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Intelligence is difficult to define—psychologists have been arguing about it for years. According to Cornell professor Robert J. Sternberg, PhD, intelligence is the ability “to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.” You’d think someone who was intelligent would be organized and have everything in their workspace arranged neatly—but that’s not the case.
Let's start by exploring those habits one by one:
The sound of chewing annoys you
Have you ever been really aggravated when dining with a loud chewer? Or wished the person next to you on the bus would stop smacking their gum? Well, there’s a scientific reason behind it—and it might just mean you’re smart.
Another habit of smart people is doodling—so if you enjoy this pastime, it may mean you’re intelligent, too. According to Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution, it’s a thinking tool that can affect the processing of information and problem-solving. This notion is backed up by scientific research—a study from the United Kingdom found that people were able to recall 29 percent more information if they were doodling.
You criticize yourself
In a landmark 1999 study from Cornell University, scientists found that incompetent people couldn’t recognize their own incompetence, which led to inflated self-assessments.
To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Highly competent people tend to underestimate their abilities. Smarties can recognize when they don’t know something—in fact, they know just how much more knowledge is out there. Instead of being overconfident, they tend to be self-critical.
You daydream
if daydreaming is one of your habits, you may have higher creative and problem-solving skills. Start doing these 14 weird brain exercises that actually help you get smarter.
You talk to yourself
You may think that mumbling to yourself makes you seem crazy, but in reality, it might be a sign of higher thinking, memory, and perception skills.
You’re a couch potato
Apparently, laziness may be a sign of intelligence! In a study from 2016, researchers at the Florida Gulf Coast University divided 60 students into two groups as thinkers and non-thinkers. They found that the non-thinkers were much more physically active than the thinkers. The authors believe this may be because the thinkers are perfectly content with entertaining themselves mentally while the non-thinkers tend to get bored more easily and associate mental stimulation as a negative experience.
You meditate daily
Starting or ending your day with 12 to15 minutes of “om” time may be just the boost your brain needs, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. In fact, many studies show that meditation can help improve your fluid intelligence—your ability to be more creative, innovative, and visionary.
Originally Published: January 04, 2019
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