26 Firstborn Children and IQ Tests
Firstborn children usually have a higher IQ than their siblings.
27. With an IQ of 46, Joe Arridy, the happiest inmate on death row, enjoyed playing with a toy train that the warden had given him. Due to his lack of understanding, he smiled on his way to the gas chamber.
28. An IQ of 171 makes you one in a million (approximately).
29. The late actor Robert Forster, best known from “Jackie Brown” and “Breaking Bad,” was a member of the “Triple Nine Society,” reserved for people whose IQ is in at least the 99.9th percentile (which equates to a score of 146 or above on the widely-used Wechsler tests).
30. The average human IQ has been increasing. Time-transporting a typical person from 1910 to the present would result in a mean IQ of 70, on the verge of mental retardation.
31 Decline of “Genius” Classification – IQ Tests
By 1937, experts no longer used the term “genius” as an IQ classification. In 1939, David Wechsler specifically commented that “we are rather hesitant about calling a person a genius on the basis of a single intelligence test score.”
32. The world record for the highest IQ was 228, held by 10-year-old Marilyn vos Savant. Marilyn attained this feat due to the use of an insufficient scoring system by her IQ testers, leading to the eventual removal of the IQ topic from the Guinness record book.
33. A high IQ does not necessarily mean high job performance. Emotional intelligence (EI/EQ) has shown to be a better indicator of job success.
34. The stress of being poor is enough to lower someone’s intelligence from average to borderline mentally deficient, reducing their IQ score by an average of 14 points.
35. With an IQ of 178, Brandenn Bremmer was a genius. He read books at 18 months old, played the piano at age 3, and started college at age 11. Tragically, he committed suicide at age 14 with no signs of depression, suicide note, or pressure to achieve from his parents.
36 Sharon Stone’s Mensa Claim – IQ Tests
Sharon Stone maintained for many years that she had an IQ of 148 and was a member of Mensa. However, she admitted in 2002 that she was not and had never been a member of Mensa.
37. There is a negative correlation between IQ and religious belief.
38. Isaac Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly. He described some members of that organization as “brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs.”
39. The higher your testable IQ, the less likely you are to develop schizophrenia.
40. A 2009 survey concluded that 65% of Americans educated to a high school level believe they possess above-average intelligence, despite data showing only 47% do. Alternatively, 73% of college-educated respondents feel they possess above-average IQs, while data shows 84% do.
41 Board Games and Children’s IQ
Playing board games with children can raise their IQ. Researchers played logic games (like Qwirkle) with 7-to-9-year-old children for 60 minutes a day, twice per week. Eight weeks later, the children increased their IQ test scores by an average of 10 points.
42. A lower IQ as a child correlates to a higher chance of obesity as an adult.
43. There is no correlation between a highly skilled chess player’s IQ and their chess rating. Moreover, two separate studies showed Korean Go experts had an average IQ of 93.
44. A woman with an IQ of 189 died after drinking 4 gallons of water in one sitting, trying to combat stomach cancer.
45. Young Hoon Kim currently holds the record for the world’s highest IQ at 276 (as of August 2024). He advises several organizations, including the World Mind Sports Council and the World Memory Championships, and is also the president of the United Sigma Intelligence Association (USIA).
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Hong Kong’s Average IQ Test Scores
Hong Kong has the highest intelligence of any country or territory on earth, with an average IQ of 107, followed by South Korea and Japan. The USA doesn’t even break the top 10.
47. Harvard conducted a study tracking the health of their students from 1938 to 2017. They found that for a healthy life, happiness and close family relationships are more important than IQ, wealth, or genes. Good marriages lead to less mental deterioration than stressful ones.
48. ‘The Mega Society’ is a high-IQ society exclusively available to those with an IQ in the 99.9999th percentile (one in a million). There are only 26 members.
49. Professor John Lorber discovered a math genius who had almost no brain because of a condition known as hydrocephalus. He went on to discover that many other people with 90% of their brains missing who had normal to high IQs.
