People with high IQs have certain traits in common. While we think of an intelligent person as someone who may express their knowledge and come across as a know-it-all, the opposite may be true in reality. Check out some of these traits of highly intelligent people:
The Dunning-Kruger effect explains this: low ability people tend to overestimate their abilities and tend to be boastful. However, the opposite may be true for high IQ people who tend to be aware of the vast sum of knowledge available and are aware of how much there is still left to know and learn.
Intelligent people tend to be curious – though many may be quite shy, reading books and losing themselves in research. They may commonly be seen to ask a lot of questions, become fixated on a mystery or puzzle and may want to keep learning and discovering new things.
Intelligent people may not be all good and proper and some could be seen to use swear words quite freely. In fact, the swearing could be quite specific and creative with an intelligent use of epithets because of a bigger vocabulary.
Intelligent people may not be as self-absorbed as we may imagine. They may have better insight into certain things and a wider worldview, and hence they tend to be more empathetic towards others.
Surprisingly, high IQ people tend to be quite funny – because they have a different way of looking at things they may observe quirks and details others may miss. Studies have also found that standup comics and humour writers tend to have high IQs.
Smart don’t mind being by themselves. Perhaps they enjoy their own company – since their own thoughts and ideas keep them entertained and engaged?
Ideas that geniuses have frequently seem like madness to the rest of the people around. Many of the brightest minds in history were considered heretical or crazy in their time – simply because their ideas were so unusual and new.
One would think that intelligent people would be highly organised and neat. They may well be – inside their heads. All around, however, there could be chaos because apparently, this forces the mind to be more organised.
As kids we were told not to talk to ourselves or people would call us crazy. However speaking to oneself is actually something that intelligent people tend to do. Verbalising is a memory boosting technique that works because it involves more of the senses.
Some smart people are seen to be more susceptible to anxiety, particularly social anxiety. Often, high IQs don’t guarantee high EQ (emotional quotient). Clearly, the brain works in mysterious ways!
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