What Does Science Say About Intelligence?

In psychology, when you talk about intelligence, you go into a black hole where shadows are confused with objects.

When it comes to trying to define intelligence, there is general agreement on the idea that people are intelligent because they are good at solving problems, proposing new ideas and finding new perspectives.

Modern psychology also supports the idea of ​​different types of intelligence rather than global intelligence. Thanks to this new understanding, we can all agree that Einstein, Mozart and Cervantes were all intelligent.

And we can say that without testing them, because their achievements, masterpieces and discoveries are proof enough of their abilities. Intelligence is nurtured by other abilities that also make us shine, such as effort, memory and creativity.

Many researchers believe that intelligence has a strong genetic component. But remember, our DNA gives us many of the cards we have to play in life, but not all of them.

We can get more from the environment we live in, especially in the first years of life, when the plasticity of the brain is at its highest level. At this stage, the brain only lays the foundation for future structures, especially those involved in social behavior.

The study of intelligence began in two interesting contexts where there was interest in quantifying and measuring individual differences. One was the military, where the work of  Robert Yerkes  in the United States Army during World War I comes into play. The second was education (see Alfred Binet’s work on the restructuring of the French education system).

In both cases, the reason for the intelligence studies was to distinguish intelligent people from unintelligent people. Ultimately, they want to create a reliable instrument that would measure intelligence, something that people are still trying to do today.

Unique organization methods

Intelligent people seem to have something in common with creative people: an apparent love of disorder. This trait, which can cause many problems for people living with them, is a result of their ability to find different solutions.

They often organize things in their own way, different from everyone else. For example, take a look at how Einstein organized his desk:

Kathleen Vohs and her staff conducted an interesting study in which they randomly divided a group of volunteers into two groups.

One group went into an office with disorganized desks and the other into an office with clean desks. Each group was asked to “brainstorm” ideas to solve different problems. The result? The people who had disorganized desks gave more and better ideas than those in the organized office.

Friends that can be counted on one hand

It seems that intelligent people do not have that many friends. The time they spend on relationships tends to be more about enjoying the ones they have than establishing new ones.

In addition, studies show that among highly intelligent people, there is a negative correlation between the number of friends and perceived satisfaction or general well-being.

This is interesting, because if you analyze the connection in the population in general, it is quite the opposite: the more friends you have, the more perceived satisfaction they have.

There is an evolutionary theory that explains this phenomenon: intelligent people do not need support in as many areas as everyone else. Being with other people can be more of an obstacle for them than an advantage.

A large vocabulary of bad words

Going through life by throwing out insults does not seem like the best approach, unless your main goal in life is to have a bad reputation or to hang out with people you are not going to fit in with.

But on the internet and even in the written press, there is no shortage of columnists who love to use inappropriate language. But does that mean people who use bad words are more intelligent? No, that’s not what we’re trying to say.

It seems that the amount of different swear words that the person is able to produce correlates with intelligence. Or at least a 2009 study by psychologists Kristin and Timothy Jay seems to prove it.

In the study, they asked participants to try to say as many swear words as possible. The results showed that those who produced a longer list of bad words could do the same in other categories of vocabulary.

There are other things that are common for intelligent people, such as getting up late, being ideologically left-leaning and caring about the environment. It also seems that very intelligent people are at risk of developing addictions as a way to make up for a possible lack of stimulation.