17 Signs You May Be Extremely Smart!
17.
Staying Up Late Most of us loved staying up late as children
but love nothing more than a good night's’ sleep as adults.
If you find that you do enjoy being up late, or otherwise have some difficulty getting
to sleep at night, it could be a sign that you are a smart person.
While many people do suffer from disorders which cause them to lose out on sleep, some
others have insomnia simply because they have overactive brains.
Intelligent people tend to go to bed later than their normal counterparts, and especially
tend to stay up on week nights.
This is true even when they have to get up at a certain time the next day - and the average
time at which people go to sleep is directly correlatable to their intelligence.
16.
Being Very Curious If you are a person who loves to learn new
things and is always looking for new information, it is likely that you’re also a generally
curious person.
This is a good thing as it turns out - being a very curious person is directly linked to
higher intelligence, on average.
In fact, curiosity is a measurable trait and is considered by many to be just as important
as intelligence itself.
A recent study found a direct correlation to those with the most curious minds and a
general higher performance in academics and a generally higher intelligence quotient,
or IQ.
In today’s intelligence-driven world, many employers are seeking to understand how curious
applicants are, since this trait tends to imply better overall performance.
15.
Being a Worry Wart Do you often find that you worry about everything?
Do you spend a lot of time wondering if you have made the right decisions, or second guessing
all of the choices you have made in your life?
Do you find that you often spend time awake at night thinking about how you spent your
day, and worrying that you could have done it better?
If so, this is a sign that you may have a higher intelligence than those around you.
It turns out that worrying a lot more than the average person can be an indication of
heightened intelligence.
This is because more intelligent people tend to think about every situation from multiple
angles, thereby revealing more reasons to worry.
14.
Being Forgetful This may seem a bit contradictory in nature,
but as it turns out, there is evidence to suggest that being forgetful is linked to
being a smarter person.
In a recent Stanford study, research was done on the ability to memorize terms in adult
subjects.
It was found that the more intelligent subjects in the study tended to have a more difficult
time remembering the phrases they were given, and the suggested reasoning is that more intelligent
minds are more forgetful because their brains are trying to conserve space for more important
information.
This isn’t to say that all forgetful people are smarter on average, but simply that forgetfulness
may be a sign of higher intelligence.
13.
Being a Funny Person Have you often found that you are the center
of attention at parties because you always have a good joke to tell?
Are you usually able to think up a comeback for any situation?
If so, this could be another sign that you are smarter than those around you.
Humor is associated with intelligence because smarter minds are able to think about a situation
and come up with a humorous response faster than those around them.
This is where the term “quick wit” comes from.
Studies of stand-up comedians found that these people tend to score significantly higher
on IQ tests than average people.
The numbers don’t lie - the average IQ of males in the study was 138, and women came
in at 126.
This is about 30 points higher than the rest of the population, who tend to score around
100.
12.
Reading At A Young Age This one will probably make sense to most
people.
If you start reading at a younger age, you tend to be smarter than those around you on
average.
It is not 100% clear if smarter people tend to start reading younger, or if reading younger
makes people smarter, but the evidence is clear: those who start reading younger than
average and who continue to read throughout their lives tend to be smarter people, on
average.
It is thought that beginning to read younger increases critical thinking skills, and forces
young children to be exposed to new ideas, situations, and problems at a younger age.
All of these things combined and carried on throughout the remainder of their lives leads
to a higher IQ down the road.
11.
Being Messy If you look around you and often find that
you are surrounded by clutter, there may be a silver lining.
Studies have shown that intelligent people tend to be on the messier side - not worrying
so much about if their stuff is organized neatly and clean, and instead spending their
time focusing on issues and solving problems.
A recent study of the desks of proven geniuses, carried out by the University of Minnesota,
found that the smartest among us seem more often than not to have some clutter.
Again, this isn’t to say that messiness itself is a sure sign that you are a genius;
but simply to say that you may be a messier person than normal if you are smart.
10.
Bipolar Disorder Mental illness is a serious issue in today’s
society, and we are only just recently coming into a place where we have begun to understand
all the different disorders people suffer from.
However, one fact has seemed to be proven over and over again - smarter people are more
likely to suffer from mental illness.
Specifically, Bipolar Disorder has shown a high frequency of being present in intelligent
people.
The reason for this is not clear as of yet, and some studies have shown no connection
at all, but more than 30 independent research studies and academic papers have backed up
the idea that those with the disorder tend to be smarter on average.
9.
Children Who Lie The intelligence and development of children
is probably one of the most studied topics in all of modern medicine.
This is why we have uncovered so many interesting facts about our youth - and one of these is
sort of funny, and sort of scary.
Children who learn to lie - and do it well - at a younger age tend to be smarter.