50. At the age of four, January Schofield tested with an IQ of 146 and knew the alphabet at 13 months old. Additionally, she experienced hallucinations, displayed extreme violence, and received a diagnosis of child-onset schizophrenia.
RE: Fact #27 (Joe Arridy’s IQ and Death Row) – That’s seriously bumming me out.
RE: Fact #26 (Firstborn Children and IQ Tests) – Being a second child, I’m happy to say I’m not like everyone else.
RE: Fact #1 (Personality vs. IQ Success) – A lot of studies show that IQ is super important when it comes to doing well in life. But some reporters try to trick people by twisting the results. They’ll say personality is more important, but what they really mean is that personality helps predict success in addition to IQ. It doesn’t mean personality is more important than IQ. Sometimes they’ll even say things like, “Personality matters more than IQ” which is kind of misleading.
The effect of intelligence on your life gets bigger as you get older because it takes time for a high IQ to make a difference. This is why studies with younger people, like those using GPA data, usually show a weaker connection between IQ and success. This study seems to have people of different ages, but it’s not clear how old they were when they were tested. But since they have GPA, it seems like they were measured when they were kids.
The main thing to remember is that this study backs up what we’ve always known: IQ is the best predictor of success. You can get a better prediction by looking at lots of different things, but if you can only measure one thing, IQ is the one to go for.
It’s amazing how easily people can be swayed by words they find appealing.
RE: Fact #7 (Relative IQ Measurement) – Yeah, we’ve gotten smarter over time, probably because our brains develop and also because schools are more focused on standardized tests these days. When you take an IQ test, you’re compared to others your age.
Maybe it’s because we don’t put lead in gasoline or paint anymore.
RE: Fact #43 (Chess Ratings and IQ) – IQ tests are just looking for a specific set of skills, and that doesn’t have much to do with how good your memory is.
RE: Fact #30 (Historical IQ Increases) – What I mean is, the things we think of as “smart” have changed over time. We value book smarts and thinking things through, but our ancestors valued being able to fix stuff, build things, and work with their hands. Those modern IQ tests might touch on some visual skills and quick thinking, but they don’t really measure how good you are at fixing a leaky pipe or knowing when to plant your crops. Back then, if you couldn’t do those things, you were pretty much useless.
My grandpa wouldn’t be the best test taker, but he’s a real whiz when it comes to fixing things. My other grandpa was more of a bookworm, he aced his exams and was super smart, but he was also awesome at doing the stuff you were talking about.
RE: Fact #15 (Tony Hawk’s IQ and School Life) – Reminds me of when that fact about Ke$ha being a “genius” blew up on factrepublic, with the top comment calling her “Basically Einstein.”
She’s way smarter than she acts. Nothing about her public persona seems real.
She’s not exactly a genius, is she?
RE: Fact #19 (Lead Exposure and IQ Decline) – Apparently, adding iodine to salt made everyone smarter by 15 points. Then, adding lead to gasoline made everyone dumber by 15 points.
I wonder if some people are just smarter than others, you know, with those iodine-filled brains, while others are, well, less fortunate.
Totally, lead pipes and paint in older neighborhoods, not to mention the possibility of polluted water sources.
Iodized salt is pretty common, so I doubt it’s a big issue.
Lead paint and gas in the soil are still problems, even though they were banned in the 70s. And guess who lives in older houses in the city? Yeah, lower-income people, especially minorities. It’s kind of a hidden problem that can really hurt kids in those neighborhoods.
RE: Fact #45 (Young Hoon Kim’s IQ Record) – Remember that time a radio station had a “Hold your Wee for a Wii” contest? It didn’t end well, someone actually died from drinking too much water.
RE: Fact #25 (Dolph Lundgren’s IQ and MIT) – Talk about a wild luck. Robbers once broke into his place, but took off when they saw pictures and realized it was Dolph Lundgren’s house!
I’m putting Dolph Lundgren in pictures of my family and hanging them up everywhere.
Should’ve just taken myself out of the picture instead of my girlfriend. Now it looks really strange!
RE: Fact #23 (High IQ Rejection in Police) – Yeah, I remember that happening in Rhode Island. The whole idea was that smart people would get tired of doing that kind of work and just leave.
