Clever enough. Like alcohol, profanity and rock music associated with the level of your intelligence
For many years researchers are trying to understand what features are inherent in intelligent people. Sometimes scientists cannot find a link between intelligence and some very unexpected characteristics, such as hairiness. In our article we will explain what unusual qualities, scientists were able to link with developed mental abilities.
Spoiler alert: correlation does not mean causal relationship, so if you’re a Lefty atheist who is at leisure likes to eat chocolate, don’t flatter yourself too much.
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Craving for alcohol
In 2013, the Finnish psychologists conducted a large-scale study: for several years they studied twins from the nearly three thousand families.
Unexpectedly, the scientists found that children who start early to speak, read and write, subsequently reaching the age of puberty, first try alcohol, and in General drink more than their brothers and sisters.
At the same time, children who have these abilities developed later, often remained sober.
It would seem that the correlation suggests the presence of a direct link between mental abilities and predisposition to alcohol. However, all is not so simple: the authors believe that verbal skills can of course be correlated with intelligence, but not conventional, and social (that is, with a person’s ability to understand the behavior and mood of other people).
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Statistics showed that the twins who early learned to speak normally more friends who drink alcohol, so scientists have concluded that they are probably more likely to be drinkers in the companies. Moreover, psychologists are generally not able to reproduce any of the identified dependencies, and the difference in craving for alcohol was found out, not all pairs of twins who began to speak at different times, but only in half of such cases.
However, the British psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa in 2010 found a correlation between the propensity to drink and high intelligence. Exploring British and American teenagers he noticed that the subjects that have 16 IQ was above 110 would grow up to consume more alcohol compared to those whose IQ was lower. Kanazawa believes that this dependence is not due to advanced communication skills, and the laws of evolution.
Alcoholic drinks in the diet of the people appeared relatively recently (for example, in Mesopotamia, beer learned to cook no more than 8 thousand years ago), and since smart people are more prone to evolutionary new behavior, then they, according to British psychologist, were also more committed to them. However, the explanation associated with verbal skills and the influence of the social environment looks still more reliable.
It is interesting, incidentally, that in children whose verbal ability was developed at an earlier age, the probability to enter College and successfully to finish higher than their less talkative peers. And education level, in turn, again correlated with a love for alcohol.
So, American researchers found that among young people aged 18 to 22 years who do not have a diploma of complete secondary education, alcohol use only 32.3 percent of people, while among graduates and College students this figure reaches 68.5 percent. However, explaining this statistic, psychologists themselves did not speak about the mental abilities: according to them, just the students on campus are more active social life, which, if not pushing them to drink a bottle of beer, then at least not hindered.
Profanity
Some believe that the use in conversation of profanity often indicates that the person simply does not have the vocabulary, and hence the mind. However, two years ago, scientists proved the opposite: it turned out that virtuosos sophisticated abuse, in contrast, have a more developed vocabulary.
American psychologists conducted an experiment involving about one hundred volunteers. First, the subjects took the test on fluency: a minute they had to name as many words as possible beginning with a particular letter. Then, the study participants offered a minute to remember the maximum number of curses.
Scientists discovered that the volunteers who collected the most points in the test for word fluency, also showed the best result in the test for profanity. On the contrary, those who have not coped with the first part of the study, failed badly with the second.
However, do not rush to remember all the curses you heard in their lives. In the study never mentions a direct connection between the human intellect and richness of his vocabulary, the more offensive. So save deliberately unintelligible speech and fine curses for disputes on the Internet, where they might make an impression.
Real rock
Of special interest are the relationship between intelligence and musical tastes. If some consider a sign of acute mind, a love of rock, for others, nothing made more wisdom than in the music of Bach and Mozart.
A graduate of the California Institute of technology decided to check in practice, how are the intelligence and love of different musical styles and artists. As indicator of intellectual development he took the average scores of students from different universities for the SAT reasoning test (Scholastic Assessment Test, similar to our use), and then looked through Facebook, what musical groups they often listen to.
Based on these data, the researcher made a schedule. It shows the 133 most popular by the students from 1352 schools. The lowest average score for the SAT belongs to the fans Lil Wayne, and the high — fans of Beethoven.
If we talk about musical directions in General, the most non-intellectual was juice (dance music of the Caribbean Islands), gospel (Christian spiritual music) and… jazz; clever, according to the valuation technique, listen to country, classic rock and techno.
It is worth noting that classical music in General got in the middle of the list, replaced by R&B. of Course, the results should be treated with irony, though, because not all performers can get enough likes on Facebook to get on the list.
Another independent study suggests that smart people love rock. When British researchers analyzed the musical tastes of 1,700 students National Academy for gifted and talented youth (National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth), they noted that the majority of survey participants called this direction. However, the next and very close in popularity to the rock was the pop music, so the study probably reflects the musical tastes of the average teenager.
Nobel chocolate
Sweet tooth like to say that chocolate stimulates the brain. Although scientists often conduct research on the effects of chocolate on the human body (some of them do show a positive effect), the “strongest” argument in favor of chocolate presented Franz Messerli.
American doctor compared the data from Wikipedia on chocolate consumption in 23 countries with a ranking of countries by number of Nobel laureates per capita according to 2011 year.
The result revealed an interesting pattern: the more the country eat chocolate, the more there are, on average, appear Nobel laureates.
Leading position in the ranking was taken by Switzerland, every citizen of which, according to the latest data, eats up about 8.6 kilograms of chocolate per year (on the chart in 2012 this figure has exceeded the mark of 10 kilograms). The number of nobilitv in this country at the time of the study accounted for about 31.5 per 10 million inhabitants, making it the leader on this indicator among other countries.
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Next in the ranking were Denmark, Austria and Norway. Interestingly, Sweden was behind schedule: the “density” of laureates per capita high, but the chocolate Swedes eat little. According to estimates Messerli order in the country became one of the Nobel laureate’s more, every citizen need to increase the consumption of chocolate is 400 grams per year. In General, this will amount to 3.8 million tons. But if the goal set before the inhabitants of the United States, they would have to increase the annual consumption of chocolate immediately to 125 thousand tons.
However, the researcher suggests that such a coincidence is nothing more than pure coincidence. British scientists, who followed Messerli decided to conduct a similar study found a similar relationship between the number of Nobel laureates in the country and the amount of consumed milk.
Christina Ulasovich