation: being able to control disruptive emotions and adapt to new circumstances.
3. Social skill: capable of managing relationships with other people effectively.
4. Empathy: taking into account other people’s feelings when making decisions.
5. Motivation: a drive to succeed.

Those high in emotional intelligence are aware of their emotions and good at controlling and expressing them.

They can read emotions in others well and know how to manage them to achieve desired goals.

Higher emotional intelligence leads to better relationships with others, higher psychological well-being, greater self-compassion and a more positive perception by others.

The conclusion comes from a ‘meta-analysis’ — a type of study that collects together the results of other studies.

The results showed that emotional intelligence predicted workplace performance over and above personality and IQ.

The authors write that other studies have found that emotional intelligence is…

…a predictor in important domains such as academic performance, job performance, negotiation, leadership, emotional labor, trust, work–family conflict, and stress…”

Daniel Goleman’s model is just one way of thinking about emotional intelligence.

The researchers found, though, that different models and measures all provided insights into people’s emotional intelligence.

Professor Neal Ashkanasy, who was not involved in the research, said:

“By analyzing the numerous studies of emotional intelligence that have been conducted over the last decade, the authors of this article provide an evidence-based account of emotional intelligence, where it works and where it doesn’t.

And, most importantly, which of the various versions of emotional intelligence work the best.

This will prove to be a valuable tool for academic researchers, as well as business consultants and managers.”

The study was published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior (O’Boyle et al., 2010).

The trait is associated with lower full-scale intelligence and lower verbal IQ.

Neurotic people score lower on intelligence tests, but it may not be a true reflection of neurotic people’s IQ.

The link could be down to the neurotic being nervous while taking tests, some psychologists think.

The links have been found between higher neuroticism and lower full-scale intelligence and lower verbal IQ.

Neuroticism is a personality trait that is strongly linked to anxiety, sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

The study’s authors explain the personality trait of neuroticism:

“Neuroticism reflects a tendency to experience negative emotions, like anxiety and depression.

The six sub-facets of Neuroticism, according to Costa and McCrae (1992) are Anxiety, Anger-hostility, Depression, Self-consciousness, Impulsiveness and Vulnerability.

High scorers tend to be sensitive, emotional, worrying, moody, frequently depressed, often sleep badly and may suffer from various psychosomatic disorders.

[…]

Low scorers tend to be secure, hardy and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions.”

The conclusions come from two studies.

In the first, 646 Dutch twins were given personality and IQ tests.

The researchers found the link between higher neuroticism and lower IQ, concluding that the link was mostly explained by genetics.

The second, though, gave 213 people IQ tests and divided them into two groups based on their anxiety.

The authors explain that neurotic people got more nervous when taking the test:

“…high Neurotics are more stressed under testing conditions than low Neurotics, and that they are even more stressed when they receive information which induces further anxiety.”

The researchers were then able to statistically remove the effects of anxiety on test-takers.

Then, neurotic people did just as well on the IQ test as non-neurotic people.

The authors conclude:

“Neurotics become more anxious under testing conditions, and this anxiety affects their performance on the IQ tests.

It is therefore proposed that Neuroticism is not related to intelligence per se, but to intelligence test performance, which has been proposed in the past (Eysenck, 1971).

This suggestion implies that IQ tests may underestimate the true intelligence of Neurotic individuals.”

The studies were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Bartels et al., 2012; Moutafi et al., 2006).

The personality trait that is linked to higher intelligence.

Being cooperative is a sign of high intelligence, recent research finds.

More intelligent people tend to be cautious with their trust at first, then build it up with experience.

People who are cooperative tend to be more helpful, believe in teamwork and be mutually supportive.

In addition, those who are cooperative tend to be better at seeing the big picture and learning from experience.

Higher intelligence allows people to process information more quickly.

All these factors are signs that someone’s IQ is high.

Professor Eugenio Proto, who led the study, said:

“People might naturally presume that people who are nice, conscientious and generous are automatically more cooperative.

But, through our research, we find overwhelming support for the idea that intelligence is the primary condition for a socially cohesive, cooperative society.

A good heart and good behaviour have an effect too but it’s transitory and small.

An additional benefit of higher intelligence in our experiment, and likely in real life, is the ability to process information faster, hence to accumulate more extensive experience, and to learn from it.

This scenario can be applied to the workplace, where it’s likely that intelligent people who see the bigger picture and work cooperatively, will ultimately be promoted and financially rewarded.”

The conclusions come from people playing a series of games that tested cooperation.

Each involved trading off risk against reward.

The results showed that people who were more agreeable and conscientious were also more cooperative.

However, the influence of these personality traits was dwarfed by that of IQ.

Those with lower IQs, the study found, tend not to use a consistent strategy and disregard the consequences of their actions.

The study’s authors explain:

“Higher intelligence resulted in significantly higher levels of cooperation and earnings.

The failure of individuals with lower intelligence to appropriately estimate the future consequences of current actions accounts for these difference in outcomes.

Personality also affects behavior, but in smaller measure, and with low persistence.”

