Intelligence What characterises people with high IQ's ?

@Claymore2. Keep in mind that people with extremely good memory can learn anything and pass almost any test. They might have great jobs, good positions, etc, but they might not be truly intelligent people. They might seem intelligent, but they are really not. To be totally honest, memory is a big part of intelligence, but what I mean is that super memory can help and make some people well function in complicated environment and do complicated jobs. Even though they are lacking true intelligence; critical thinking, pattern recognition and cognitive creativity.
 
Define your definition of "high intelligence".

For a start I would avoid this kind of redundant verb-object combination. Did you mean simply: "define intelligence" ?

There are many types of intelligence: logic, mathematical, analytical, critical, organizational, spatio-visual, linguistic, musical, social (e.g. understanding the way people interact), psychological (e.g. understanding how the human mind works and why people act the way they do), philosophical, and so on. These can be further differentiated. Some people are great orators, but poor writers. Others uses their mother tongue sublimely but are terrible at learning foreign languages. Others still have a perfect command of grammar, but can't imitate accents, or vice versa.

Athletic abilities are a subtype of visuospatial abilities, but obviously not the same as the one that makes you understand geometry, which is also different from the one you use to play video games, or to draw a world map from memory, or to park your car.

Intelligence is one person's average 'score' for all categories of the human intellect. Definitions always miss something. Just make the total of a person's capabilities and you get an idea of their intelligence. Of course there is no way to reliably measure that at present (or it would be really tedious and time-consuming).

I have seen numerous well educated, and "intelligent", people drive vehicles with less skill than a one-armed half blinded chimp.

Then you have met some kinds of savants with only one part of their brain functioning properly, maybe due to an brain injury. Truly intelligent people are good at everything (at least if they practice a bit, as the brain atrophies without practice). For example my visuospatial IQ is about 165 and I can parallel park my car between two cars in reverse on my first try without looking backward and faster than most people. I just feel the car moving into position inside my mind. But it didn't come without a few months of practice when I first started driving a car. IQ gives you potential. IQ alone is meaningless without developing skills.

I have always looked at it this way - intelligence is your ability to comprehend. Not your book smarts.

Too restrictive definition. A good science writer is not necessarily someone who understand science the most deeply, and vice versa. A great painter or musician is not necessarily a great art critic or art historian. Performing uses a different part of the brain from understanding.

I know a number of very intelligent individuals:
1) a close friend who is a Mensa member, his PhD completed by 27.
2) My father completed his Bachelors and his Masters within half the standard time. He had his Bachelors, in psychology, done within just 2 years due to overload of courses [and he was an honours student].
3) My 2nd cousin is considered something of a genius in his field as well as being capable of speaking seven different languages fluently by age 28. He’s in the art field by the way, given your last comment.
4) Another close friend, likewise Mensa member.

Academic performance does not correlate as much to very high IQ as to having a good memory and being able to know what is expected of you. Statistically people with Masters and PhD are more likely to have moderately high IQ (between 115 and 135). Truly gifted individuals may not see the value of being tested by people who know much less than them and can't think as clearly. It also depends what one is studying. Having an exceptionally high mathematical/logic and spatio-visual IQ won't help you much to study foreign languages if your verbal IQ is low. Likewise being extremely articulate and picking up languages easily is not going to get you a PhD in physics. I am not sure how common it is to have a very big gap in non-verbal and verbal IQ though. There are genes that influence the whole brain plasticity and should therefore increase all types of intelligence. But some genes do grant special abilities in one field too.

Mensa accepts the top 2% of the population, which is an awful lot of people. For profoundly gifted individuals, the IQ gap with someone who barely made it to Mensa can be greater than between the latter and an average person (IQ of 100). In other terms, the bottom Mensan with an IQ of 132 is 22 IQ points away from an average intelligence (range 90 to 110), but 38 points away from someone with an IQ of 170.

The Mensa test is based on crystallised non-verbal intelligence, which tests mostly mathematical, logic and spatio-visual skills, and to some extent low-grade analytical skills. It does not test critical thinking (such as judging the value and merits of the test), linguistic or artistic skills, social, psychological or philosophical intelligence, nor creative potential.

It is not surprising that some people with extremely high IQ can still believe in god, because a high IQ does not mean that the person possesses a strong critical sense, an independent personality (easily free of social influence, peer pressure, culture and traditions), or a high psychological and philosophical intelligence (required to understand that religions are man-made and gods modelled on the human mind).