This is because smarter children inherently develop cognitive abilities faster and more
efficiently than their peers, and being a good liar is a direct result of having higher
cognitive ability.
The ability to cover one’s tracks and think up detailed lies which make sense is a sure
sign of intelligence in a young mind.
8.
Being Compassionate Most people probably know that less intelligent
people tend to be quicker to judgement - being racist or sexist is often seen as a sign of
being dumb.
However, there’s actually science to back that up, and also to prove that being the
opposite of those things is a sign of intelligence.
Recent studies found links between racism, prejudice, and conservative viewpoints as
a whole to lower intelligence.
These studies, which were done in a scientific and unbiased context, found that those who
hold prejudiced or judgemental viewpoints tend to have a lower intelligence.
This implies an inverse link between higher intelligence and empathy - something which
makes sense when you consider that it takes higher cognitive ability to be able to imagine
oneself in different situations.
7.
Being an Atheist Atheists make up less than 5% of the total
population of the world.
The vast, vast majority of people alive today believe in some kind of a deity.
Fret not if you are a disbeliever, however - studies have shown that being an atheist
is linked to having a higher IQ.
The reasoning here is that those with a higher intelligence on average are less likely to
believe stories for which they don’t have direct evidence, and therefore tend to dismiss
religion at a young age.
Additionally, intelligent people tend to surround themselves with as many new ideas as possible,
and so are less likely to dedicate themselves to a single religion or god.
6.
Being The Youngest Child Family dynamics play a big role in how you
develop as a person.
The nature VS nurture debate is long and has entrenched views on both sides, but there
is a lot of good research to suggest that how you are raised plays a major role in the
type of person you become.
One such study has found that younger children in a family - that is to say those born most
recently - tend to have a significant edge over their older siblings.
This is thought to be because having a younger sibling takes away from the educational environment
for the older child.
In simple terms, when you are the first kid to be born, not as much attention is paid
to you.
Inversely, the younger children have not only their parents to learn from, but also their
older siblings.
This heightens their own educational potential, and has seemed to lead to a higher IQ.
5.
Taking Risks If you often find that you weigh the odds
and choose to do things which could benefit you even when the odds aren’t necessarily
in your favor, this could be a sign that you’re smarter than your friends.
There looks to be a link between the amount of white matter and in your brain and the
amount of risks you’re willing to take.
This is interesting because white matter content is already thought to be related to higher
intelligence.
On top of just taking more risks, people with this increased white matter density also make
quicker decisions as a whole.
Quick thinking is also a sign of higher intelligence, so it seems that the association with risk
taking is well founded on most fronts.
Worth noting, also, is that this link is present in both men and women.
4.
Not Believing In Yourself There is an interesting phenomenon where people
who are far more capable than others are less likely to believe that they are.
This is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and it has two parts.
On one hand, people who are less intelligent and capable tend to overestimate their ability
and think that they know far more about a given subject than they actually do, and people
who are more intelligent and capable tend to second-guess their own abilities.
This is often seen as modesty amongst the intelligent and arrogance amongst the more
dim-witted, but in reality it is a very real psychological type of bias which can have
negative consequences on both sides.
The effect has been studied and documented since 1999, and is considered to be slightly
tongue-in-cheek by some, while others consider it to be serious.
3.
Talking To Your Animals While many people already think that just
keeping and enjoying pets in general is a sign of higher intelligence, one aspect of
pet ownership has been linked directly to it.
This is the practice of talking to your pets - not in a joking or cutesy way, but actually
having conversations with them.
The ability to recognize human traits in animals could be a sign of higher social intelligence.
Specifically, humans are perhaps the most social species on the planet and we are hardwired
to recognize facial expressions.
Scientists believe our ability to recognize these patterns and read intentions, even in
other animals, may have increased our evolutionary survival and may be linked with higher social
intelligence.
2.
Swearing Do you have the mouth of a sailor?
Do you love to color your vocabulary with curses and dirty language?
While those around you might frown upon this kind of speech and consider it to be best
used by the lowest among us, the opposite may in fact be true.
As it turns out, being able to accurately and properly use curse words could be a sign
of intelligence.
This is because the use of such words implies a heightened strength of rhetoric and a better
understanding of the language as a whole.
So remember that, next time someone tells you that cursing is only for dumb people.
1.
Sitting Around Another interesting study has linked sitting
around to intelligence.
Often perceived as laziness, this is actually just thought to be more about the person in
question spending more time in their own head, thinking about things, and being less likely
to engage in physical activity than their more easily bored counterparts.
Those with higher intelligence are more capable of being entertained by their own thoughts,
and therefore spend more times doing less physically engaging activities, since they
are sitting around and thinking more often than others.
While laziness itself is not a trait of intelligence, it may appear that way outwardly as a result
of its nature.