Five Signs of a Highly Intelligent Person
By: Wasim Akram
Tags: Articles, Personality, Intelligent, Content Writing

Five Signs of a Highly Intelligent Person

Accurately sizing up someone’s mental acuity is a valuable life skill.

There are significant reasons to size up a person’s mental acuity. For example, if you are taking advice, interviewing, or communicating, it helps to know what you are working with. Many of the best managers are excellent at reading their audience.

If you are looking for a one-shot way to determine brilliance, stop reading now. If you are looking for exceptions to the following points, you’ll be able to find them. The following are correlative, not causal. This is an exercise in nuance. Because within nuance, you find most answers.

They Practice Intellectual Humility

I worked in finance and mostly hated it. However, one of the few perks was the people. The industry attracts and needs intelligent people. Consequently, hiring successful candidates mandated we get a quick read on them. Interviewing is tricky because everyone is putting their best foot forward and trying to sound smart, as perhaps they should.

A manager taught us a trick: ask a question the candidate won’t know the answer to. Then, observe how they act. A very good sign was when they could simply admit they didn’t know, rather than fake it and force-feed an answer.

This admission is a sign of intellectual humility, which is correlated to better decision-making. This is particularly useful in an industry plagued by arrogance. Intellectually humble people challenge their conclusions based on evidence and feedback from others. As a simplistic example, you’ll see this when people say, “From what I’ve seen, it could be true.” Rather than, “It’s definitely true.” They frame their observations as open to critique. They prize truth over ego.

Obvious Signs are Often a Valid Data Point

For example, people who refuse to social distance tend to be less intelligent. People who read in their free time skew smarter than those who don’t. Things that smart people tend to do, tend to be done by smarter people.

Many years ago, I was working retail at a used sports equipment store. A 10-year-old kid came in to buy a baseball helmet. I gave him the price. He held the helmet up, looked it over, then looked back at me, “Can you knock a few bucks off? I mean, look at these dents.” He pointed at the dents. I smiled and gave him a discount.

When he left, I thought, “That kid is going to do just fine.” Being crafty, demonstrating street smarts, and quick thinking is correlated to intelligence. In fact, Yale scientists found that street smarts are just as important for employees as their academic smarts. More plainly, you can be a mediocre student, with great street smarts, and go on to be very successful.

They are Meta, Literally

There is a newly popular phrase, “That is so meta.” Meta means something is self-referential. For example, a Medium article that is about Medium articles is meta. A video game where you play a character playing a video game is meta. The Onion famously did this with “World of World of Warcraft.”

Related to this, intelligent people often demonstrate metacognition. They talk about and analyze their own thought process. They are objective and critique their nature. They know when and how they perform best. A simple example of meta behavior is when someone says, “I need to put this on my calendar or I won’t hold myself accountable.” Unsurprisingly, people with high metacognition are often great students and employees. They leverage their self-awareness to their advantage.

thinks they’re smarter than they really are. But even more common are people who don’t realize they’re actually smarter than they think.

Is that you? Here are nine science-backed signs that you’re not giving yourself enough IQ credit.

1. Their thinking is creative

Dr. Katie Davis, a clinical neuropsychologist, told Business Insider that creativity is a definitive sign of intelligence because it requires thinking flexibly/outside the box and necessitates the ability to shift and change your patterns of thinking from one way to another.

I’ve worked with many ad agency creatives — they’re some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Their ability to take an insight and translate it into a message that illuminated my brand’s benefits in a compelling, memorable way is a task few merely “book smart” people could do. I often walked away after a brilliant ad campaign presentation thinking, “Their brain just works differently.” Creativity is its own brand of smart.

The Strongest Indicator of Intelligence

Researchers have looked into the many different traits highly intelligent people have in common. For instance, a 2016 study published in the British Journal of Psychology, found that highly intelligent people actually prefer to be alone. It was found that smarter people tend to experience lower life satisfaction the more often they socialize with friends. According to evolutionary psychology, people evolved to be intelligent in order to solve problems. So those who are happier being alone were seen as highly intelligent because they have the ability to solve problems on their own without needing any help.

Rest assured, if you’re a social butterfly, it doesn’t mean that you’re not smart. You may possess other qualities that show off your intelligence, like having the ability to easily connect with others.

Conclusion and Takeaway

Society has placed a massive priority on intelligence. We often feel pressure to be smart and value those who are. Never forget the value of kindness and respect. Each person has their own combination of skills and gifts and should be respected as such.

Remember, outside of a psychologist-provided test, there’s no real way to gauge intelligence in one data-point. But if they do these five things, there is a very good chance they are quite smart.

They demonstrate a curiosity to learn more information.They can openly admit when they don’t know something. They know and operate within their limits.They can break down complex problems and cut straight to a solution.They have an acute awareness of their own thought process. They critique and understand it. They use that knowledge to their advantage.They display obvious signs of intelligence. They think quickly on their feet and have situational awareness. They wear a mask during a pandemic.