People With Unusually High IQs Almost Always Struggle With This One Aggravating Thing, Says Science
blvdone / Shutterstock According to a study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, excessive worry isn't always a bad thing. In some cases, it could mean you actually have a high IQ.
If you're like me, you think a little too much. Your thoughts and ideas swirl around so much in your mind that it can be hard to get much done, and it results in anxiety. Just relax.
One study found that there may be a link between intelligence and anxiety.
The authors of the study investigated neuroticism, a personality trait associated with negative emotions, and how it relates to self-generated thought. They suggested that those who overthink, or "think too much," may be fueling their own neuroticism. It is simply a possible by-product of having a mind that is capable of complex, rich thought.
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For those who experience anxiety, some bells of recognition might be ringing right now. "It occurred to me that if you happen to have a preponderance of negatively hued self-generated thoughts ... and you also have a tendency to switch to panic sooner than average people ... that means you can experience intense negative emotions, even when there's no threat present," said Dr. Adam Perkins, an expert in neurobiology of personality at King's College in London and one of the study's researchers.
"This could mean that for specific neural reasons, high scorers on neuroticism have a highly active imagination, which acts as a built-in threat generator," Perkins continued. "Cheerful, happy-go-lucky people by definition do not brood about problems and must be at a disadvantage when problem-solving, compared to a more neurotic person...It is easy to observe that many geniuses seem to have a brooding, unhappy tendency that hints they are fairly high on the neuroticism spectrum." He refers to specific examples like Kurt Cobain and Vincent Van Gogh.
This is not the first study to associate having a high IQ with having anxiety.
Dr. Jeremy Coplan, a researcher and professor of psychiatry at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, weighed in as well, saying, "Although we tend to view anxiety as not being good for us, it is linked with intelligence — a highly adaptive trait."
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Coplan explains that high levels of anxiety can be disabling, and patients' worries are often irrational, but that "every so often there's a wild-card danger. Then, that excessive worry becomes highly adaptive." He also notes that people "who act on the signals of that wild-card danger are likely to preserve their lives and the lives of their offspring."
A study that Coplan co-authored found that, in patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, those with a higher IQ had greater levels of worry. The researchers hypothesize that metabolic activity in white matter in the brain may be a common link between intelligence and anxiety, but it hasn't been definitively proven. So, there you go. Your feelings of anxiety may actually be the key to the survival of humanity. Not to, you know, stress you out or anything.
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