I have my own intelligence test. If I say something and you agree, you're intelligent. If I say something and you disagree, you're a fucking idiot!
Scientists still debate how many types of intelligence there are. But we know there is more than one. Per
Dr. Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, these types include logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
But why should we care if someone is intelligent? It matters because someone's intelligence, or lack thereof, can have a huge impact on your own life. For example, if you are taking advice, interviewing, or communicating, it helps to know what you are working with. Many of the best managers are excellent at reading their audience. And so perhaps we should develop this skill as well.
How can you tell if someone is intelligent?
If you are looking for a one-shot way to determine brilliance, stop reading now. If you are looking for exceptions to the following points, you’ll be able to find them. The following are correlative, not causal. This is an exercise in nuance. Because within nuance, you find most answers.
1. They love learning and practice intellectual humility
I worked in finance and mostly hated it. However, one of the few perks was the people. The industry attracts and needs intelligent people. Consequently, hiring successful candidates mandated we get a quick read on them. Interviewing is tricky because everyone is putting their best foot forward and trying to sound smart, as perhaps they should.
A manager taught us a trick: ask a question the candidate won’t know the answer to. Then, observe how they act. A very good sign was when they could simply admit they didn’t know, rather than fake it and force-feed an answer.
This admission is a sign of
intellectual humility, which is correlated to better decision-making. This is particularly useful in an industry plagued by arrogance. Intellectually humble people challenge their conclusions based on evidence and feedback from others. As a simplistic example, you’ll see this when people say, “From what I’ve seen, it could be true.” Rather than, “It’s definitely true.” They frame their observations as open to critique. They prize truth over ego.
2. They have strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills
For example, per a study at Princeton University, people who refused to
social distance during the pandemic tended to be less intelligent. People who read in their free time
skew smarter than those who don’t. Things that smart people tend to do, tend to be done by smarter people.
Many years ago, I was working retail at a used sports equipment store. A 10-year-old kid came in to buy a baseball helmet. I gave him the price. He held the helmet up, looked it over, then looked back at me, “Can you knock a few bucks off? I mean, look at these dents.” He pointed at the dents. I smiled and gave him a discount.
When he left, I thought, “That kid is going to do just fine.” Being crafty, demonstrating street smarts, and quick thinking are correlated to intelligence. In fact, Yale scientists found that street smarts are just as important for employees as their academic smarts. More plainly, you can be a mediocre student, with great street smarts, and go on to be very successful.
3. They have a sense of humor
A study at Yale University
showed a positive correlation between psychometric intelligence and performance on a test that measured a person's verbal humor ability.
It showed that a person with a good sense of humor is great at detecting correlations between disparate ideas, and peculiarities in situations, which is why you’ll often see them in the corner laughing, and be left wondering what is so funny. Yes, it might surprise you that humor is on the list. Just remember that we say someone is witty for a reason.
4. They easily understand information and have impeccable memory
Intelligence is often misunderstood as a singular trait. In reality, it’s multi-dimensional and is qualitative as much as quantitative. For example, having a strong memory is correlated to a high intellect. You may recall the intelligent people in your life remembering all the tiny details of events you forgot. They are hard to lie to for this reason because they'll always catch you contradicting yourself.
In rare cases, people have eidetic memory, or hyperthymesia, which is when a person can remember the precise details of
every event in their life. These individuals with “highly superior autobiographical memory” tend to be highly intelligent.
Just remember that the brain is a complex component of our body and that our abilities can be expressed in many, many ways.
5. They are adaptable and possess strong pattern recognition
My parents have a bizarrely smart golden doodle, Dexter. When they were living in Miami, they often brought the dogs out back and announced, “Who wants to go for a walk?”
All three dogs recognized this phrase and got excited, jumping up and down. But Dexter instinctively walked over into the pool, swam from one end to the other and got out.
Why? Because he knew going on a walk in the Miami meant he’d get hot. He figured out on his own that wetting his fur down beforehand would make the walk more tolerable. He’d spotted the pattern of him being miserable, and did something to break it.
Functional areas of the human brain
6. They exhibit emotional sensitivity and are self-reflective
There's a newly popular phrase, “That is so meta.” Meta means something is self-referential. For example, a Medium article that is about Medium articles is meta. A video game where you play a character playing a video game is meta. The Onion famously did this with “World of World of Warcraft.”