RE: Fact #49 (John Lorber’s Brain Discoveries) – Seriously, how is that even possible? It’s totally wild, like seeing a bunch of hamsters doing the twist under a super-powerful microscope. If someone’s missing 90% of their brain, how could they even function? It’s like that part was just…extra.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this.
Your brain is super flexible – it can change how its wiring works. It’s not about size, it’s about how many connections are made between brain cells. These people’s brains are probably super connected, with lots of connections packed into a smaller space.
RE: Fact #21 (Francis Galton’s Innovations) – Bjerkness was just some jerk, I guess.
It really ticked me off! Bjerknes basically invented everything we know about weather today. He figured out the whole low and high pressure system thing over 30 years before we even had decent computers to use it.
RE: Fact #34 (Poverty’s Effect on IQ) – So basically, it’s saying that how well people do on IQ tests depends on how focused they can be. If they’re worried about getting food or taking care of their families, they might not do as well. It makes sense, right?
RE: Fact #35 (Brandenn Bremmer’s Genius and Tragedy) – Maybe it’s depression, like everyone says. But I’m thinking maybe it’s just curiosity.
RE: Fact #12 (UK Court Ruling on IQ) – The court should really be looking into the person who agreed to have sex with someone with such a low IQ.
RE: Fact #44 (Death from Excess Water Intake) – Intelligence and wisdom are two totally different things, you know.
RE: Fact #14 (IQ Floor for US Armed Forces) – You know, those guys in the movie *Forrest Gump*, where Forrest and Bubba are together? That’s based on a real thing, and this article talks about how those soldiers had some serious problems.
Wow, I had no idea. That explains a lot. It’s really sad.
RE: Fact #20 (Down Syndrome and IQ) – This fact doesn’t really talk about it, but there’s this thing called mosaic Down syndrome. Some people with it have typical Down syndrome symptoms because of a chromosome problem, but they can also be really different in terms of how they look, how tall they are, how they talk, and stuff like that. Some people might not even know they have Down syndrome, you know? Maybe those people have mosaic Down syndrome.
RE: Fact #8 (Stephen Hawking on IQ) – He has a point.
RE: Fact #29 (Robert Forster and Triple Nine Society) – I figured out that in a city with a million people, about a thousand would be smart enough to join. But that’s not exclusive enough, I need to find something harder to get into.
A movie or TV show made that joke, I think. Like, “I’ll never get over her. She was one in a million.” Then someone’s like, “Well, there are tons of girls in New York, let’s find the other four!”
Your love is one in a million, it’s priceless. But, statistically, there are probably a bunch of other people out there who could love you just as much.
It’s way more exclusive than that. Only a tiny percentage of people even take an IQ test. And then only the super high scorers who are really into bragging about it join this group.
RE: Fact #38 (Isaac Asimov on Mensa Members) – That’s kind of their whole deal, right?
RE: Fact #8 (Stephen Hawking on IQ) – I was really blown away by this comment in the article: “Just last month a Gallup poll found that only 35 percent of Americans accept Darwin’s theory of evolution, while 45 percent prefer the creationist view. ”
Stephen Hawking’s response was, “Maybe it is because people in America have less sense of belonging to a tradition and culture than in Europe, so they turn to fundamental religion. “
It’s pretty alarming that almost half of Americans don’t trust science.
I’m curious how they worded that question. Lots of people who aren’t super religious still think God created the universe, and that science and evolution are totally real, but were part of God’s plan. Picking that option doesn’t mean 45% of Americans think science is wrong because they believe in a young Earth, it just means they think God was involved and works through science. Or maybe the question was just phrased badly and 45% of Americans actually don’t believe in evolution at all. That seems hard to believe though, especially since I went to Catholic school and everyone there, from the teachers to the priests, believed in evolution. I mean, everyone I know in real life believes in evolution.
RE: Fact #36 (Sharon Stone’s Mensa Claim – IQ Tests) – The only people I’ve heard bragging about their IQ are people who definitely aren’t geniuses.
