Signs of a smart person
Every smart person is unique, but they all have several characteristics in common, which you will now learn about:
- Ability to solve any problems. An intelligent person does not see unsolvable problems. He tries to find an original way out of any situation and, as a rule, comes up with it.
- The ability to listen. An intelligent person is a person who knows that by listening carefully and asking leading questions, you can learn a lot of interesting things about the interlocutor, which is why an intelligent person cannot be a chatterbox.
- Good memory. The ability to remember and skillfully use knowledge stored on memory shelves is often called intelligence.
- Broad outlook. An intelligent person is aware of everything. He is interested in all areas of life, he is able to support any conversation.
- Desire to share knowledge. A smart person never tries to make someone look like a fool (although it is very easy for him to do this). On the contrary, he tries to pass on his experience or help others become a little smarter.
- Modesty. The phrases of smart people are not replete with incomprehensible words and scientific terms. They speak a language that everyone understands and seem to be ashamed of their genius.
- Competent organization of leisure time. Smart people don't spend hours on social networks looking at funny photos, pictures or videos. They prefer interesting and educational books or documentaries. At the same time, smart people know that they also need rest from intellectual pursuits, so sports, playing music or painting are very attractive to them.
Intelligence is not judged by grades
I consider myself a smart person, but I don’t have a bunch of different certificates, cups and other things, like those who answered above. I never pursued this, simply because I didn’t see the point in it.
At school and university, I always asked more questions than my peers and always expected more detailed answers.
I try to surround myself with smart people, but they don't necessarily have to have a PhD. A person can have a hundred pieces of paper to prove his intelligence and still be incredibly boring to me. I like people who have an inquisitive mind, who are open to everything new and are not afraid to express their opinions. It’s nice to talk to such people, it’s interesting to listen to their reasoning.
Nowadays, intelligence is measured through IQ tests and university grades. I think this is a big misconception. A thirst for knowledge, a passion for everything new, a penchant for analysis - this is what distinguishes a truly smart person.
How to become smarter?
What can you do to make your brain work better? We'll give you some tips on how to become (not seem) a little smarter:
- Breathe deeply. A brain saturated with oxygen works better.
- Read more. Give preference to reading a book rather than watching a movie based on it. Firstly, this way you will force your brain to illustrate the work on its own, and secondly, you will immerse yourself in it much deeper.
- Get rid of junk words. In addition to the fact that they clog up speech, they also confuse thoughts. You should completely forget about profanity.
- Train your brain. Memorization exercises, arithmetic operations and various types of brainstorming should become your favorite pastime.
- Be interested in everything that happens in the world. You will not only be aware of all events, but will also be able to share or exchange opinions with family and friends.
- Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Stop spending all your free time in front of the computer. Go to the city tournament “What? Where? When?" or visit an art gallery, you will enjoy it.
- Learn to use your mind. Scientific research shows that people think no more than 10% of the time. We do many actions automatically, we say stupid things, guided by emotions. Try to control your actions and think before you speak.
- Embrace the idea that you are truly smart. Once you start thinking this way, you will think and act differently.
- Make sure your wording is clear. The words and thoughts of smart people should not be ambiguous. Express yourself clearly, speak confidently, and be poised and self-sufficient.
- Strive for excellence. Never stop there. Strive for perfection in everything: in cooking, in work, in raising children.
- Leave time for reflection. Sometimes a person needs to isolate himself from the whole world and think in silence alone with himself. Don't deny yourself this.
- Read biographies and quotes from smart people. You will understand that many of them are self-taught, without multiple degrees, but constantly striving for self-development.
You are a night owl
Do you sleep a lot? This is fine
The smarter you are, the more likely you are to stay up late and go to bed early in the morning. In a 2009 study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, researchers looked to find a link between children's intelligence levels and their sleep patterns. More than one thousand teenagers took part in the study. The results showed that more gifted young people go to bed and wake up later than everyone else, both on weekdays and on weekends.
Another study conducted ten years earlier and published in the same journal reported similar results. Only in this case, the subject of the study was about 400 US Air Force personnel.
Let's dispel the myths
It's time to talk about which statements about smart people are not entirely true.
A smart person knows a lot. This is partly true. However, a truly smart person is one who knows how to properly manage his knowledge.
Intelligence = education. In fact, having even ten higher education degrees is not a sign of intelligence. Education helps enrich and sharpen the mind, but cannot replace it.
Mind = intelligence. Equating mind with intelligence is also not entirely correct. After all, intelligence is not only the ability to answer test questions correctly and quickly, but also intelligence, cunning and life experience. An intelligent person knows this and tries to develop comprehensively.