Related to this, intelligent people often
demonstrate metacognition. They talk about and analyze their own thought process. They are objective and critique their nature. They know when and how they perform best. A simple example of meta behavior is when someone says, “I need to put this on my calendar or I won’t hold myself accountable.” Unsurprisingly, people with high metacognition are often great students and employees. They leverage their self-awareness to their advantage.
7. They are curious and always want to learn more
They have an itch to know more, to drill down on details, just for the sake of knowing. After all, that’s how we learn, right?
Curiosity is an indicator of intelligence in other animals too. For example, there was a
study involving three language-trained chimps. Their job was to use a keyboard to name what food was in an unreachable container. The prize was, you guessed it, food. When the test food was visible, they just hit the correct button and got the food. When the food was hidden amongst various containers, the smarter chimps inspected and tried to peek inside the containers before giving their answers. They knew the odds of winning were higher if they learned more.
This chimp study is a basic example but reveals the power of information-seeking (curiosity). And don’t forget,
we share 98.8% of our DNA with chimps. The smartest chimps are measured by their ability to patiently learn and troubleshoot problems. Sound familiar?
8. They demonstrate strong problem-solving abilities
My dad was an engineering major at the Naval Academy decades ago. He doesn’t brag very often about other men. It takes a lot to impress him. But one of his roommates, Charlie was a special classmate.
They were both in an industrial engineering class. It was the hardest class he’d ever taken. Dad said they’d come back to the room. He’d study for hours while Charlie only studied 20 minutes and then fiddled with his guitar. That roommate still got better grades than my dad, who is fairly bright, and it ticked him off to no end. That roommate went on to become a college professor.
At the pulsing core of intelligence is the ability to simplify complex problems and solve them, as Charlie did. Often, that skill is genetic. The people themselves don’t know how they do it. You can develop the skill as well. A physics professor once told me that, “A big problem is just a bunch of small problems combined. Learn to separate them out.” It’s all a matter of approach.
Curiosity is an indicator of intelligence
9. They keep an open mind and are inquisitive
A friend of mine, who went on to be an elite lawyer, was one of the smartest people I ever met. One of his distinguishing traits was his ability to listen and synthesize information. It has paid huge dividends in his law career.
He always asked amazing questions. They were never the questions other people asked, and they always made me think. This is a sign that someone thinks outside of the box and can foresee obvious conclusions that don't need to be asked about. They may get genuinely curious about seemingly extraneous parts of your job that are actually quite important. I always notice when someone asks very specific and novel questions. It is refreshing.
10.
A
2019 study led by psychology professor Dr. Pablo Fernández-Berrocal gave participants "cool" and "hot" tasks—meaning one cognitive problem was emotionally non-demanding (cool), while the other was much more emotionally demanding (hot).
Those with high and low emotional intelligence scored the same on the cool task. But on the hot task, those with high emotional intelligence performed far better. Their mental acuity remained sharp and carried them forward.
The study showed that when people have high emotional intelligence, it supplements their cognitive abilities, especially in the lived world. It reminds us that our everyday situations aren’t math quiz questions. They involve other people, personal problems, stress, and many factors that can impact our emotional state, which can diminish us.
Emotions like anger and intense feelings of stress can significantly impair our problem-solving abilities. It’s why
anger management programs have been so effective at improving grades with adolescent students, who are still learning to manage their emotions. This is also why we value leaders who are both intelligent and also calm under pressure.
How do extremely intelligent people with high IQ act?
Society has placed a massive priority on intelligence. We often feel pressure to be smart and value those who are. Never forget the value of kindness and respect. Each person has their own combination of skills and gifts and should be respected as such. If they do these ten things, there is a very good chance they are quite smart:
- They demonstrate a curiosity to learn more information.
- They can openly admit when they don’t know something. They know and operate within their limits.
- They can break down complex problems and cut straight to a solution.
- They have an acute awareness of their own thought process. They critique and understand it. They use that knowledge to perform better.
- They spot patterns and use them to their advantage—like our dog Dexter did.
- They listen with ease and ask amazing questions in their follow-ups.
- They demonstrate strong emotional intelligence and know how to stay calm under stress and pressure.
- Their sense of humor is on point and catches you off-guard. It reflects strong verbal intelligence and an ability to tie in separate ideas.
- Academics come naturally and with ease, as if answers fall into their lap out of the sky.
- They display obvious signs of intelligence. They think quickly on their feet and have situational awareness. They wear a mask during a pandemic.
Remember, outside of a psychologist-provided test, there’s no real way to gauge intelligence in one data point.
