- [Narrator] Hey, Psych2Goers.
Welcome back to our channel.
If you clicked on this video,
you're probably wondering if you're smart.
While a great report card
doesn't define all types of intelligence,
there are a few bizarre habits
a lot of intelligent people happen to share.
Here are some of the weird habits
smart people tend to share
according to psychological research.
One, you're a night owl.
Can't go to sleep on time,
not just on time, but a reasonable hour?
A lot of intelligent people share this habit
according to research.
The London School of Economics and Political Science
conducted a study that found
that people who often find themselves going to bed later
have higher IQs.
The researchers explained in their study
that the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis
suggests that more intelligent individuals
are more likely to acquire and espouse
evolutionarily novel values and preferences
than less intelligent individuals.
But general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition
and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values
and preferences.
They go on to explain that one example of such choice
within genetic constraint is circadian rhythms.
Survey of ethnographies of traditional societies
suggest that nocturnal activities
were probably rare in the ancestral environment.
So the hypothesis would predict
that more intelligent individuals
are more likely to be nocturnal
than less intelligent individuals.
The analysis of the National Longitudinal Study
of Adolescent Health confirms the prediction.
With such an instinctive behavior,
it seems you can't help but sense a danger in the night,
or you just really like staying up late
and watching YouTube videos.
Two, you live in a disorderly environment.
Is your room a mess, your workspace, your hair?
Well, a messy environment might not be so bad
if you value creativity.
According to a research experiment
from the University of Minnesota,
participants in a disorderly room
were more creative than participants in an orderly room.
The study says,
"Why does creativity spark in a messy environment?"
Research scientist, Jonathan Wai, PhD,
says that smarter people tend to have creativity as a trait,
which can lead to their messy lifestyle or room.
Wai guesses that it's not messiness that helps creativity,
but creativity which may create messiness.
He goes on to say that such people
tend to get lost in thought focusing on a problem or issue,
and crumminess becomes of less importance
than focusing on the problem at hand.
While a messy room sounds great for all artists out there,
it may not be great when it comes to your food choices.
In the University of Minnesota study,
their first experiment showed that
relative to the participants in a disorderly room,
participants in an orderly room chose healthier snacks
and donated more money to clean or not to clean.
Three, you like to doodle.
Do you find doodling to be a hobby of its own?
Your memory may just thank you.
A 2009 study found that
their subjects in a group that doodled
performed better on a monitoring task.
And on a surprise memory test,
they recalled 29% more information than the other group.
What exactly were they doodling?
They simply shaded printed shapes
while listening to a phone call.
(phone ringing)
So next time you have to remember something important
during that class lecture,
bring the coloring books, not the textbooks.
I'm just kidding, kind of.
Four, you swear.
Timothy Jay, PhD, a well-known expert in cursing,
conducted a study with his colleagues
and found that those who came up with more curse words
generally had a larger vocabulary.
Jay told Medical Daily that taboo or swear word fluency
is positively correlated with overall verbal fluency.
Dr. Jay told Medical Daily,
the more words you generated in one category
meant the more words you generated in another category
orally and verbally.
Time to bring out the swear jar
and start counting your quarters.
Be prepared to say goodbye as you test out this theory.
How many swear words can you come up in your head
in 30 seconds?
Share with us the number only, folks.
Five, you daydream a lot.
Catch yourself daydreaming
while working on that gruesome homework assignment?
(playful upbeat music)
It might not be so bad after all.
There may be some benefits in taking a quick daydream break
while working on another simple task according to research.
A 2012 study from the University of California
found that when subjects engaged in an undemanding task
during an incubation period from a demanding task,
it led to substantial improvements in performance
on previously encountered problems, according to the study.
All participants were given a demanding task.
Some subjects were given a break, some no break,
while some were given an undemanding task to complete
that maximize mind wandering
before they went back to the demanding task.
According to the study,
critically, the context that improved performance
after the incubation period
was associated with higher levels of mind wandering.
They go on to suggest that this data suggests
that engaging in simple external tasks
that allow the mind to wander
may facilitate creative problem solving.
So taking a quick doodling or coloring break
might not be so bad when you're faced with a tough problem
on that next assignment.
It may give your head some time
to work out the problem in the back of your mind.
That is while you're bringing to life
an Elmo on the pages of your coloring book.
Hey, look, he has wings.
Six, you like sick jokes.
According to a 2017 study from the University of Vienna,
subjects who enjoyed sick jokes often scored higher
on nonverbal and verbal intelligence.
159 adults rated sick cartoons.
And then researchers measured participants
using psychological and standard intelligence tests.
What were the types of cartoons the subjects enjoyed?
A kind of humor that treats sinister subjects
like death, disease, deformity, handicap, or warfare
with bitter amusement and presents such tragic, distressing
or morbid topics in humorous terms.
The subjects who enjoy these types of cartoons
scored higher on nonverbal and verbal intelligence.
Try to open up the back of the newspaper
and read the funnies.
So, do you have some of these weird habits?
Do you think it's because you're smart
or just can't stop watching midnight YouTube videos
and doodling, not to mention the swear jar?
Let us know your habits in the comments down below.
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don't forget to click the like button
and share it with a friend who has one of these habits.
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Thanks for watching.