ABSTRACT
WE ONCE ASKED the students in an undergraduate psychology class, “If you had the ability to change your intellectual skills now, would you pre-fer to increase, decrease, or keep them the same?” Ninety percent of the students chose to increase them. Across the globe, people tend to see high intellectual skills as an asset. In ethnic folklore as well as in scientic tractates of the past, our ancestors praised high intellectual skills. Contemporary data link intelligence to positive behavioral and health outcomes (Plomin & Deary, 2015). Did you know, for example, that people with higher intelligence scores are more likely to be healthy than those with lower scores? Apparently there is a link between (a) how our bodies manage diseases and (b) our intelligence: If you have higher intellectual skills, you are likely to manage your body more eectively than a person with less intelligence. Scientists in the United Kingdom took into consideration many dierent studies uncovering signicant negative correlations between people’s verbal and numerical reasoning skills and their likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. “Clever” people are also less likely to be overweight. People with higher intelligence tend to have better mental health in comparison with others. ey also tend to experience fewer illnesses throughout their life span and live longer compared with people with lower intelligence scores. Higher intelligence scores are associated with a lower risk of developing type II diabetes, coronary artery disease, and strokes. Such individuals also tend to earn higher educational degrees and occupational positions than others. Lower intelligence scores are associated with early dropout and incompletion of school or college. On the contrary, intelligent people experience a higher incidence of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism, compared to the general population. Yet high intelligence is commonly associated with success, achievement, and other desirable behavioral outcomes, especially in the West. Is there such a connection crossculturally, and how does it work? And, of course, what is intelligence?
