Oct 20, 2019 20:00:00

It turns out that people with higher IQ are more likely to get sick, and why?

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If you are smart, you can get high income and social status, so it seems that people with higher intelligence can live healthier. However, a survey of Mensa members, an organization with only the top 2% intelligence quotient (IQ), found that people with higher IQ are more likely to suffer mental and physical health.

High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities-ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324

Bad News for the Highly Intelligent-Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-intelligent/

Research Group of Ruth Karpinski Mr. et al., Which studied psychology at Pitzer University of the United States, conducted a questionnaire intended for the Mensa member 3715 people of the United States, mood disorders , anxiety disorders , attention deficit hyperactivity disorder , self Investigate the number of people with autism spectrum disorder , allergies, asthma, and autoimmune diseases . We compared the results with the national average of the United States.

The result is the following graph. Bar graph shows mood disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, food allergy, environmental allergy, asthma, autoimmune disease from the left, yellow is national average, brown is diagnosis of the disease This is the prevalence rate of Mensa members who have received a mentor, and the dark brown is the sum of the diagnosis and self-diagnosis by a doctor. Regardless of the disease, the prevalence rate of Mensa members is higher than the national average, but in particular, mood disorders are about 2.5 times the national average, and environmental allergies are just three times the national average. It was.

Karpinski et al.'S research group believes that this result may be due to the “

overexcitability ” often seen in so-called gifted people with very high IQ. Excessive turbulence is the property of responding excessively to stimuli. As a result, people with high IQ will lose their health in the form of 'thinking too much when receiving a negative evaluation from the boss of the workplace, causing stress and other abnormalities in the mind and body' Karpinski et al. Guess that it might be.

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On the other hand, David Hambrick, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University, who took up the results of this study in an article published in the American scientific journal Scientific American , said, “The prevalence is higher in the high IQ group than in the general population. Even if it turns out, it doesn't prove that a high IQ is the cause of the disease. ' The reason is that people who are devoted to intellectual exploration tend to be unhealthy as a result because they spend less time on exercise and social activities than the average person. Because it is thought that there is no direct relationship.

In fact, in the case of a genius child named IQ171 at the age of 3, `` Children with high IQ are devoted to learning all day long and do not eat meals, so parents must prepare high calorie meals and juice '' Has been pointed out.

What are the concerns of parents who have “IQ171 Genius” in their children? -GIGAZINE

According to the results of this study, the research group said, “Highly intelligent people have a significantly higher risk of mental and physical illness. However, the causal relationship has not been elucidated.” I hoped that future research would reveal the relationship between high IQ and health.