Atheism, love of cats and 5 more unexpected signs of high intelligence

Everyone is well aware of such signs of high intelligence as a love of reading, the ability to solve complex logical problems and quickly make the right decisions. But modern science claims that there are other, indirect signs of a remarkable mind. There are a lot of them, but we have chosen only seven that can be discovered independently, without complex tests and communication with specialists.

It may seem strange, but alcohol can be considered a faithful companion of an intellectual. American, British and Finnish scientists say with one voice that alcohol, within reasonable limits, makes it possible to better cope with logic tests and puzzles.

It is proved that the higher a person's intelligence, the lower his need for religiosity. A detailed analysis of the relationship between intelligence and faith was recently published in the scientific publication Personality and Social Psychology Review. The studies that made it possible to draw such conclusions have been conducted in different countries over the past century independently of each other. Scientists believe that the more a person knows about the world around him, the less his need for belief in supernatural forces.

Need is not only unpleasant, but also detrimental to the intellect. Scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as the University of Michigan and the University of Denver found that the constant struggle with poverty reduces IQ by at least 13 points.

But that's not all. During the study of the problem, experts determined that poverty has a cumulative effect — the longer a person has been in a difficult financial situation, the more difficult it will be for him to return to his normal level of cognitive resources.

French researchers have discovered an interesting pattern — men and women with a low body fat content show the best results in vocabulary tests. Slim people reproduce up to 55 percent of new words, and full people reproduce no more than 44 percent.

If you tend to trust people, then you are not naive, but smart. The results of the study, published in the publication Social Psychological & Personality Science, suggest that the participants of the experiment who trusted their interlocutors showed a higher level of intelligence than distrustful people. At the same time, oddly enough, it was the gullible subjects who most accurately determined deception.

Psychologists from Carroll University, Wisconsin, USA, found out that people with a broad outlook and well-expressed own beliefs prefer cats as pets. The head of the study, professor of psychology Denise Guastello claims that "cat people" do better with intellectual tests than "dog people". But dog lovers can boast of higher communication, friendliness and energy.

But the most unusual dependence was discovered by scientists from University of Louisville. They determined that a person's ability to find a way out of situations that require a non-standard approach, as well as his ability to concentrate, depend on the color of the iris of the eye. The best results were shown by the study participants with light-colored eyes.