Are you open
Smart people are always open to new ideas, opportunities and alternative solutions, and they do not neglect the opinions of others, even if they differ from their own.
Psychological scientists say that open-minded people seek out alternative points of view and weigh all evidence fairly. And they tend to do better on exams and intelligence tests.
At the same time, such people do not take anything for granted. To accept an idea, they need evidence.
9th place – Garry Kasparov, IQ 190
Harry grew up in a family where chess was treated with special reverence. Parents, engineers, often spent evenings at the chessboard. The boy also joined his favorite family activity, improving his IQ.
Already at the age of 22, Kasparov defeated Anatoly Karpov and became the champion.
And in 1997, Harry played a draw with the computer, losing to it only once, which amazed the entire world community.
Are you an empath?
Empathy is okay too
Smart people “can literally feel what you are thinking or feeling, that is, projecting onto themselves the feelings and experiences of other people,” says one Quora user.
Psychologists, in turn, believe that empathy, that is, the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others and sincerely empathize with them, is the main component of emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent people tend to be interested in connecting with new people and genuinely want to learn more about them.
1st place – Terence Tao, IQ 230
The person with the highest IQ lives in Australia (although he is of Chinese origin). At the age of 2 he could perform simple arithmetic operations, and by the age of 5 he was solving complex mathematical problems.
At the age of 12, he took part in international mathematical Olympiads.
Are you impressed by the success? Train your brain and, perhaps, in the near future you will find yourself on the list of the smartest people in Russia, which already includes A. Wasserman, Zh. Alferov, G. Perelman and others.
You are not easily distracted
People who can focus on something for long periods of time and are able to ignore distractions are distinguished by extraordinary intelligence. A report published in the journal Current Biology in 2013 confirms this.
The document describes studies that found that people with higher IQ levels pay little or no attention to what is happening around them. Most likely, this happens because they focus on the most important information and filter out the unimportant.
You see connections between seemingly unrelated things
Can you connect science and cats?
Several Quora users agree that smart people are able to see things that others might not notice. This is explained by the fact that such people can draw parallels between, at first glance, completely unrelated ideas.
As an example, user April Astoria gives the following:
“Do you think there is nothing in common between sashimi and melon? You are not right. Both foods are eaten raw and cold.”
Famed journalist Charles Duhigg believes that the ability to draw such parallels is the hallmark of creativity (which is also closely related to intelligence). Duhigg analyzed the processes and methods by which Disney created one of its hits, Frozen, and concluded that the film seemed so clever and original only because "it took old ideas and told them to others." , in a new way."
Research shows that people who score high on IQ tests do better in several other areas of life.
Dagens Nyheter employee Maria Gunther wrote the book “Smart”. Augustin Erba read this book, which debunks many myths about intelligence.
Myth 1: People with high IQs are better than others
It can be assumed that people with a proven high IQ are better than others because they have higher thinking abilities. But when the writer Maria Gunther became a member of the society of people with high IQs, she very quickly realized that this was not the case at all. She applied for membership in Mensa, a society that accepts only those who pass its own version of an IQ test.
Maria Gunter successfully passed it and was soon able to join community discussions on the Internet. In her book, she says that not everyone who did well on the test was pleasant and socially competent. The level of conversation was so low that Maria Gunther left Mensa. Here's what she writes about intelligence researchers themselves:
“I was not quite prepared for the fact that when communicating with some intellectual experts I would encounter some unpleasant tendencies - for example, elitism, sexism, racism, scientific dishonesty and a harsh and derogatory tone with others. Some of this, of course, can be explained as a natural reaction to the fact that their field of activity is constantly under attack from critics, and the subject of research is still not precisely formulated.
It might also be worth adding that it is not a fact that intelligence researchers have higher IQs than other people. But our own experience and the experience gained by Maria Gunther at Mensa allows us to state that a high IQ does not necessarily make a person pleasant to talk to. However, the question here is what intelligence and IQ actually are and how they are measured in the first place.
Myth 2: Intelligence is the result you get from an IQ test.
In popular culture, there are many different opinions about what intelligence is, but in fact, most scientists have come to a consensus on this issue.
IQ once stood for psychological age. Intelligence quotient in English served as a measure used to determine whether a child was lagging behind in mental development or developing faster than usual. But now this is no longer the case. Yes, and IQ tests are different. The test used by Mensa, for example, includes five main types of problems, according to Patricia Carpenter, Marcel Adam Just and Peter Shell.
Spektrum.de 06/01/2020 Svenska Dagbladet 02/06/2018 1. A series of similar elements: find the similarities.