The study was published in the Journal of Political Economy (Proto et al., 2018).

How your sense of humour, what time you go to bed and your curiosity reveal your intelligence.

Being curious, staying up late and having a dark sense of humour are all signs of a high IQ, psychological research finds.

People who are curious ask lots of questions, look for surprises, seek out sensations and make time to search out new ideas, a study finds.

Intelligence, along with curiosity and some personality factors, predicts successful performance in many areas.

Night owl

Being a night owl, meanwhile, is linked to stronger reasoning and better analytical and conceptual thinking.

Night owls prefer to stay up late at night and rise later in the morning.

Around one-third of the population are night owls, with one-quarter preferring to rise early.

The remainder fall somewhere in between, being neither early risers nor late sleepers.

Dark humour

Liking dark humour is a sign of higher intelligence, research finds.

Dark humour, the study’s authors write, is:

“…a kind of humour that treats sinister subjects like death, disease, deformity, handicap or warfare with bitter amusement and presents such tragic, distressing or morbid topics in humorous terms.

Black humour, often called grotesque, morbid, gallows or sick humour, is used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox and cruelty of the modern world.

Characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony, potentially requiring increased cognitive efforts to get the joke.”

Surprisingly, though, people who like dark humour feel the least aggressive towards others.

In other words, it is not aggressive people who like sick jokes.

Dark humour, it seems, is more difficult to enjoy without higher intelligence.

The study was published in the journals Perspectives on Psychological Science, Personality and Individual Differences & Cognitive Processing (Díaz-Morales & Escribano, 2013; von Stumm et al., 2011; Willinger et al., 2017).

This test can quickly identify someone with higher IQ.

People with high IQs have stronger basic perceptual skills, research finds.

People with higher IQs find it easier to tell which way an object is moving.

They are also better at blocking out background information to make their judgement.

The reason is that the brains of people with higher IQs work faster.

It helps underline that high IQ is about more than just solving puzzles or making the ‘right’ decision.

For the study, people had to judge lines moving across a screen.

Here is an example:

The results showed that the more intelligent people were, the quicker they picked up the direction of the drifting lines.

Dr Duje Tadin, co-author of the paper, said:

“Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t really track it back to one part of the brain.

But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent.”

However, sometimes people were shown small images, sometimes large.

What this shows is that people with high IQs are better at suppressing background information.

Mr Michael Melnick, study co-author, said:

“Being ‘quick witted’ and ‘quick on the draw’ generally go hand in hand.

From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse.”

The study may help researchers identify the neural correlates of intelligence, said Dr Tadin:

“We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion.

This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs.”

The study was published in the journal Current Biology (Melnick et al., 2013).

Crystallised intelligence is demonstrated by better language and reasoning skills.

Sitting down is not all bad: people who spend more time sitting score higher on tests of crystallised intelligence, research shows.

Crystallised intelligence is demonstrated by better language and reasoning skills.

It refers to the type of intelligence that comes from knowledge and experience that tends to come with age.

However, people who do more exercise boost their fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence refers to the speed at which the brain works.

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

The conclusions come from a study that looked at how different levels of physical activity are linked to cognitive health.

Dr Agnieszka Burzynska, the study’s first author, said:

“We know that as we grow older, even if we do not have any cognitive impairments, people aged 60 and up already show some decreases in speed, executive functioning, and memory.

Those decreases are totally within a normal range, but this study was looking to understand how our behaviors and habits may correlate with cognitive outcomes in older age.”

For the study, 228 older people’s daily activity was measured.

People are often sat down each day for longer than they think said Dr Burzynska:

“If you ask, ‘How long did you sit today?’ people will perhaps say 2 to 3 hours when the reality is more like 6 to 8 hours.”

Cognitive tests revealed that people who sat more tended to do better on knowledge and reading tests.

Those that exercised more, though, did better on memory and problem-solving tests that require a ‘faster’ brain.

Light physical activities like housework cooking and laundry had little effect on people’s cognition — it was moderate-to-vigorous activities that worked.

Dr Burzynska said:

“There’s this big push within health and wellness that sitting is always bad for your body, that being a couch potato is not good, and although our earlier studies indicated that the brains of those who spend more time sitting may age faster, it seems that on the cognitive level, sitting time may also be meaningful.”

Sitting time may be beneficial as long as it is used to stimulate the brain: such as by reading, playing games or doing something educational or mentally invigorating.

Dr Burzynska said:

“I don’t think I would in any way suggest that we should engage in more sitting, but I think trying to be as physically active as possible and making sure that you get stimulated in your sedentary time — that it’s not just spent staring at the TV — that this combination might be the best way to take care of your brain.

I hope it sends some positive message for those of us who have had limited opportunities to exercise during the pandemic.”

Dr Burzynska added:

“When you exercise, enjoy your exercise. Maybe sometimes think, ‘Yeah I’m going to go sit now and enjoy a really good book’.”

The study was published in the journal Psychology and Aging (Burzynska et al., 2020).