Another problem with IQ tests, not only Mensa's but any IQ test, is that even in the categories they do test, they only assess comprehension, not performance or creativity. Someone who gets a high score at a verbal IQ test, for example, is someone with a good understanding of language, but that doesn't mean that he or she would make a good writer, a good orator, a good stand-up comedian, or even a good communicator. All these require a lot of practice and other skills that are much harder to test. Same for non-verbal IQ.

Let’s clarify something here. Higher IQ is, potentially, linked with HIGH testosterone. Nothing else. As there are numerous factors that can influence testosterone – including genetically inherited problems – this “find” is ultimately irrelevant. Not to mention the backlash of having HIGH testosterone would probably handicap any benefit to so called “high” IQ.

Testosterone only shapes the brain development in the womb, and actually only during one specific period of pregnancy. Boys and girls both have low testosterone before puberty. When boys start producing testosterone at puberty, it will affect their body and sexual behaviour, but it won't change their neural pathways the way testosterone did when they were foetuses. That's too late. Anyway testosterone in the womb will only increase male types of intelligence, like spatio-visual, logic and analytical skills, but not female ones relating to empathy, communication, social skills, etc.
 
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Then you have met some kinds of savants with only one part of their brain functioning properly, maybe due to an brain injury. Truly intelligent people are good at everything (at least if they practice a bit, as the brain atrophies without practice). For example my visuospatial IQ is about 165 and I can parallel park my car between two cars in reverse on my first try without looking backward and faster than most people. I just feel the cat moving into position inside my mind. But it didn't come without a few months of practice when I first started driving a car. IQ gives you potential. IQ alone is meaningless without developing skills.

I agree with this. There is a balance where intelligence is displayed. Being able to drive well,cook etc,etc . There are some oddballs though,where they excel at one task such as math ,but are as average as the next one.

I also agree with the original post, as Many of those characteristics are displayed by me .
For a while there I thought I was alone.
 
The score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a six-year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by six-year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985). Binet thought that intelligence was multifaceted, but came under the control of practical judgment.
 
We have seen in this thread that IQ is strongly hereditary, that children with highly educated parents also tended to have higher IQ's, and especially that male hormones significantly increased IQ (because IQ only testes typically male reasoning skills, like logic and spatial skills). We saw that the higher the IQ, the bigger the gap in numbers between men and women.

Because IQ is so intricately linked to male hormones, it is normal to see a correlation between very high IQ and masculine social behaviour.

The higher the IQ, the higher the sense of individuality and the independence of mind. Exceptionally gifted people care (much) less about what other people think of them, and are less sensitive to praise, and even less to flattery.

Because they care less about the opinion and esteem of others, they tend to be less socially oriented, but also feel less easily lonely. Maybe it is because they have a very heightened sense of the "self".

They feel pressed to tell openly what they think to others, especially when they hear something that conflicts with their reasoning or knowledge. They value more truth, facts and logic than friendship or emotional relations.

Gifted people therefore only care about social conventions they agree with, and (harshly) criticise the others. They live in an inner world where anything that is not rational is wrong and should be changed. It is unconceivable to them to bask in mediocrity. They are born perfectionists (for what they care about).

Their disregard for conventions, combined with vivid, creative and independent mind, often make them coin new words (often just for fun, to see the reaction of those who care about conventions), or use rare words (not by pedantry at all, but just because they like them better). In other words, they recreate the conventions for themselves.

Typical high-IQ people are constantly thinking about something, worried about a problem, thinking about solutions... So they end up having little time and energy left, and little motivation, for ordinary chit-chat. Because they are constantly "navigating in their thoughts", they tend to be more forgetful of trivial things ("damn, I forgot to remove the clothes from the washing machine last night !").

Their strong independence of mind and deep intellectualisation of things results in exceptionally gifted people having stronger individual interests than average ("passions" for some topics or activities). Once they get into something, they want to know everything about it (which can make them look like geeks or freaks to ordinary folk).

High IQ correlates strongly with exceptional concentration abilities. The problem is that it makes such people quite stubborn until they know or understand what they wanted. Such children are known for always asking "why" questions, and never give up until they get a satisfactory answer.

