There are lots of online articles about signs that indicate high intelligence, like 17 Signs You Might Be Smart - Even if It Doesn't Feel Like It. Well, some are obvious like early reading, curiosity and creativity. However, there are a lot of traits that are seemingly completely unrelated to cognition - e.g. being a night owl - that also indicate high intelligence. Such traits cannot be explained within cognitive psychology However, they can be explained with evolutionary psychology. I will use the hunter-gatherer-hypothesis (first put forward by Thom Hartmann, developed by me) to explain these traits. The hunter-gatherer hypothesis states that we have inherited our traits from our ancestors’ mode of subsistence: farming, herding and foraging and that these traits tend to remain bundled due to assortative mating.
Two of the most consistent findings in personality psychology are two correlations with intelligence: openness to experience (positively) and conscientiousness (negatively). In a very simplified way, the hunter-gatherer hypothesis states that hunter-gatherers were characterized by cognitive openness whereas early farmers evolved the trait high conscientiousness which correlates with: orderliness, planning, hard-working attitude, less impulsiveness and many other traits, such as being more conservative and traditional. All these traits make farmer types often more successful in the modern workforce, however, hunter-gatherer types are found more often among high IQ individuals.
Here were go:
- You are messy
Being messy is a sign of low conscientiousness and reflects a personality that is more spontaneous and less planning ahead. Not everybody who is messy is a hunter-gatherer type (could also be a herder type) and not every hunter-gatherer type is messy, but conscientious hunter-gatherer types are relatively rare. One of the most famous messy hunter-gatherer types was Einstein, who famously said: "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
- You are thin
Everybody knows the stereotype of the skinny scientist known from TV by characters like Bill Nye, the Science Guy, or Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future. “I was just a skinny lad”, this is how Brian May’s (guitarist of the group Queen and a PhD. in astrophysicists) song Fat Bottomed Girls starts. What is wrong here is the word “thin”. No political correctness intended, but high IQ people often have an “ectomorph” body type. I have argued that this body type is highly adapted to hunting-gathering, whereas the stronger endomorph body type was an adaptation to farming. The ectomorph body type is very similar to the Ayurvedic dosha type “vata”. This type puts on weight less easily and also grows muscle mass less easily. Indeed, it often seems that high IQ people have all their power in their brains, less so in their biceps.
- You are a night owl
Hunter-gatherers have a different chronotype from farmers. They wake more easily and during a typical night, there are always a considerable number of people awake. For obvious reasons, this helps hunter-gatherers survive. Farmers show a different pattern when it comes to chronotype: early to bed, early up. All studies show that early farmers had to work much harder than hunter-gatherers and regular, long and deep sleep was highly advantageous to their lifestyle.
- You distrust authority
Hunter-gatherers are highly egalitarian and they distrust people who base their authority on anything but competence. Hunter-gatherers only have permanent leaders and the most competent individual takes on this role depending on the situation. Early farmers relied on massive cooperation which could often only be accomplished by hierarchical leadership. This often required faith in their leaders and trust in authority.
- You worry a lot
This trait is called “neuroticism”. While any type can be neurotic, hunter-gatherer types (think Woody Allen), have the highest risk for neuroticism and anxiety. Why should this be so? I have argued that hunter-gatherers had longer lifespans than early farmers and have a more sensitive amygdala, which fires more rapidly and makes hunter-gatherer types produce more stress hormones (cortisol).
- You are non-conformist
Early farming and its hierarchical social structure required more rules for living together and stricter adherence (conformism) to these rules. Michelle Gelfand has investigated different cultures all over the world. They tend to fall on a spectrum between tight and loose. Farmer societies tend to be tight and hunter-gatherer societies (Inuit, Hadza, etc.) tend to be loose. Modern hunter-gatherer type people generally do not feel at ease with lots of rules and regulation and generally pay little attention to what other people do or own.
- You are funny
A great sense of humour requires out-of-the-box, big picture and non-conventional thinking. These are characteristics of hunter-gatherer type cognition. It’s therefore little surprise that the majority of the greatest comedians are/were hunter-gatherer types. These include many comedians who suffered from depressive disorders. Jim Carrey and Robin Wiliams are just two examples from a long list of outstanding comedians with depression.
- You doubt yourself
The Dunning-Kruger effect states that people with lower IQs are more likely to overestimate their intelligence than really intelligent people, who actually often doubt themselves. Why should hunter-gatherer type people be more doubtful about their IQ and sometimes even suffer from imposter syndrome? Hunter-gatherers often downplay their own success, e.g. in the form of “shaming the meat”. They wouldn’t show off when they had a successful hunt but do the exact opposite, they remain humble about it. This kind of behaviour prevents any one person from rising to leadership and serves hunter-gatherer egalitarianism.
- You didn't have sex until after high school
There are two main reasons for this phenomenon. First, hunter-gatherer types would have later puberty (predicted by life-history theory) compared to farmer-herder types. The second reason has more got to do with the fact that hunter-gatherer types are a minority (about 20-25% of the population) and have a harder time to find a partner. In addition, modern dating (chatting up, etc.) does not correspond to hunter-gatherer courtship patterns, which are based on mutual mate choice rather than an alpha-male type of behaviour to attract females.
- You need a lot of alone time
This is certainly an indication of introversion. However, not all introverts are hunter-gatherer types and extroverts can also be hunter-gatherer types. Even extroverted hunter-gatherer types tend to spend a lot of time alone and thinking. Hunter-gatherer types are notorious overthinkers, which might stem from the fact that our world has been so much more a farmer world than a hunter-gatherer world for the past 10.000 years and that a lot of things we encounter daily are against our inborn instincts. Moreover, introverts tend to be more humble, a trait necessary for an egalitarian society, and perhaps an important reason why hunter-gatherer types tend to be more introverted, to such an extent that even a lot of extroverted hunter-gatherer personalities consider themselves introverted, among them the comedians Steve Martin and John Cleese.
Bonus: Listening to music gives you the chills
This trait is connected to very high levels of openness to experience and the ability to feel very intensely. Very rarely people even have the ability to give themselves goosebumps. This is called voluntary piloerection.
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