Have you always fancied yourself the smartest of your friends? Maybe you know that your brain power is superior to others, despite the fact that your friends wouldn’t likely agree. Highly intelligent people often embody certain behaviors and characteristics.
If your tendencies fit into this mold, you just might be as intellectually superior as you often feel when listening to the insipid conversations and childish drama that prevail in typical interactions.
1. Do You Stay Up Late?
While morning people are all fine and dandy, it would appear that the night owls have them bested – intellectually, at least. Research suggests that highly intelligent people are more likely to burn the midnight oil than their typically intelligent counterparts.
While the reason for this isn’t proven, some suggest that it could be due to the fact that highly intelligent people have a hard time shutting down their brains at day’s end, making catching those Zzzs decidedly more difficult.
2. Were You Choosy When You Lost Your Virginity?
Although it might not seem that taking your time to pick a partner for your first romp in the bedroom has anything to do with the number of brain cells you have in operation, studies suggest that it does.
Through evaluation of the mating habits of top university students, the study found that students who scored the highest had the lowest numbers of partners, suggesting that these smarty-pants students were more willing to keep their pants on and wait for Mr. or Miss Right than typical students.
3. Are You The Silent Type?
Introverted behavior and extreme intelligence go together like peanut butter and jelly. Highly intelligent individuals are much more likely to remain quiet during conversations or exhibit a hesitancy to engage in socialization, particularly with people they don’t know.
While reasons for this vary, the most universally accepted explanation is that highly intelligent people insist on thinking before they speak and don’t want to offer anything if what they have to say wouldn’t be an improvement to the conversation.
This can prove problematic for highly intelligent people, as their tendency towards silence can make them seem stuck-up and aloof, ala Mr. Darcy.
4. Do You Socialize With Smart People?
If you’re usually hanging out with smart people it’s likely that you, yourself, are in fact smart as well. This is due to two characteristics of human interactions. Firstly, you are naturally more likely to hang out with people who are like you. You have more in common with these people and, as such, you’re naturally going to have more to discuss.
Secondly, if you were a dummy, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the high-brow conversations and would tire of spending time with these people – not to mention, they would get sick of you hanging around when you just can’t keep up.
5. Do You Know What’s Going On In The World?
How likely are you to turn on the news? Read a newspaper? Search for news online? If you’re in a never-ending quest to stay on top of current events, you’re probably highly intelligent.
Smart people are prone to news obsession. They seek to understand everything – including the incomprehensible tragedies of the world. To this end, they are continually cognizant of what’s going on in the world, sometimes to the point of obsession.
6. Do You Actively Listen?
When in a conversation or attending a presentation, do you actively listen? Just as they are often interested in the news, highly intelligent individuals are apt to give their rapt attention to presenters and speakers.
While some of the super-smart may find their mind wandering if the topic turns tiresome, most are likely to listen relatively attentively – particularly if the speaker or presenter is talking on a topic about which the individual has a personal connection or particular interest.
7. Are You Perfectionistic?
Geniuses have a tendency towards perfectionism. Not only are geniuses highly intelligent and, as a result, capable of producing perfect things, they are also intelligent enough to recognize even seemingly inconsequential flaws.
Because smart people can see errors and imperfections more easily than others, they are more bothered by these flaws and more prone to seek to fix them.
8. Are You Hard On Yourself?
Perfectionism and excessive self-criticalness go hand-in-hand. People with keen intellect can often see errors – even when they are not present. If you’re always thinking you could have done better – knowing that, with more work your finished product could be even more perfect – you’re in good company.
This trait is highly common among exceptionally intelligent people and could be responsible for robbing the world of many great masterpieces, as excessively self-critical artists may be unwilling to put these pieces that they deem imperfect out for public display.
9. Are You Always Busy?
The to-do lists of many intelligent people overflow with tasks to complete. These individuals, partly as a result of their perfectionism and self-criticalness, are constantly striving to improve both themselves and their environments.
They are unlikely to leave something in their homes imperfect or to possess a desire to learn something and not work actively towards accomplishing that mental goal. If your Saturdays are less leisure filled and more a marathon of tasks to complete, you’re likely highly intelligent.
10. Do You Face Problems Head On?
Highly intelligent people know that ignoring problems won’t make them go away. These individuals are commonly willing to face problems head on, even when doing so is uncomfortable. This may make them more prone to getting in arguments with friends or family members, as they will confront problems instead of just letting them simmer under the surface.
While, to some, this can come off as confrontational, to highly intelligent individuals this assertive attacking of problems is just common sense.
11. Do You Lie Well?
Not everything about being highly intelligent is good. Super smart people know that they can lie and get away with it – and many of them do. Unlike their mentally inferior peers, these brainiacs have the mental wherewithal to remember even complex lies, making it much easier for them to get away with a fib, or two, or twenty.
While not every intelligent individual lies like a rug, many of them are willing to use this secret skill when doing so will prove advantageous.
12. Do You Think You’re Smart?
People are often poor judges of their own intellectual merit. The scientifically proven Dunning-Kruger Effect states this. According to this theory, humans have a natural tendency to over-estimate their intellect if they are unintelligent and, conversely, a tendency to under-estimate their mental abilities if they are, in fact, smart.
This means that the smartest of the smart often feel like they are the dumbest of the dumb. If you’ve always considered yourself academically sub-par, you could be lying to yourself.
