Five traits often linked to high intelligence are a tendency to worry, a willingness to take calculated risks, openness to new ideas, a good sense of humour, and a strong appetite for new information. Research supports some of these links better than others. Humour and curiosity have reasonably solid evidence behind them, anxiety rests on small studies, and one popular claim about risk-taking comes from a study that never measured intelligence at all.
Intelligence is shaped by a mix of genes and environment, including education, nutrition and the habits we build. None of the signs below can tell you anyone's IQ. They are tendencies that show up, on average, in groups of people. With that in mind, here is what each one is based on, and how far the evidence really goes.
1. A tendency to worry
The idea that anxious people are smarter became popular in the 2010s. It draws mainly on two lines of work. Psychiatrist Jeremy Coplan at SUNY Downstate reported that among people with generalised anxiety disorder, higher IQ scores went with more severe worry, and that their brains showed differences in activity linked to communication between brain regions. The study was small, and Coplan himself stressed that serious anxiety can be disabling.
Separately, personality researcher Adam Perkins of King's College London suggested that people high in neuroticism may have an overactive "threat generator" that makes them dwell on problems, which might sometimes feed creativity. That is a theory, not a measured result.
The verdict: interesting, but weak. These are associations in small or specific samples, and they do not mean that anxiety makes anyone smarter. If worry is affecting your sleep, work or relationships, talk to a doctor; anxiety is treatable, and there is no hidden benefit in suffering through it. There is more on this in our look at social anxiety, empathy and intelligence.
2. Taking risks, with a correction
Many websites claim that a 2015 Finnish study proved risk-takers are more intelligent. The study they usually link, published in PLOS ONE by Victor Vorobyev and colleagues at the University of Turku, does not show that. It scanned the brains of 18- and 19-year-old male students while they played a simulated driving game, deciding whether to drive through yellow traffic lights. Usable brain data came from 27 young men.
The researchers found that risky choices activated reward-related brain areas, that low risk-takers showed more activity in a frontal region tied to weighing conflict, and that competing in front of peers pushed everyone towards more risk. Intelligence was not measured. The authors did mention earlier research suggesting a positive link between sensation-seeking and intelligence, but only as background.
The verdict: the claim as usually stated is wrong. A fairer version is that a taste for novelty and stimulation sometimes overlaps with higher ability, while reckless risk-taking, especially behind the wheel, is not a sign of brains.
3. Openness to new ideas
Here the evidence is much stronger. In personality psychology, "openness to experience" describes people who enjoy ideas, art, novelty and unfamiliar ways of thinking. Studies consistently find that openness correlates with measured intelligence, at roughly r = 0.30 to 0.45 in many reviews, with the strongest links to verbal ability. The facets most closely tied to intelligence are those about ideas and intellectual curiosity.
A more controversial paper by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, published in Social Psychology Quarterly in 2010 under the title "Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent", used large US surveys to argue that more intelligent people are more likely to adopt "evolutionarily novel" values, such as liberal politics and atheism. Popular articles reported average IQs of about 95 for young adults calling themselves very conservative and about 106 for those calling themselves very liberal.
The verdict: the openness link is well established. Kanazawa's explanation is contested, and the political finding describes small group averages with huge overlap. Plenty of very bright people are religious or conservative, and an individual's views say little about their IQ.
4. A good sense of humour
This sign has one of the clearest studies behind it. In 2011, Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico tested 400 students, 200 men and 200 women, on abstract reasoning and on vocabulary. The students then wrote captions for three New Yorker cartoons, which six judges rated for funniness without knowing anything about who wrote them.
Both measures of intelligence predicted who wrote funnier captions, and verbal intelligence was the stronger predictor. The study, published in the journal Intelligence, also found that humour ability helped explain the link between intelligence and mating success, although that effect was small.
The verdict: producing humour, especially quick verbal wit, does seem to draw on intelligence. Laughing at jokes is a different skill from writing them, and there are many kinds of funny. We have also looked at whether sarcastic people are smarter.
5. Curiosity and a hunger for information
People who read widely, follow the news, look things up and enjoy puzzles tend to score higher on tests of knowledge and reasoning. Psychologists call one version of this trait "need for cognition": a motivation to think hard about things, question information and enjoy mental effort. It overlaps with the intellectual side of openness, and those facets correlate modestly with fluid reasoning ability.
Curiosity matters partly because it compounds. Someone who keeps asking questions keeps learning, and accumulated knowledge is itself a major part of what intelligence tests measure. Unlike some of the other traits here, curiosity is also something you can deliberately feed, by reading outside your usual topics, learning a skill, or following a question until you understand it.
The verdict: well supported as a correlate, and the most useful sign on this list because it is within your control.
Myths and what these signs can't tell you
- Myth: one trait proves you are gifted. Every correlation here is moderate at best. Many highly anxious, funny or curious people have average IQs, and the reverse is also true.
- Myth: intelligence is fixed at birth. Genes matter a great deal, but schooling, health, nutrition and stimulating environments also shape measured ability.
- Myth: IQ is all that counts. Emotional intelligence, persistence and practical skill predict a lot about how life goes, and they are not captured by an IQ score.
- Myth: the studies are about individuals. They describe averages across groups. They cannot diagnose anyone.
If you recognised yourself in several of these signs, enjoy it, but treat it as a nudge rather than a verdict. The habits behind the best-supported signs, staying curious, reading widely and staying open to ideas you don't yet agree with, are worth cultivating whatever your score.
Sources: Vorobyev et al. (2015), PLOS ONE; Kanazawa (2010), Social Psychology Quarterly; Greengross & Miller (2011), Intelligence (PDF); Wikipedia: Openness to experience; Thinking Humanity: worry, anxiety and IQ.
Thanks for the article, it was informative.
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