2. Quantitative change: for example, one figure has one segment, another has two.
3. Addition or subtraction of figures: the segments from which the figures are made must be added or subtracted from each other separately.
4. Distribution of three options.
5. Distribution of two values.
And, of course, it is obvious that the ability to find these kinds of patterns says little about a person's communication skills, for example. But there is evidence in psychology that IQ tests measure one useful and valuable human characteristic. Why the types of tasks listed above reveal it is unknown, we only know that this is exactly the case.
However, the analysis that is carried out during intelligence research is much more profound.
Most scientists agree that there is something called a general intelligence factor. The theory of general intelligence was put forward by English psychologist Charles Spearman at the beginning of the 20th century. We know that general intelligence, like many other human properties, on average is approximately the same among people. This means that most of us are at about the same level, with only a few people being less or more intelligent than the average person.
As Maria Gunther writes in her book “Mind,” two types of intelligence can be distinguished. One is responsible for the ability to draw conclusions and solve problems. The second is our knowledge and the ability to use it, as well as experience in solving problems. The body of knowledge and experience is called crystallized intelligence, and the ability to draw conclusions and solve problems is called fluid intelligence. To put it simply, we can say that crystallized intelligence works when you need to recognize old, already encountered patterns and act on it, and fluid intelligence is needed to discover new patterns.
Maria Gunther defines intelligence as the ability to retain necessary knowledge in the head and discard what is not important.
Myth 3: Smart people do better
As always with categorical and general statements, if you look at them in more detail, it turns out that all this is very difficult to prove. What does “things are getting better” mean? What person makes more money? That he has a higher status at work? Why is he happy? If you look at how the lives of intellectual people develop from an academic point of view, we can say that among them there are more people with scientific degrees. But there is research that shows that it is better to be a stupid person than an unpleasant person. People who have difficulty accepting criticism, coping with stress, and experiencing failure are much more likely to be unemployed than those who simply have lower intelligence.
And in work, both unskilled and managerial, the level of salary often depends more on personal qualities than on the level of intelligence.
There are many stories of smart people being bullied in school, but research suggests just the opposite. Intelligence works as a kind of defense. In addition, smart children are less dependent on the level of education of their parents to achieve success.
Conclusion: Intelligence is important if you want to succeed, but other qualities are more helpful in avoiding failure.
Myth 4: Men are smarter than women
Research suggests that there are some small differences in intelligence, but there is no evidence that men are smarter than women. Rather, there are slightly more men with reduced intelligence in the world than women.
Illustrerad Vetenskap 03/31/2020 BBC 11/03/2016 But the same study says that among the smartest people there are also slightly more men. This is probably because intelligence can be improved - see point 7.
Myth 5 (?): Brain size determines intelligence
From an evolutionary point of view, everything is crystal clear here. Dinosaurs had a brain the size of a pea, when you look at it in relation to body size. And the difference between us humans and our predecessors lies precisely in the volume of the brain. And this myth is more difficult to debunk. We know that larger brains in animals provide them with greater intelligence, but men have larger brains than women, and the intellectual difference is not in favor of men (see point 4) - despite their larger brains on average. There is a theory that it is not the size itself that matters, but the density. Or that certain parts of the brain are more important than others.
Myth 6: Multitasking doesn't require intelligence.
An important part of intelligence is what psychologists call working memory, or, simply put, the ability to hold information in your head. For example, working memory determines how many different things we can do at the same time. There are many games based on working memory, such as the Rubik's Cube or the Tower of Hanoi. Some people believe that working memory and fluid intelligence are the same thing, but scientists have not yet come to a consensus.
Myth 7: You can’t increase your IQ
For some reason, many people have a ingrained idea that intelligence, unlike almost all other human abilities, is something unchangeable and predetermined. But measurements prove that this is not so. An example is the so-called Flynn effect. It shows that people who take an intelligence test today do, on average, better than those who took it 15 years ago.
You can also achieve the opposite result - worsen IQ. For example, if a person grows up in an area contaminated with mercury, his intelligence decreases. Mercury vapor impairs people's mental abilities.
The best way to increase your intelligence is to study. Each additional year of school on average improves IQ by 1-5 points. And this result does not disappear after the training is completed.
Myth 8: You are smarter than you think
And here we come to the saddest part of this article. In one American study, 64% of respondents agreed with the statement “I am smarter than the average person.” Those reading this may have already realized that if more than half of people consider themselves smarter than average, then this certainly cannot be true.
But here we can take comfort in the fact that at least some of these 64% are right. In addition, this American study cannot be transferred to the Swedes, and who cares about this intelligence anyway - we ourselves wrote in paragraph 3 that it is more important to be a pleasant person!
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
