3 Signs Of High IQ & Ability To Read Other People’s Personalities

Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.

Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.

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

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.”

→ Discover 22 more signs of intelligence.

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.

A Fascinating Sign That You Have A High IQ

This parental behaviour is linked to more intelligent children.

This parental behaviour is linked to more intelligent children.

Children whose parents are ‘chatterboxes’ tend to have higher IQs, research finds.

Children hearing more speech from their caregivers had better reasoning and numeracy skills, the observational study found.

Some children in the study heard twice as many words as others.

Perhaps less surprisingly, children who heard higher quality speech from their parents, using a more diverse vocabulary, knew more words themselves.

For the study, tiny audio recorders were fitted to 107 children aged between 2 and 4.

They were recorded for 16 hours a day for three days at home.

Ms Katrina d’Apice, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Using the audio recorders allowed us to study real-life interactions between young children and their families in an unobtrusive way within the home environment rather than a lab setting.

We found that the quantity of adult spoken words that children hear is positively associated with their cognitive ability.

However, further research is needed to explore the reasons behind this link — it could be that greater exposure to language provides more learning opportunities for children, but it could also be the case that more intelligent children evoke more words from adults in their environment.”

While parental talk was linked to children’s cognitive abilities, their parenting strategy was linked to their behaviour.

Specifically, positive parenting was linked to less aggression, disobedience and restlessness.

Positive parenting involves responding to children in positive ways and encouraging them to explore the world.

Professor Sophie von Stumm, study co-author, said:

“This study is the largest naturalistic observation of early life home environments to date.

We found that the quantity of adult spoken words that children were exposed to varied greatly within families.

Some kids heard twice as many words on one day as they did on the next.

The study highlights the importance of treating early life experiences as dynamic and changeable rather than static entities — approaching research in this way will help us to understand the interplay between environmental experiences and children’s differences in development.”

The study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology (d’Apice et al., 2019).

2 Personality Traits That Indicate High IQ

This is not something people usually associate with intelligence — but the study clearly shows a link.

This is not something people usually associate with intelligence — but the study clearly shows a link.

Highly intelligent people are more likely to be generous and altruistic, psychological research finds.

Altruistic people are unselfish and sometimes deny themselves so that others can have more.

Intelligent people may be more generous partly because they can afford it.

People with higher IQs generally have greater resources, or can expect to recover what they have given later on.

Generosity is not something people usually associate with intelligence — but this study clearly shows a link.

The study’s authors write:

“In the first study, we found that those who contributed more than their fair share to a public good were more intelligent, as measured by two relatively independent measures of general intelligence.

In the second study, we showed that those who possess a dispositional tendency to value joint benefits more than
their own, scored higher on an intelligence test.”

For the study, 301 people played games that involved either donating to others or keeping things for themselves.

The results revealed that intelligent people were more generous to others.

People who were more egotistical — keeping more for themselves — tended to be less intelligent.

People with higher IQs were more concerned with the public good.

The authors write:

“The evidence presented supports the possibility that unconditional altruism may serve as a costly signal of general intelligence because altruism is costly and is reliably linked to the quality ‘general intelligence’.

Consistent with the finding that children’s intelligence
predicts later socio-economic success better than parents’ attributes, we assume that intelligence is an indicator of future resources.

As a consequence, someone with high cognitive skills may be able to donate more in advance than someone with lower skills.”

In other words, intelligent people can afford to be more generous because they have more to give.

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Millet & Dewitte, 2007).

4 Wonderful Personality Traits Linked To High IQ

The traits are so powerful that they are linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later.

The traits are so powerful that they are linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later.

Insatiable curiosity, an active fantasy life, a sensitivity to emotions and an appreciation of art and beauty are all linked to high IQ, a study finds.

High IQ may have a particularly strong link to curiosity because intelligence creates a ‘cognitive hunger’ — a desire to think.

Over the years, higher IQ drives people to keep exploring new experiences to satiate this hunger.

Curiosity, along with sensitivity to emotions, appreciation of beauty and an active fantasy life are all aspects of the major personality trait called ‘openness to experience’.

Being open to experience is so powerful that it is linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later.

Children who scored higher on IQ tests at just 11-years-old were more open to experience when they were 50-years-old, the psychologists found.

The study’s authors explain their results:

“…childhood intelligence is indeed positively associated with adult trait Openness, even when it was assessed almost four decades earlier when participants were at 11 years.

Intelligence may influence the development of personality in that intelligent people develop habits to satisfy their curiosity and ‘‘cognitive hunger’’ which are an essential ingredient of Openness.”

The conclusions come from a huge study of 17,415 people born in the UK in one week in March 1958.