Speaking of IQs… have I ever mentioned mine?
RE: Fact #25 (Dolph Lundgren’s IQ and MIT) – Calling him a Fulbright Scholar is a lot cooler than saying he studied Chemical Engineering.
RE: Fact #33 (IQ vs. Job Performance) – It’s more about playing nice with the boss and customers than actually knowing your stuff, right?
It’s crazy, you could kill yourself working, be the top performer, but your boss would still give the promotion to Craig. Why? Because while everyone else is busting their butts, Craig’s buttering up the boss with fishing stories.
RE: Fact #34 (Poverty’s Effect on IQ) – I get it. When I was flat broke, couldn’t even afford a security deposit, all I could think about was that $500. You get so desperate, it’s hard to breathe. I’m okay now, but it really sucks to be poor. I feel bad that they don’t get much help or sympathy.
RE: Fact #3 (Money’s Effect on IQ Scores) – Being smart isn’t enough if you don’t put in the work. The test still shows how well you can use your smarts in real life.
RE: Fact #27 (Joe Arridy’s IQ and Death Row) – They say he smiled on his way to the gas chamber. He only got nervous for a minute, until the warden calmed him down.
It’s messed up that the warden knew this guy was intellectually disabled and still went through with the execution.
The guy was found guilty. If the warden knows the trial was messed up, why wouldn’t he do his job?
RE: Fact #13 (IQ and Mental Health Issues) – I was a pretty smart kid, went to one of those fancy high schools for brainiacs, but then a whole decade of depression hit me hard. I feel like I was actually smarter when I was just 13. I guess things even out in the end.
I’m in the same boat. My grades are tanking because ADHD and depression are really messing with my focus and I can’t concentrate on assignments that need it.
ADHD and anxiety make me take breaks every 20-30 minutes. When I study, I do something random. If I’m on the computer, I play a few rounds of typing games and then get back to work. Lately in my dorm, I’ve been playing hacky sack for a few minutes. I’m not great at it, but it’s a good way to disconnect. Plus, with enough practice, I might actually get decent! It’s really just about finding what works for you.
Welcome to the club. You’re not guaranteed success just because you’re smart.
Neither happiness.
RE: Fact #1 (Personality vs. IQ Success) – Been in tech sales for a while, and let me tell you, your network is basically your worth in this game.
Senior folks make bank, and they deserve it. It’s not just about being a super aggressive, winning sales machine. They’re good at knowing people. They remember faces, names, the whole deal. And that stuff builds up over time. At a certain point, your actual skills matter less than the contacts you’ve got in your head.
I’ve seen people get hired just because they know tons of people in education, consulting, and all that. If you’re good at remembering faces and names, and keeping up with those connections, you’re a gold mine, man. Every company you work for can tap into that for a long time.
If you want to succeed, get good at building relationships. It’s seriously valuable. Now, if you’re terrible with faces, you better have some seriously killer skills in something else.
Networking, schmorking. Just another day in the jungle, I guess.
One of these is totally different
Dwight
So Dwight’s the tough guy, but Michael’s the one who handles the public?
Those factrepublic meme-posters might be smart, but they seem clueless in the real world.
It’s more like they might be super smart and good at stuff, but they’re kinda quiet or not team players. So they end up just being the go-to person, not actually leading anyone. Then they whine about how clueless management is, even though they get paid way more.
RE: Fact #50 (January Schofield’s IQ and Schizophrenia) – That’s super interesting! What blew my mind was that both their kids have schizophrenia and autism. Is that a genetic thing? I mean, the odds of both kids having mental disorders like that seem crazy low. And hey, Michael Schofield is the dad of January – Prison Break anyone?!
RE: Fact #15 (Tony Hawk’s IQ and School Life) – Tony, in his book, said that being a pro skateboarder back in high school was like being a pro frisbee thrower today.
RE: Fact #25 (Dolph Lundgren’s IQ and MIT) – Lundgren says his IQ of 160 is a bit of an exaggeration, but he’s definitely a smart guy.
