Last night, I was conversing with an Economics graduate student at Brown University. Eventually, the discussion turned to women. I expressed my view that I always look for intelligence in a woman, which I consider to be a great measure of someone’s overall quality.
I tend to think that intelligence (in the generic sense of pattern recognition and problem solving, not “emotional intelligence” or anything like that) is not only an important trait in and of itself, but is likely to produce other important traits as well. I believe that people with high intelligence are more likely to have other positive traits, such as maturity, faithfulness, honesty, and so forth. This has always been my personal experience. I believe that many people believe otherwise because they work around very intelligent people and notice only their flaws, never noticing the even greater flaws of the more dim-witted. Additionally, though there is probably little of this at this board, I believe that anti-intellectual sentiment sometimes causes people to view that smart as generally weak of character.
My friend at Brown disagrees. He thinks that intelligence, maturity, honesty, and so forth are all independant variables, and one cannot truly say that a very smart person is any more likely to show empathy or act professionally than anyone else. He thinks that each of an individuals qualities is mostly independant from their intelligence.
I’ve been a member of Mensa for more than thirty years. I have rubbed elbows with quite a few high-IQ people, and I really don’t think that high intelligence says anything much about a person’s other qualities. You mention maturity, faithfulness, and honesty. To be frank, I think high-IQ people often lag a bit behind “normals” in these areas. Of course, it is entirely possible that Mensa folks are not a typical cross-section of the highly intelligent.
Yeah, I’ve met a lot of smart people in my time, and while the plural of anecdote is not data, there are just as many immature assholes among the smarties as there are among the dim bulbs.
What pinkfreud said. Frankly, I’m pretty far out on the right of the old IQ Bell Curve, but it took having life beat the stuffings out of me to make me realize where my best thinking had brought me, & to use something other than my intellect to turn me into a reasonably mature adult.
That’s how I found maturity, honesty, empathy, patience, and a bit of wisdom. By listening to mature, honest, empathic, patient, wise folks, and emulating them. Even (especially) if their IQs were below body temperature. Or even room temperature.
My experience, with no data set to back it up, is that people in the “meaty” part of the bell curve are the most well adapted to society. Those are the people who most often show those traits that you listed as positive and that you look for. Maybe, 85-115 or something like that. When you get too far to either side people start getting a little weird. That being said, my best friend is probably one of the smartest 5 people I’ve ever met and I think he’s great (obviously).