Over the following 50 years they were given various personality and intelligence tests.

Children with higher IQs were more open to experience because of higher motivation at school, greater support from their families and higher social status, the researchers found.

They explain how these factors fit together:

“Parents of higher socioeconomic status may foster children’s trait Openness by providing better resources such as choosing good schools and cultural environment (theaters, museums, traveling abroad, etc.); intelligent children tend to use more mental activities (such as abstract ideas, learning new
vocabularies, or math formulas) than those who are less intelligent; school settings (quality of teaching, good facilities) may enhance pupils to engage more in school learning.

All these three factors may influence educational and
occupational achievement, which in turn, may increase
the scores on Openness.”

In other words, they believe that it is a higher IQ that mainly drives the development of greater openness to experience.

The study was published in the Journal of Individual Differences (Furnham & Cheng, 2016).

A Fascinating Sign Of High IQ

This sign indicates stronger reasoning and better analytical and conceptual thinking.

This sign indicates stronger reasoning and better analytical and conceptual thinking.

Being a ‘night owl’ is a sign of high IQ, research finds.

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

This sleep pattern is linked to stronger reasoning and better analytical and conceptual thinking.

Despite higher intelligence, night owls tend to get slightly worse grades in school.

This may be because the school day starts too early for them.

Morning types who rise early, also known as ‘larks’, tend to do around 8% better in school.

Later in life, though, the higher intelligence of night owls tends to shine through.

Once in the world of work, night owls tend to do better because of their higher intelligence.

Higher inductive reasoning abilities, in particular, are linked to more prestigious jobs and higher incomes.

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.

The conclusions come from a study of 887 adolescents in Spain.

All were given tests of intelligence and this was compared to their performance in school and sleep habits.

The results showed that night owls had higher IQs but did worse in school.

This could be partly explained by night owls being nonconformists, the authors write:

“Evening adolescents tend to act out in an independent and nonconforming manner and resist following traditional standards (perhaps early morning schedules), also they tend to be creative, something that probably is not promoted at school.”

Commenting on the study, Professor Jim Horne, of Loughborough University, said:

“Evening types tend to be the more extrovert creative types, the poets, artists and inventors, while the morning types are the deducers, as often seen with civil servants and accountants.

We have looked at morning and evening types and we found that personalities tended to be different.

Evening types were more social, more people-oriented.

They will probably be good at cryptic crosswords, while morning types go for the more logical ones.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Díaz-Morales & Escribano, 2013).

The Sign In Your Eyes That Reveals Higher IQ

Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve problems, apply logic and identify patterns.

Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve problems, apply logic and identify patterns.

Having larger pupils is linked to higher fluid intelligence, a study finds.

Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve problems, apply logic and identify patterns.

It is contrasted with crystallised intelligence, which involves using skills, knowledge and experience.

The differences are visible to the unaided eye, despite the relatively small size of the pupils.

The pupils are the black part in the centre of the eye.

They open and close in response to the amount of light falling on them.

The pupils also respond to how much work the brain is doing and other psychological factors.

The study’s authors explain:

“Starting in the 1960s it became apparent to psychologists that the size of the pupil is related to more than just the amount of light entering the eyes.

Pupil size also reflects internal mental processes.

For instance, in a simple memory span task, pupil size precisely tracks changes in memory load, dilating with each new item held in memory and constricting as each item is subsequently recalled.”

Dilated pupils have been shown to reflect when a person’s brain is overloaded with information, how interested a person is in what is being said to them, whether they are in pain and much more.

Measuring pupils

For the study, 40 people’s baseline pupil size was measured — half were in the top quartile for intelligence, the other half in the bottom quartile.

Baseline pupil size is measured when a person is sitting down, not doing too much.

The authors describe the results:

“…we have shown that large differences in baseline pupil size, even observable to the unaided eye, exist between high and low cognitive ability individuals engaged in a cognitively demanding task and cannot be explained by differences in mental effort.”

The study was published in the journal Cognitive Psychology (Tsukahara et al., 2016).

A Simple Musical Sign Of High IQ

People with higher intelligence tend to have this musical ability.

People with higher intelligence tend to have this musical ability.

People who can learn a tune more easily have higher intelligence, research suggests.

People with higher IQs were able to learn to play “Happy Birthday” on the piano more accurately in the study.

Whether or not people believed they could improve did not seem to matter.

Instead, pure intelligence predicted how well they did, not a ‘growth mindset’.

A growth mindset is a belief that basic abilities can be improved through hard work.

Musical aptitude was the only other factor that mattered, said Mr Alexander Burgoyne, the study’s first author:

“The strongest predictor of skill acquisition was intelligence, followed by music aptitude.