RE: Fact #11 (Sterilization Policies and IQ – IQ Tests) – That was a close one, Charlotte would have been empty otherwise.
RE: Fact #7 (Relative IQ Measurement) – That’s why the average will always be 100.
RE: Fact #30 (Historical IQ Increases) – The average IQ is supposed to be 100, so it’s not that people are getting smarter, it’s just that what’s considered “smart” keeps changing.
RE: Fact #34 (Poverty’s Effect on IQ) – It’s like, duh, right? Being poor isn’t something you choose, it’s a tough situation that’s out of your control. And all these rich guys who don’t want to pay decent wages just say, “Stop being poor.” How? How do you expect people to get out of poverty when you’re holding onto all the money?
RE: Fact #13 (IQ and Mental Health Issues) – The more you pay attention to what’s going on, the more stressful life can feel.
The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
RE: Fact #9 (Dysrationalia and High IQ) – It’s crazy, but sometimes the smartest people can be totally wrong about things.
If you keep digging into any idea, you’ll eventually hit a wall where everything just feels pointless. Then you can just make up your own answers and call it a day.
RE: Fact #40 (Survey on Perceived IQ) – That’s totally in line with the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you know? But it also makes me think about how much we value intelligence these days. Even if someone isn’t super smart, it’s understandable why they wouldn’t want to admit it. Not being smart isn’t exactly a cool thing to be.
The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
That’s a good point. I thought this part was really interesting:
Turns out, people with more education are more likely to think they’re smarter than average. It makes you think, maybe people just tend to overestimate their smarts, and it’s just part of being human.
Turns out, people with more education tend to think they’re smarter than average. No surprise there, right?
RE: Fact #41 (Board Games and Children’s IQ) – Cool, thanks for sharing that! Even if it doesn’t make them smarter, spending time with your kid like that is awesome – so why not?
RE: Fact #6 (Impact of Iodized Salt on IQ) – And it fixed goiters super fast, which were apparently common in parts of the US back then. Gross.
Bavarian women’s traditional outfits include a choker, because goiters were super common in the mountains of Europe. They had to cover up the scars from surgery. I read that in a Sawbones episode, a really interesting podcast.
RE: Fact #12 (UK Court Ruling on IQ) – The psychiatrist told the court that Alan thought babies came from storks or bushes and that sex could give you spots or measles. The court decided Alan couldn’t understand sex and ordered him to get sex education, hoping that would help him learn.
Alan still hasn’t gotten his license? It’s been forever!
It’s kind of like having spots or measles, you know?
He knows you can get sick from having sex.
RE: Fact #36 (Sharon Stone’s Mensa Claim – IQ Tests) – Smart people usually figure out pretty fast that bragging about how brilliant they are is a surefire way to make people dislike them.
It’s weird, the more school you get, the more people think you’re some kind of alien. After my master’s, everyone was like, “Hey, there goes the smart guy!” Then after the PhD, people started asking about my IQ. Not in the lab, but at parties or whatever. Like, “You’re so smart, what’s the best oil for my car?” Dude, I’m just really into one very specific thing. Grad school was rough, and I’m not a genius.
“What’s your IQ, dude?” LOL. I don’t even know what my IQ is. There are people smarter than me who dropped out of my program. Asking about IQ is just… weird. Like, “How long can you go at it before you come?” It’s a pretty personal question.
RE: Fact #40 (Survey on Perceived IQ) – I usually don’t think I’m super smart. Then I watched that QAnon documentary on HBO and felt like a total fraud. I mean, these people are missing huge chunks of the puzzle and they’re so convinced they’re right, it’s crazy.
I sometimes wonder if maybe I’m just really dumb and everyone else is right… then all the evidence against that pops back into my head.
RE: Fact #32 (Marilyn vos Savant’s Record) – A few months after Andrew Wiles said he had cracked Fermat’s Last Theorem, Savant put out a book called “The World’s Most Famous Math Problem”. It talked about the history of Fermat’s theorem and some other tricky math puzzles. But it got some heat for trashing Wiles’ proof. Apparently, she didn’t really get how mathematical induction, proof by contradiction, and imaginary numbers work.