One thing that normally irritates people with high IQ is asking them to explain something (complex), then stop listening in the middle of their explanations. Exceptionally gifted people just can't understand why one would ask a question and not care about the answer, when they visibly do not understand that topic.

At school, exceptionally gifted children are easily bored by lessons, because they understand before everyone else and get irritated when the teacher has to repeat for slower people. If it is a subject they are particularily interested in, they usually have learned everything by themselves before, which can create conflicts with the teacher, as gifted children do not mind correcting the teacher's slightest mistake in front of the whole class (that's their way of showing that they shouldn't be sitting in that class in a humiliating position of inferiority - well, you know how wild and vain kids can be !).


On the whole, exceptionally gifted people tend to be hyperactive, eat a lot and sleep a lot (because the brain uses so much energy), or on the contrary eat and sleep very little (these are exceptions, like Napoleon, probably due to a different metabolism).

At work, they have difficulty understanding why other people can't do as much as they do in the same amount of time, or don't do things as well as they should. They are usually unsatisfied by others, demanding, strict, and feel like they have to do things by themselves if they want them to be done properly...

High-IQ people are very individualistic, but they usually strive for the common good (as well as their own interests). Their passion for things, their sense of logic, and their desire for perpetual improvement, make of them good politicians and philosophers. On the other hand, they usually dislike routine jobs, with predefinied tasks and little space for creativity and a sense of intellectual challenge.

Given their individualism, they rarely bear the authority of other people, and are therefore more often self-made people, free-thinkers and entrepreneurs, rather than conventional academics or professionals employed by a company.

Having a high IQ has little influence on most of the arts, as IQ only testes rational, logic and spatial skills. It may help for sculpture (spatial skills), or classsical music (rational and spatial).

We all are the product of randomness. At least until now. Later the people could be engineered. Intelligence has to do with the part of the brain that deals with thinking. The gray area. If this part of the brain is bigger the IQ is higher. It does not have to do with the size of the head since it might not be the grey area. Inheritance always has a role but its not determinant. Einstein had two sons and neither one was intellectually above the average. I don't trust IQ tests a lot. Many tested high IQ people have failed. When I am trying to picture people with high IQ I think of Darwin. We still discovering what Charlz Darwin told as hundreds of years ago They don't necessary excel all the time but when time comes they strike on target. To me an high IQ person is quiet, not talkative and question everything
 
I've never had my IQ tested I believe that overall it's above average. I began sleeping late at around three years ago. It's 2AM where I am and I'm still awake. I'm individualistic but not like the North American / Anglo-Saxon way which can be better defined as selfishness and hyper-competitiveness. I'm not a very rational person as I brood and obsess over things quite easily. I can be quite paranoid at times.
 
I've never had my IQ tested I believe that overall it's above average. I began sleeping late at around three years ago. It's 2AM where I am and I'm still awake. I'm individualistic but not like the North American / Anglo-Saxon way which can be better defined as selfishness and hyper-competitiveness. I'm not a very rational person as I brood and obsess over things quite easily. I can be quite paranoid at times.

Interesting. Where I'm from, Canada, we have lots of international students from China, and they are known for being hyper-competitive and selfish. Also notorious for sticking to their groups and sharing old exams. You must be a different kind of Chinese. I bet you've never even met a white person since no western people really go to China unless we're spending money to feed your economy or temporarily work in a field for a Chinese company that requires an English speaker for some reason and boost your GDP. Funny.
 
I've never had my IQ tested I believe that overall it's above average. I began sleeping late at around three years ago. It's 2AM where I am and I'm still awake. I'm individualistic but not like the North American / Anglo-Saxon way which can be better defined as selfishness and hyper-competitiveness. I'm not a very rational person as I brood and obsess over things quite easily. I can be quite paranoid at times.

Have you thought about seeing a therapist?
 
Forgetting everyday, simple facts? I think it's called old age.
 
It sums up people with good logic instruments and spatial skills. There are certain types of people who are better in this than others. The IQ yest is a test for 2 out of many types of intelligence.

I don't complain though, the OP post is like a description of me
:)
 
We have seen in this thread that IQ is strongly hereditary, that children with highly educated parents also tended to have higher IQ's, and especially that male hormones significantly increased IQ (because IQ only testes typically male reasoning skills, like logic and spatial skills). We saw that the higher the IQ, the bigger the gap in numbers between men and women.