By contrast, the correlation between growth mindset and piano performance was about as close to zero as possible.”

The study included 171 people who had little or no experience playing the piano.

All were given tests of their mindset and their intelligence.

They followed a video guide that taught them to play “Happy Birthday”, which contained 25 notes.

Afterwards they were rated on their performance of the simple song.

The results showed that IQ mattered most in predicting who did well.

When IQ was taken into account, even musical aptitude paled into insignificance.

Mr Burgoyne said:

“The results were surprising, because people have claimed that mindset plays an important role when students are confronted with challenges, like trying to learn a new musical instrument.

And yet, it didn’t predict skill acquisition.”

There were also some interesting patterns in the results:

  • Some learned quickly within six minutes.
  • Some were poor at first, but soon improved.
  • Some faded away as they lost motivation.
  • The rest could not work it out at all.

Mr Burgoyne said:

“Our study examined one of the earliest stages of skill acquisition.

Early experiences can be formative, but I would caution against drawing conclusions about skilled musicians based on our study of beginners.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Burgoyne et al., 2019).

How COVID Affects Your IQ Long-Term (M)

COVID’s impact on cognition varies based on factors like illness duration and virus variant, scientists find.

COVID's impact on cognition varies based on factors like illness duration and virus variant, scientists find.

Keep reading with a Membership

• Read members-only articles
• Adverts removed
• Cancel at any time
• 14 day money-back guarantee for new members

2 Personality Traits That Indicate High IQ

These qualities are not usually associated with intelligence.

These qualities are not usually associated with intelligence.

Highly intelligent people are more likely to be trusting and generous, research finds.

Trusting people tend to believe that others are honest and will not harm them.

Intelligent people are able to override the perfectly natural worry that other people will betray them.

While being trusting is not something people usually associate with intelligence — this research clearly shows a link.

The reason for the link may be that human intelligence has evolved to be trusting as it helps society function.

For the study, 80 people played an economic game that tested how trusting they were.

They were also given a test of their ‘cognitive reflection’.

Cognitive reflection measures people’s ability to override a quick, obvious response that turns out to be wrong in order to get the right answer.

Here are two of the tests of cognitive reflection used in the study:

  • If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long will it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
  • In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

The answers are at the bottom of the article.

More trusting

The research also showed that smarter people behaved in a more trusting way towards others.

The study’s authors write:

“It is not hard to imagine that the ability to trust is largely beneficial in a society where survival and prosperity crucially hinge upon the capacity to exchange with counterparts with various degrees of familiarity.

All such transaction […] require an important element of trust.”

In other words, society gets on better if people trust each other.

The study’s authors write:

“…trust has been shown to impact economic variables such as growth and financial development as well as entrepreneurship and trade.

In sum, trust is seen as the lubricant that facilitates exchange in society so its relevance cannot be overstated.”

The answers are…

The answers are 5 minutes to the first problem and 47 days to the second.

If you didn’t get this, remember the test is designed to make you think a little longer and harder.

The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Corgnet et al., 2015).

4 Ways Parents Can Boost Children’s IQ

The right methods can help boost children’s IQ.

The right methods can help boost children’s IQ.

Parents can boost their children’s IQ, psychological research finds, as long as they use tried and tested methods.

After examining almost every available intervention, Dr John Protzko and colleagues found that just four had a real chance of working:

  1. Omega-3 supplementation,
  2. reading to children interactively,
  3. enrolling children in early educational interventions,
  4. and sending children to a quality preschool.

The results come from a meta-analysis, a type of study that collects together the results of many other studies.

In doing so, the researchers created a “Database of Raising Intelligence”.

Dr John Protzko, the study’s first author, explained:

“Our aim in creating this database is to learn what works and what doesn’t work to raise people’s intelligence.

For too long, findings have been disconnected and scattered throughout a wide variety of journals.

The broad consensus about what works is founded on only two or three very high-profile studies.”

Supplementation with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, like those in foods rich in omega-3, was linked to an IQ boost of 3.5 points, on average.

Preschools were linked to an increase of 7 IQ points.

They may boost IQ by providing the child with a cognitively stimulating environment.

In addition, it could be the extra exposure to language that provides the boost.

Dr Protzko said:

“Our current findings strengthen earlier conclusions that complex environments build intelligence, but do cast doubt on others, including evidence that earlier interventions are always most effective.

Overall, identifying the link between essential fatty acids and intelligence gives rise to tantalizing new questions for future research and we look forward to exploring this finding.”

Teaching parents how to read interactively with their children was linked to a 6 point IQ increase.

This is likely from the boost to language development.

The study was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (Protzko et al., 2013).

Get free email updates

Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.