iq is a very good predictor of health
and so predictor of longevity is a
predictor of resistance to
post-traumatic stress disorder
it's a predictor of obviously
occupational status it's a predictor of
educational success as a predictor of
income it's very powerful predictor and
here's another way of conceptualizing
its effect so imagine that you could
choose how you were going to be when you
were born this is in North America
because it's been a very by society at
least to some degree you get to be born
into a family that's at the 95th
percentile for wealth or you get to be
born at the 95th percentile for
intelligence who's better off at the age
of 40 and the answer is the person who
picked being born with an IQ in the 90th
percentile at Birth it's more powerful
predictor of long-term life of them than
familial will so and it shows up
everywhere like one of the things we did
recently was look at disgust sensitivity
we're going to talk a little bit about
that when we talk about
conscientiousness because orderly people
seem to be more sensitive to disgust and
disorderly people that seems to be why
they're orderly but the higher you are
an IQ the less disgust sensitive you are
now we don't know exactly why that is
maybe it's because you know maybe you
could make the inference that IQ is is
in related in some way to the
physiological integrity of the cortex
you know rather than the limbic system
which you know is the source of say
emotions and motivations and the more
powerful it is the more inhibitory
capacity it has over the more
fundamental motivations and emotions you
could make that case the problem is is
that it's intelligent people don't
necessarily seem to be any less
impulsive so and you can have a pretty
vicious personality disorder that's
characterized by extremely disorganized
behavior and a complete inability to put
long-term plan into operation and still
have a high IQ so
what are the things we really can't
figure out it's just a hell of a thing
to try to figure out is like the
relationship between IQ and
industriousness is zero and that just
makes no sense to me because most of the
brain models are predicated on the idea
that your ability to engage in long-term
planning is a factor that's associated
with intelligence but then industrious
people seem to not only engage in long
term planning they seem to do it right
so that they feel more industrious they
put their plans into operation then the
plans actually work but it's not
correlated with IQ so that then I can't
figure out well obviously the
industrious person in some way is able
to regulate their own behavior you know
they're not procrastinating for example
and you think that that the ability to
not procrastinate would be a cognitive
feature but it doesn't seem to be and we
have no idea what makes people
industrious and we can't figure it out
so it's just incredibly potent
predictors just about as powerful as IQ
and we have no idea what it is
so so if you you know if you think if
you have a smart idea about that and you
want to pursue it like feel free because
there's a big mystery there that no
one's been able to crack and we've been
at it for a long time and it had almost
no success
you know we had people do things like
the given sentences of enzymes and you
sort of randomly distributed and then
we'd have them count to use you know
like a whole page of sentences they're
not sentences they're just strings of
letters how to use how useless you know
you think that someone who does this
would do that better
it's like fiddled that's an IQ test the
people who can come to use faster have
hierarch use almost everything that you
would do that would where it has to do
with manipulation of abstractions of any
sort even something that basic seems to
be fundamentally assaut
created with IQ people with higher IQs
have slightly bigger heads if you
control for body size they have slightly
bigger brains if you control for body
size the axons on their neurons are a
bit thicker so that the electrical
messages seem to travel a little bit
more efficiency efficiently they are
slightly faster in simple reflex tests
so it goes right down to the level of
because their simple reflex light goes
on push a button
there's not many neurons mediating that
response you know chains of neurons
there's only a few neurons communicating
so that you can do that but even if that
relatively simple processing level IQ is
associated with feet so there's a
physiological component you're less
likely to develop Alzheimer's disease if
you have a high IQ and maybe that's
because your brain is just more robot
you know so you could sustain damage say
of up to 50% of your brain you wouldn't
even show it if you're if you have a
sufficiently high IQ whereas if you're
you know if you're on the bottom end of
IQ distribution you're much more you
seem to be much more susceptible to
physiological damage nutrition is a big
predictor of IQ variation so and a lot
of that's being hammered out in modern
societies you know so 150 years ago
people's idea was pretty tightly
associated with their nutritional status
but now you know there very few people
in North America who don't have enough
to eat even though there's some
variation in quality of diet and that's
flattened out a lot of the cultural
variability and intelligence