Photo via Pixabay.
It’s tough to ignore the voice in your head of your mother repeating that hackneyed platitude “Don’t judge a book by its cover” once you’ve formulated an on-the-spot judgment of someone based on their appearance. Turns out, however, these snap judgments can be fairly accurate, and the answers to our personality, fitness, and intelligence may be written on our faces.
Photo by Lori Hurley via Flickr
Bad news for dimbulbs: A piece in Scientific American this morning highlights a statement from 70 leading cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists refuting the notion that “fluid intelligence”—our ability to solve novel problems through logic—can be improved with games or “brain training” exercises. These fad programs approach the mind like a muscle, and theorize that repeating individual cognitive activities will result in stronger function in the same way that physical exercise strengthens the body. Through companies like Lumosity and BrainHQ, Americans spent more than a billion dollars this year trying to beef up their brainpower, but the statement, issued by Stanford University and the Berlin Max Planck Institute for Human Development, makes a pretty strong case that trying to boost one’s IQ is a waste of time:
One of the world's top intelligence experts, John Flynn, a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, says his latest round of research reveals that for the first time ever women around the globe are outscoring men on IQ tests.