Because IQ is so intricately linked to male hormones, it is normal to see a correlation between very high IQ and masculine social behaviour.

The higher the IQ, the higher the sense of individuality and the independence of mind. Exceptionally gifted people care (much) less about what other people think of them, and are less sensitive to praise, and even less to flattery.

Because they care less about the opinion and esteem of others, they tend to be less socially oriented, but also feel less easily lonely. Maybe it is because they have a very heightened sense of the "self".

They feel pressed to tell openly what they think to others, especially when they hear something that conflicts with their reasoning or knowledge. They value more truth, facts and logic than friendship or emotional relations.

Gifted people therefore only care about social conventions they agree with, and (harshly) criticise the others. They live in an inner world where anything that is not rational is wrong and should be changed. It is unconceivable to them to bask in mediocrity. They are born perfectionists (for what they care about).

Their disregard for conventions, combined with vivid, creative and independent mind, often make them coin new words (often just for fun, to see the reaction of those who care about conventions), or use rare words (not by pedantry at all, but just because they like them better). In other words, they recreate the conventions for themselves.

Typical high-IQ people are constantly thinking about something, worried about a problem, thinking about solutions... So they end up having little time and energy left, and little motivation, for ordinary chit-chat. Because they are constantly "navigating in their thoughts", they tend to be more forgetful of trivial things ("damn, I forgot to remove the clothes from the washing machine last night !").

Their strong independence of mind and deep intellectualisation of things results in exceptionally gifted people having stronger individual interests than average ("passions" for some topics or activities). Once they get into something, they want to know everything about it (which can make them look like geeks or freaks to ordinary folk).

High IQ correlates strongly with exceptional concentration abilities. The problem is that it makes such people quite stubborn until they know or understand what they wanted. Such children are known for always asking "why" questions, and never give up until they get a satisfactory answer.

One thing that normally irritates people with high IQ is asking them to explain something (complex), then stop listening in the middle of their explanations. Exceptionally gifted people just can't understand why one would ask a question and not care about the answer, when they visibly do not understand that topic.

At school, exceptionally gifted children are easily bored by lessons, because they understand before everyone else and get irritated when the teacher has to repeat for slower people. If it is a subject they are particularily interested in, they usually have learned everything by themselves before, which can create conflicts with the teacher, as gifted children do not mind correcting the teacher's slightest mistake in front of the whole class (that's their way of showing that they shouldn't be sitting in that class in a humiliating position of inferiority - well, you know how wild and vain kids can be !).


On the whole, exceptionally gifted people tend to be hyperactive, eat a lot and sleep a lot (because the brain uses so much energy), or on the contrary eat and sleep very little (these are exceptions, like Napoleon, probably due to a different metabolism).

At work, they have difficulty understanding why other people can't do as much as they do in the same amount of time, or don't do things as well as they should. They are usually unsatisfied by others, demanding, strict, and feel like they have to do things by themselves if they want them to be done properly...

High-IQ people are very individualistic, but they usually strive for the common good (as well as their own interests). Their passion for things, their sense of logic, and their desire for perpetual improvement, make of them good politicians and philosophers. On the other hand, they usually dislike routine jobs, with predefinied tasks and little space for creativity and a sense of intellectual challenge.

Given their individualism, they rarely bear the authority of other people, and are therefore more often self-made people, free-thinkers and entrepreneurs, rather than conventional academics or professionals employed by a company.

Having a high IQ has little influence on most of the arts, as IQ only testes rational, logic and spatial skills. It may help for sculpture (spatial skills), or classsical music (rational and spatial).

I have the impression that high IQ people are not sociable in general. It was hard to socialize with Newton, Tesla, Einstein, Gauss,Dirac just to mention a few.This is a sign of autism with its severity differing from one person to another. They see the reality different from others. Let say we all think that darkness is the opposite of light, but Einstein saw darkness as lack of photons, not the opposite of light. He pointed that there is not such a thing like darkness, its the wrong perception of our mind. As proof he pointed that once you are locket in a box tightly closed it will be dark inside, but won't get any darker if this box is put into another one. Once is dark that's it. But that's not the point with light. Strength of light can be changed, so actually light is something we can add or subtract, and darkness is nothing, so darkness can not be the opposite of light. I personally think that very high IQ people are product of randomness rather than hereditary. Let say Einstein's kids did not excel in science. If ever happens that intelligence is transmitted through DNA, so to say becomes hereditary they will form a brand new spices. The rest of us can not keep up with them. So we average IQ people will look like Neanderthal they like the Humans ( intelligently)
 
