Are smart people more quiet?
Hannah Poole, Most Viewed Writer in Music Promotion
Answered May 7
It can’t be denied that some very smart people seem to be quiet. They patiently wait for other people to say what they need to say. They choose to open their ears rather than their mouths. So, why are they like that?
Introversion: This is because as intelligence declines, extroversion tends to increase. As intelligence rises, especially beyond a certain point, people tend to become increasingly introverted. People with very high IQ’s of 160+ are often extremely introverted, even pathologically so.
Living in your head: We all live in our heads to some extent, but no one lives in their head more than extremely bright people. I imagine if we could look into the brains of very smart people, we might be amazed at the content in there. Very bright people are often having conversations in their head frequently of a question and answer type. The content of the inner conversation often changes rapidly, so as soon as they are ready to say something, their mind may have moved on somewhere else, or it may not be an appropriate thing to say anymore, as the conversation has moved on.
Weighing what to say: Although very bright people are often regarded as social retards, I doubt if there if there is much good evidence of this. For instance, for perhaps every ten things I think about saying to people as I move about in public, I might say one or maybe two of those things. All of the others are censored out as unacceptable, unlikely to go over or more likely to fall flat or bomb out.
This is because before they say something, bright people often weigh it in their heads quite a bit from all sorts of angles to determine whether it would be an acceptable thing to say or not, whether it would fall flat, bomb out or be seen as weird, crazy, offensive, too familiar, out of context, too forward, too personal, or too sexually oriented for the situation.
Being extremely observant: Most people don’t realize this, but bright people are often observing everything around them very carefully, and in many cases, they are trying to figure out, analyze and put the situation in front of their eyes together in the most sensible ways. They are searching for patterns, making hypotheses, and yes, engaging in a lot of generalizations along the way because if you are in the habit of pattern recognition, you must be generalizing constantly. Indeed the wisest man of all is the one who has figured out the most patterns in life and has made the most and most accurate generalizations about the patterns that he has seen.
Inhibition: This can be thought of best as recognition of and being chastened by the notion that one can open their mouth and make a complete ass of themselves, hence caution about speaking. One of the problems of being very bright is that one observes a world full of people saying and doing stupid, irrational, and just flat out wrong or incorrect things all day every day.
Caution: Smart people tend to be cautious. As IQ declines, people become less and less cautious. Indeed, an argument can be made that “Life is an IQ test.” Careful studies have shown that more intelligent people quite simply make fewer mistakes and do fewer stupid things than less intelligent people. As a result, they have fewer health problems, and they actually live longer.
