Wealth and Smarts: Are They Connected?
The other day, I asked if you thought intelligence was connected to weight and/or wealth. As I delved into my own prejudices last week, I’d done a bit of research via Google, to turn up any related facts.
I’d expected to find that yes, wealthy people were a bit brighter, and maybe a lot brighter… and that weight had very little to do with intelligence. Studies suggest I’m very wrong.
Wealth and Intelligence_________________
USA Today reports on a study focused on the impact of IQ on wealth, income and financial distress.
What they found was that IQ does slightly increase income, but has little impact on actual net worth. Increased IQ does, however, put people at a higher risk for financial problems - things like maxed out credit cards, missed payments, and bankruptcy.
The study didn’t look into the reasons for the connection, but the author of the study suggests several possibilities. More intelligent people may be busier, more distracted and less focused on bill paying routines, or they may take more financial risks because they think they are smart enough to get away with it. There’s also a chance they have a better memory, and may just have remembered more mistakes on the study survey.
A friend of mine and I came up with a few other likely factors, including that for growing up as “gifted” may encourage a bit of magical thinking and a sense of entitlement. And for some intelligent people, keeping up the appearance of success may be more important than actually *being* successful -an idea that relates back to my own intellectual vanity.
The Bottom Line?______________
Lesson #1: You can’t judge someone’s overall intelligence based on the level of their wealth or poverty.
Lesson #2 Not being able to handle your money does not mean you’re less intelligent overall. In fact, you’re pretty normal in this regard. It does mean that you do need to *work* at finances.
Lesson #3 For those with a streak of intellectual vanity: Stop focusing on the appearance of wealth. Looking like you have money doesn’t make you look smarter. Instead, focus that energy on *actually* handling your finances. That in turn will reduce stress, and stress can dramatically affect your mental functioning.
But What About Weight?____________
Surely my association between being overweight and being less intelligent is groundless! I mean, there is no way my IQ numbers dropped as the scale numbers rose! Is there?
Er…. well. Actually? They may have. A number of studies out which suggest that as weight goes up, cognitive function may decline.
I’ll need to report on those studies tomorrow, though… Right now, I need to go pay a couple of maxxed out credit card bills I forgot about. (I’m joking, of course) (well, mostly joking)
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MindTWEAK: “Anyone can be great with money. With money, greatness is not a talent but an obligation. The trick is to be great without money.”
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Brilliant piece MT.
A great follow-up would be “does wealth indicate success?”
Mother Teresa would need to be classified as successful, but she actually had very little personal wealth.
In fact if you step back for perspective and look at nations, a 1999 study showed Germans among the wealthiest yet most miserable people and Portuguese among the poorest yet most content.
(hmm, I feel an MT to ET follow-up coming on).
Mother Teresa had no funds to help all those she did help. It was her faith that proved helpful. Some would say, “God came through to help her to help others.” I agree, Mother Teresa was very successful but not monetarliy wealthy.
Wealth does not indicate smarts nor does it indicate success. Success comes from “doing” and “living” life to the fullest.
I guess it all depends on how you look at being wealthy. Monetary or life wise? With all that I have, and have done in life I see myself as wealthy and intelligent.
~
Although, I am flat broke and overweight.
Hello MT (Mother Theresa, perhaps?),
Good question, but it all depends how you define “intelligence”. IQ has not been used by neuroscientists or biologists for years, despite its mainstream use. Instead, we should talk about the ability to learn and adapt, to succeed in a variety of environments, that makes one organism, or one person, “smart”. With that definition in mind, I am sure there is a correlation between, say, Global Impact (because I’d say both social and business entrepreneurs can be “wealthy”) and Intelligence/ Smartness.
@Alvaro,
Can you elaborate, “IQ has not been used by neuroscientists or biologists for years”?
MindTweaks to Elemental Truths..
MT to ET… Come In, Elemental Truths…
Glad you enjoyed the post, Reg… I enjoyed having my preconcieved ideas exploded. And you’re right, Wealth/Success are often linked in the same way. Writing that might make a good break from all of my intellectual self obsessing
I really like how Jackie put it: “Success comes from “doing” and “living” life to the fullest.”
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Jackie,Hmm.. you made me think. though I clearly value a lot of things other than finances/material wealth, I have never made the mental association between wealth and the non-physical, at least not the way you and Reg seem to have done. It’s a vocabulary thing, more than a measure of what I value. It might be interesting to see how my approaches shift if I broaden my working definition.
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And Alvaro! Me? Mother Theresa? HA. What have all of those brain programs been doing to your mind?
