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The seven signs of high intelligence

Most of us like to think we’re pretty smart – but what does the science say? All of these traits have been found by researchers to be associated with elevated intelligence:

Untidiness

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Photo: Getty Images

If your desk is a total shambles, be proud. “Messy desks may not be as detrimental as they appear to be, as the problem-solving approaches they seem to cause can boost work efficiency or enhance employees' creativity in problem solving,’” a 2012 study from the University of Groningen argued. It seems being surrounded by clutter actually makes people hone their thinking to become clearer.

Being the oldest

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Photo: Getty Images

If you have younger siblings only, chances are you score more highly on IQ tests than your brothers and/or sisters. Interestingly, the researchers who discovered this tendency in 2007 found that the differences between siblings are most probably down to socialisation.

Swearing like a sailor

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Photo: Getty Images

Your teachers probably told you that curse words are the sign of a limited vocabulary. Turns out your teachers didn’t know what they were f***ing talking about: psychologists Kristin and Timothy Jay found in 2014 that colourful language is actually positively correlated with “verbal fluency”.

“When it comes to taboo language, it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves,” they wrote. “The overall finding of this set of studies, that taboo fluency is positively correlated with other measures of verbal fluency, undermines the [normal] view of swearing.”

Sense of humour

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Photo: Getty Images

If you’re good at making people laugh – deliberately, that is – you’re probably a bit of a smart cookie. “The strongest correlation is with verbal intelligence as you might expect, as humour is mostly verbal,” Dr Gil Greengross of the University of Mexico explained in a paper from 2012. “Humour signals intelligence because knowing to say the funny thing in the right time, and deliver it correctly requires skill.”

Anxiety

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Photo: Getty Images

One less thing to be a worrywart about: if you’re frequently in a state of high alert and stressing out about events of the past, or anxiously ruminating on the future, guess what?

That could well mean you’re just too smart for your own good. “Verbal intelligence was a unique positive predictor of worry,” a 2015 study in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences claimed.

Staying up late

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Photo: Getty Images

“The Savanna–IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals,” found a 2009 study published in Personality and Individual Differences.

In other words, people who burn the midnight oil are breaking with historical human habits, so they’re basically mavericks whose unconventional way of doing things indicates they’re wicked smart.

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Being into cats

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Photo: Getty Images

Soz, dog people. A 2014 study out of Carroll University, Wisconsin, found that cat owners scored better on intelligence tests than their canine-owning counterparts. Cat-lovers were also found to be more sensitive and open-minded.

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