Oh dear.
RE: Fact #6 (Impact of Iodized Salt on IQ) – Stanford did a study back in the 70s showing that iodine cleans water just as well as chlorine, and it also gives people iodine, which they’re not getting enough of these days. The CDC did another study in 2003 showing that iodine deficiency is a problem across the country, so maybe we should reconsider using iodine for our water.
Iodine water is seriously gross, but hey, after a week of that, even plain water tastes amazing.
RE: Fact #9 (Dysrationalia and High IQ) – You ever play Ninja Gaiden on NES? Let me tell you a story about the fifth stage, and two brothers who took completely different approaches.
My older brother, he was a year and a half older than me. We were both getting older, and he started failing in school around the time I started doing really well. We kind of butted heads, because everyone kept telling him he should be more like me, and that he could ask for help from his little brother if he needed it. I didn’t really understand how embarrassing that must have been for him at the time, to be told he was too dumb to do his schoolwork without my help. It really created a rift between us, and it’s only recently that we started to make things better.
We both loved video games, and I started to get really good at them. He started losing to me all the time, so he stopped playing games with me. He still loved to play, but he just played with his friends at their house instead. He started pulling away from me, and I was still too young to understand what was going on.
Anyway, I loved Ninja Gaiden, but I always struggled with stage 5. It has this infamous jump, one of the hardest in all of platforming. And if you somehow manage to make that jump, you have to fight a crazy tough boss. I started recording my games on VHS tapes, taking notes on the timings, where enemies spawned, what would happen if I moved the screen this way or that way. I had a whole notebook full of notes from dozens and dozens of attempts, even writing down the time stamps when I died and making a heat map. I was ten years old. I remember asking everyone at school how they dealt with that stage, and none of my friends could even get there, so I started to think it was impossible unless I figured it out.
My brother was sick and missed a few days of school. I came home one day, and there he was, playing the final stage of the game. I asked him who showed him how to get there, and he said nobody, he did it himself. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was insulting, and he got really mad and turned off the game and went to bed. Later, I tried to apologize, saying something like, “Sorry I didn’t believe you, but if anyone in the house could figure out how to beat that stage, it would be me.” He didn’t say anything, just huffed, turned the game back on, and started playing. I kept telling him he was doing things wrong, that this weapon was better, that he could kill this enemy more efficiently with the sub-weapon, that he was playing suboptimally. He didn’t say anything.
When he got to the jump in stage 5, he didn’t calculate anything, didn’t try to line himself up perfectly, he just walked up, made the jump, grabbed the cliff, and jumped over without missing a beat. I saw it, but I didn’t understand, how could he do that without thinking about it? It felt reckless and stupid to me. I remember thinking he was going to get killed by the boss, and then he’d finally see why you have to plan things out.
He got to the boss. The fight started. He just ran right at the boss. He got hit. He got to the boss. He started mashing the attack button. He got hit again. He stood there and attacked. He was almost out of health. He stood there and attacked. Two hit points left. He stood there and attacked. The boss died.
What the heck?
I asked him why he did it that way, and he just said it worked. But what kind of strategy is that? He said it didn’t matter, it worked.
I didn’t learn my lesson that day, but it stuck with me. You can’t know everything. You can learn from anyone. People will call you smart when you don’t deserve it. People will assume you’re dumb when you don’t deserve it. When someone’s explaining something to you, don’t assume you know more than they do, no matter what a test tells you about yourself. And don’t ever, ever be an intellectual bully. You’re going to hurt someone who loves you.
Sorry for the rambling story, but when I saw this article, it reminded me of that time in my life.
You definitely learned a lot from that situation, like 15 things!
RE: Fact #50 (January Schofield’s IQ and Schizophrenia) – Yeah, don’t they adjust IQ scores based on how old you are?
RE: Fact #21 (Francis Galton’s Innovations) – I have an estimated IQ of 201. I’m open for any company to discuss employment. Contingent on the salary offered is $100,000+, and that I’m not asked to take an IQ test.