ARE YOU INTELLIGENT?

IQ is a measure of how fast you can acquire new information, not the amount of information you know. In other words, even if you have a high IQ, if you do not bother to acquire new information, you can simultaneously be ignorant and a genius at the same time.

Even if you do not want to shell out a bunch of bucks for a formal IQ test, psychologist and author Dr. Travis Bradberry assures us that there are a few things which can provide a clue that you have a high IQ, notwithstanding the particular factual information which may or may not reside within your skull.

The first indication is your level of anxiety. Tests have shown that people with high levels of anxieties generally score better on intelligence tests than their more laid-back associates. If being anxious makes one smart, then the current Presidential election is going to drive a lot of Americans into genius status.

The second thing to consider is whether or not you are an early reader. People who read at an early age tend to score higher on IQ tests. Although it might seem obvious that people who are intelligent were able to read at an earlier age, further investigation suggests that the people became smart because they read earlier and that the early reading helped to boost their IQ.

Another relevant item is whether or not you are a comedian. People who are funny and witty score high in verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning. So, why did the calf walk around his mother? To get to the udder side. If you found the preceding to be hysterical, you might be a genius.

Another thing which affects IQ levels for kids is whether or not they took music lessons. Music training sharpens our old friend verbal intelligence as well as the ability to focus and exercise self-control.

A final factor indicative of intelligence, especially with males, is if they are left-handed (or, at least, if the only reason they are right-handed is because they grew up in the 1950s and had a superstitious incompetent first-grade teacher who forced them to switch from the left hand to the right). Left-handed people tend to do well in divergent thinking, which gives them the ability to link unrelated items in a meaningful way.

The next time you see a nervous left-handed male with his face buried in a book and chuckling out loud while clutching a trombone, engage him in conversation and see how smart he is.

For more information on Dr. Bradberry's hypothesis, click here.

"The difference between stupidity and genius

 is that genius has its limits."--Albert Einstein