The One Behavior That Separates Intelligent People From Highly Intelligent People
Some people think there's an easy way to determine when someone is highly intelligent, but science doesn't back it up.
Ground Picture | Shutterstock There are a lot of smart people in the world, and then there are really smart people. It may not sound like there’s a huge difference between the two, but there is something subtle that separates the highly intelligent from people who are just intelligent. Before anyone gets their feelings hurt, this doesn’t mean that anyone is dumb. There’s just one little thing that makes highly intelligent people stand out.
And, really, it doesn’t have all that much to do with book smarts or how well you did on the SAT. Instead, it’s all about your perspective and awareness of the world around you. If it’s not a trait you already possess, it’s one you could work to develop.
Highly intelligent people are able to separate the truth from their biases.
A man named Jack, who goes by @jackxwil on TikTok, shares philosophical information from his viewpoint as a self-proclaimed “armchair logician.” In one post, he explained something small that sets highly intelligent people apart and makes him really like them.
“One thing that I like about the above-average smart people is their ability to rationalize their opinions,” he said. “So it’s to say that there are people that are pretty smart, and they would know that they’re smart, but they can’t see past their bias.”
“And there are other people who are smart enough to know that they are intelligent, and that they have biases, and they can understand when they are choosing their bias over information,” he continued. “Those are the people that I like.”
Jack explained that he likes those highly intelligent people who can see past their own biases because they understand the difference between what’s right and what they choose to believe. They don’t conflate the two just because they can’t separate them.
Based on Jack’s definition, it sounds like these highly intelligent people have a lot of emotional intelligence as well.
“You get somebody who is well-reasoned in something, and it’s probably not the conclusion that they wanted to go to, but it is the most rational one,” he said. “And it might not be the one that some people are comfortable having, but because they can explain why they got to that, it is a little bit more respectful than just assuming that you should have some sort of opinion because it is the correct one to have, even if it is not the correct one to have.”
According to Jack, it’s easy for humans to be wrong because we have biases. We can easily get our biases confused with the truth and preach them like they’re gospel when they’re completely wrong.
Highly intelligent people avoid this blunder. As he said, a really smart person will recognize when they’re wrong based on the information at hand and work to align the facts with what they believe.
The only problem is that science doesn’t support Jack’s theory.
Jack’s idea sounds pretty solid. It makes sense that highly intelligent people are able to look beyond their biases and see the rational truth of a situation. Unfortunately, that’s not really the case. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology concluded that people who have higher levels of intelligence actually have a harder time seeing past their biases.
Sasha P | Pexels
As Tauriq Moosa wrote for Big Think, “Being smarter does not make you better at transcending unjustified views and bad beliefs, all of which naturally then play into your life. Smarter people are better able to narrate themselves, internally, out of inconsistencies, blunders, and obvious failures at rationality, whereas they would probably be highly critical of others who demonstrated similar blunders.”
It would be nice if one way to determine how intelligent someone is were based on their ability to be rational and see past biases. Unfortunately, it seems like that’s just not true.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
