Generosity and IQ…

Wednesday, January 24, 2024.

Generosity is not a trait is not a trait commonly associated with intelligent people. However, according to social science research, humans who are inclined to be generous by nature have a higher IQ.

But wait. There’s more. Generous humans sometimes deny themselves so that others may have their needs met.

It’s odd that we have no meme connecting generosity with high intelligence. Being kind and generous is not particularly associated with high intelligence (not in American culture, at least).

However social science research clearly suggests otherwise…

Here are two possible explanations:

• What if intelligent humans may be more generous, in part, simply because they can afford it?

• It logically follows that humans with higher IQs generally would tend to have deeper resources, and can expect to recover what they have given away by their future endeavors. In other words, they might tend to have a more confident, abundant mindset.

How the study was conducted

The conclusions come from a study in which 96 humans played games that either concerned donating to others, or keeping resources for themselves.

The results revealed that the most intelligent humans were also the most generous players in the game.

In contrast, humans who kept more for themselves, tended to be the less intelligent members of the study cohort.

I thought it was clever how the researchers recruited the results of SAT tests, and then converted into approximate IQ scores. This is creative thinking in research at it’s best.

They concluded:

“We find that subjects who perform better on the Math portion of the SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO [Social Value Orientation] measure.

Our results involving SAT scores […] suggest that measures of cognitive ability, which are less sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject, are positively related to generosity.”

We’ll be needing to better understand cooperation, kindness, and generosity in order to protect and defend those human sensibilities in the world to come.

Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

The study was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (Chen et al., 2013).