I am not quite sure that their personality traits were "hard to socialize with" but rather not having people around compatible with them in terms of socializing. I have noticed that a lot of high IQ people do not seem to worry about what most people worry about. Some of the ones I think are very intelligent are not that well off financially. At least not as well as society would expect them to be. Rather than spending their time thinking about it, they are so occupied with areas of their interest, that they sort of elevate themselves above what people people appear to speak about to their friends. Money, food, clothes, cars, what was on the tube etc. The older I get the more antisocial I become with people whose only conversations are around the same thing as it does not benefit anyone and often has too much negative energy in it. Does that make me antisocial? Sure, some people may think so. But I also know I more and more appreciate the people who inspire me and with whom I can spend an afternoon and get home with new ideas because of mutual inspiration. As for being exclusively hereditary: I know quite a few families with mostly highly intelligent people ... except one. The black sheep. Probably you are right about it being hereditary, but of course there are factors that can play a role in turning a child out differently. But I thought I bring it up to see what causes you detect that IQ and IQ of parents does not always align.
 
They tend to kinda be introvert. Just check Newton's story.
 
Probably depends on the social settings. Likely very talkative when inspired by like-minded but equally reserved when in situations with people who do not share their areas and levels of interest. I think it is less about IQ but rather what you spend your time being interested in and thinking about. If it has to do with being passionate about things that you think are missing in the world or science "needs to explore further", you might get bored hearing about inside politics of the company your friend is working for. You might tune out when you are content overall and excited over new ideas and research when money (and what it can buy) seems to be the only thing that gets others fired up.
No, I do believe that people with a lower IQ can definitely communicate with those of a genius level when their interests are similar. And this is likely more in terms of personal choice what we spend our time doing and working on rather on how much cash we can grab right now. Which is a necessary part of life, but those who only focus on nothing else are boring to me.
And I always love to look at people's potential. Which I think far too many people are hiding as they have never gotten out of the rut of only looking at what they have to do in life to get what they want. And their own ideas have never properly developed as they were and are only busy executing other people's ideas in order to get paid for it. So no, I do not believe that high IQ people are anti-social. They simply are either in charge if they are business minded or they are somewhere standing a little further away from the masses. But hearing everyday problems is something that is not appealing to those who are able to think on higher level. What appeals to them is likely new solutions. Not old problems.

They tend to kinda be introvert. Just check Newton's story.
 
I have long been interested in exceptional cognitive ability.
I'd say the most common trait of people with very high IQ is persistence, but this is far from universal. It appears more common than it is because it is very common in highly intelligent people who are well-known.
There have been attempts to correlate IQ and various personality traits. Results have been quite mixed and inconclusive.
But even among the highest IQ people, some fit in well, some are ostracized. Some are polymaths, others are specialists. Some are extraverts, others are introverts. Some appear quite "normal" other than being brilliant, others are distinctly odd. Most are sane, some are crazy.
 
I'm gifted, a kind of hopeless romantic, I love art, can get pretty passionate over things, am extremely extravert once I feel comfortable with someone, but very introvert otherwise. The same with talking: I'm a closed book with people who I don't like, but I can't stop talking in the car when my grandma gets me home from school. Some of these 'people with high IQ' things are surely right for me, but by far not all, or not all exactly. I'm pretty emotional. And I don't need 'truth' for everything, I'd like to know things for sure, but I can deal with it I'll never now things for sure, but still wonder about it. I'm a big dreamer.
 
Getting a high score in an iq test
 
I'm gifted, a kind of hopeless romantic, I love art, can get pretty passionate over things, am extremely extravert once I feel comfortable with someone, but very introvert otherwise. The same with talking: I'm a closed book with people who I don't like, but I can't stop talking in the car when my grandma gets me home from school. Some of these 'people with high IQ' things are surely right for me, but by far not all, or not all exactly. I'm pretty emotional. And I don't need 'truth' for everything, I'd like to know things for sure, but I can deal with it I'll never now things for sure, but still wonder about it. I'm a big dreamer.

Which zodiac sign do you belong to? Don't tell me the crab.
 

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