4 Traits your kids may be displaying right now that indicate high intelligence
Monday, July 31, 2023. I wrote this for all my readers who are parents to little kiddos. Hope you’re all having a fabulous summer!
There are 4 traits researchers have been studying for decades because they are so powerfully correlated to high intelligence… We’ve known this since 1958.
Research keeps telling us over and over….appreciation for beauty and art, emotional sensitivity, a wide ranging, imaginative “life of the mind,” and unquenchable curiosity are the hallmarks of high intellect…
Researchers now believe that having a higher than average IQ may be highly correlated to curiosity because ia high order of intelligence creates a sort of ‘cognitive hunger’ — a desire to think.. a lot.
We also now know that high intelligence has a developmental arc, that is, having a higher IQ drives humans to widen their exposure to new experiences in order to satisfy this craving to think.
Aren’t we just talking about the personality trait called Openness to Experience?
Ok, smartypants, you got me! A fine aesthetic sense, with emotional sensitivity, a powerful imagination and curiosity, are all aspects of the major personality trait called ‘Openness to Experience’.
Being open to experience is so powerful that it is linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later in their lifespan!
Study findings:
Psychologists discovered a persistent finding. Little kiddos who scored higher on IQ tests at just 11-years-old were more open to experience when they were 50-years-old.
The researchers explained their findings:
“…childhood intelligence is indeed positively associated with adult trait Openness to Experience, even when it was assessed almost four decades earlier when participants were at 11 years.
Intelligence may influence the development of personality in that intelligent people develop habits to satisfy their curiosity and ‘‘cognitive hunger’’ which are an essential ingredient of Openness to Experience.”
How the study was conducted
This is a mid-century study which commenced in 1958… and we keep proving the truth of it over and over again…
This original study was from Great Britain. It was an ambitious, longitudinal study of a huge cohort over 17,000 people born in the UK in one specific week in March of 1958.
Over the following 50 years they were given various personality and intelligence tests.
This careful study unpacked how kids with higher IQs were more open to experience because they had greater motivation at school, greater support from their families of origin, and they also enjoyed a higher social status.
The researchers explained how these factors interplay:
“Parents of higher socioeconomic status may foster children’s trait Openness by providing better resources such as choosing good schools and cultural environment (theaters, museums, traveling abroad, etc.); intelligent children tend to use more mental activities (such as abstract ideas, learning new
vocabularies, or math formulas) than those who are less intelligent; school settings (quality of teaching, good facilities) may enhance pupils to engage more in school learning.All these three factors may influence educational and occupational achievement, which in turn, may increase the scores on Openness.”
In other words, they nailed the chicken or the egg question…
the 1958 study produced convincing data that it is the genetic gift of a higher IQ is the main driver in the development of greater openness to experience over the course of a human lifetime, and research in 2016, just proved it all over again.
RESEARCH:
Furnham, A., & Cheng, H. (2016). Childhood intelligence predicts adult trait openness: Psychological and demographic indicators. Journal of Individual Differences, 37(2), 105–111. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000194
