Research Hit: Why Those With Higher IQ Can Make Better Decisions

A new study shows that those with higher IQ are better at forecasting

Is IQ really related to better decisions?

Well, there are two ways we can think of this:

One, is that those with higher IQ are smarter (that is what IQ is meant to measure) and hence make better decisions.

Two, IQ measures some factors that are important for decisions but not all and indeed can sometimes impair decision-making by over thinking, or being too specialist, or lacking emotional intelligence.

There is truth in both.

So what is it?

Well, let’s look at this piece of research that I am reporting on here: Chris Dawson of Bath University conducted a study by using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. He took a representative sample of people over 50 and assessed their ability to predict their own life expectancy. This was then matched to various cognitive data but also to genetic markers.

These predictions were then compared with the probabilities taken from the Office for National Statistics life tables (a demographic tool used to analyse death rates and calculate life expectancies at various ages) but also controlled for…