More seriously, your comment brings up some fascinating thoughts, especially about “Global Impact” and the idea of “social entrepreneurs.”
I could guess at what your answer to Reg will be, but I’d much rather hear you explain it : )
Sorry, I have been pretty busy these days.
Reg, IQ was a measured created by psychologists and statiticians with limited, if any, grounding on how the brain works.
Biologists would tell you that organisms have brain in order to adapt to unpredictable environments-that is the only reason why genes only predispose, not determine, our behavior. “Smart” means an organism that can adapt and succeed in unpedictable contexts. You can read Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.
Neuropsychologists usually measure and focus on
5 domains that correspond (roughly) to specific parts of the brain: executive functions, language, visual/ spatial, memory, attention. “Smart” would be mostly focused on being able to set meaningful goals, prepare a good plan, and execute it well (i.e., accomplish those goals). IQ is a small component of this.
Horward Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences is way more complete than IQ.
MT, I think you will enjoy this post
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/06/16/on-bill-gates-harvard-commencement-speech-and-his-frontal-lobes/
I have been involved with social entrepreneurs for many years (basically, entrepreneurs whose ultimate impact is social change, not making money alone), so let me know if you have any questions!
Finally, I just posted some thoughts by me and an expert on Being Smart and how to become Smarter…take a look at
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/08/31/smart-brains-becoming-smarter-and-intelligence/
…and Digg it if you like it
The delay is no problem, Alvaro. MindTweaks tends to run at a rather more leisurely pace, as you can tell from the timestamps of my own replies
Thank you for the links, good stuff. And I’m really looking forward to your posts on intelligence this week. And especially thank you for the concept of social entrepreneurs. It may help me form my ideas of personal success, which are rather fuzzy at the moment.
I realized that IQ was an outdated concept, but hadn’t thought about IQ measurements predating any of the current neuroscience. That helps me to toss it out. I’ve been looking into Gardner’s theories, and hopefully will be covering some of that territory soon.
Digg Dug Done (and congrats on that traffic boom you’ve been enjoying!)
Alvaro & M.T.
It sounds like you are both working from the same general perspective. There is value in much of what you say.
But, I differ on some points.
First, IQ as a concept continues to be a mainstay of psychologist and will continue to be for quite some time. I can not tell you how many Kaufman examinations I have conducted over the years. And they almost invariably correspond to academic performance. If they do vary there is almost always a behavioral or organic reason.
Second,I don’t think it is sound science to assume high IQ relates directly to life success. Factors such as social circumstance, and individual temperament are much more reliable predictors.
Third, how the brain works and how we chose to work our brains are not the same concepts.You can’t confuse physiology with training.
Otherwise, Stephen Hawking is just a guy in a wheel chair.
God Bless.
Reg Adkins writes on professional and personal development as well behavior and the human experience at http://www.elementaltruths.com
Well, that’s what I get for not being as careful with wording as I should be!
The word “outdated” was a particularly poor choice for my meaning — since (if I understand correctly) IQ was never intended to be used as it is by the general public — as a synonym for intelligence and a sign of over-all potential. So the popular idea of IQ as the main or even only measure of “smarts” isn’t as much outdated, as it was mistaken from the beginning, and not what it was intended to be used for.
That’s my layman’s take on it, anyway, and that’s the idea that I’m trying to uproot and toss out of my own mind because it causes me problems, on a personal level. I didn’t mean to imply that IQ testing as a tool should be “tossed out”.
Second: I would agree that IQ is not a good predictor of success (however we define it).
From my perspective, I’m less concerned about predicting success, than reaching success, regardless of what our predictive factors are, or are not. Make sense?
And third: Reg wrote “How the brain works and how we chose to work our brains are not the same concepts.You can’t confuse physiology with training.”
Maybe they shouldn’t be confused, but they do seem far more inter-connected than was formerly believed, especially in how mental training impacts physiology. I don’t think our language has begun to catch up with those changes in perspective, and our understanding of intelligence certainly hasn’t.
Thank you for questioning the perspective - one of the things about the internet I most value is how it brings different fields, approaches and world views together, blowing up assumptions and forcing us to avoid sloppy language.
I do love this stuff : )
Reg: I am sure IQ will keep being used for a while. Precisely because it is correlated with academic performance-maybe they are measuring the same? which may be both its strength and weakness.
MT: glad you enjoy learning more about social entrepreneurship. Time magazine has just published an special issue on the topic, and a great book is How To Change The World, by David Bornstein, or you can check the PBS series The New Heroes