I don’t know about you, but I enjoy spending time with people who are smarter than me. To do this, I have to actively scan my social circle for low-intelligence people and limit my association with them.
So, I thought an article that lists the major signs of low intelligence would be a nice idea. Note that when I say ‘low intelligence’, I’m not talking about people with learning or intellectual disabilities that are diagnosed in childhood. Also, I’m not talking about low IQ scores. I don’t care much for IQ tests because they often test how fast you can think versus how good you can think.
Intelligence defined
Intelligence is the ability to learn, reason, and solve problems.1Colom, R., Karama, S., Jung, R. E., & Haier, R. J. (2010). Human intelligence and brain networks. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 12(4), 489-501. If you want a broader definition, then intelligence can simply be defined as how well a person uses their brain. How well one solves the problems of life is correlated with how well one uses one’s brain.
Low intelligence signs
The following signs of low intelligence are present in healthy, otherwise normally functioning adults.
Cognitive limitations
1. Lack of deep understanding
Those with low intelligence can only understand things on a superficial level. They avoid trying to gain a deeper understanding of things and stick to stuff like small talk and gossip. They’ll say you’re an overthinker if you try to talk about something abstract to them. Fact is: Reality is complex and requires that you think a lot to be able to solve problems. People who avoid deep and hard thinking can’t solve hard problems. Often, the hardest problems are the most important.
2. Difficulty recognizing patterns
To understand and navigate the world effectively, you have to be a deep observer of reality. When you observe reality deeply, you notice patterns. Those patterns teach you the nature of reality. When you understand the nature of reality, you can solve the problems that exist in that reality. People with low intelligence either fail to notice patterns or ignore them.
3. Black-and-white thinking
Low-intelligence people are masters of black-and-white thinking. They only seem to think in terms of opposites, ignoring the grey areas in between. Reality is too complex to be interpreted only in opposites. As a result, they tend to simplify everything. While simplification is useful sometimes, not everything can, or should be, simplified. Knowing what does and doesn’t require simplification signals high intelligence.
Overgeneration is another way people oversimplify reality. Generalizations are warranted in some situations, but in others, they overlook nuances. Knowing what to generalize and what not signals intelligence.
4. Jumping to conclusions
Jumping to conclusions is often a sign of low intelligence. The person who jumps to conclusions isn’t thinking enough or digging deep into what’s happening. They’re in a hurry to attain cognitive closure and can’t tolerate not having conclusions. Being able to draw conclusions based on minimal information can be smart, but it’s often a trap for faulty thinking. Intelligent people are generally slow to draw conclusions and test them when they draw them. Unintelligent people get rigidly attached to their fast and poorly drawn conclusions.
5. Inability to strategize and plan
Strategy and planning require conscious mental effort. Humans aren’t naturally good at exerting conscious mental effort. Much like other animals, we’re prone to living in the present and seeking instant gratification. Strategizing and planning require thinking about the future and seeing how your current actions will affect your future outcomes. Those with low intelligence fail to strategize, plan, and prioritize. That’s why they consistently fail to solve their problems or attain their goals.
6. Poor decision-making
People with low intelligence don’t put much thought into their decisions, including major life decisions. They leave their decisions to their feelings. There’s nothing wrong with taking your feelings into consideration when making decisions. But you shouldn’t only take your feelings into consideration. The best decisions get made when one utilizes both logic and feelings.
Intelligent people try to validate their feelings with logic. Feelings are initial information that you need to reflect on and test. Depending on the situation, they may be right or wrong.
As a general rule, the longer you take to make a decision, the better it will be. You’ll probably have taken into consideration all the pros and cons of that decision, which is the ideal way to make decisions.
7. Unrealistic thinkers
People with low intelligence are either positive or negative thinkers. The problem with those styles of thinking is that they can make you biased. Intelligent people think more realistically. They’re not caught up in trying to see things from the lens of either positivity or negativity.
Learning and adaptability issues
1. Low adaptability
Adaptability is critical to problem-solving and survival. When their problem-solving methods no longer work because things have changed, people with low intelligence struggle with adapting to new circumstances. They get too comfortable with their old ways of thinking and doing things.
2. Resistance to feedback
Those with low intelligence see feedback as criticism. It hurts their ego, and they’re unable to take in the feedback and improve themselves. Intelligent people actively look for criticism and feedback. Of course, there are people who criticize because they’re haters and get a kick out of it. Despite their hatred, their criticism may still be valid.
3. Uninterested in learning
Low-intelligence people mostly see learning as a waste of time. They don’t have the intelligence to see how learning can benefit them. They stop learning when they graduate. On the other hand, high-intelligence people accept that learning is a lifelong thing.
Lack of curiosity is the hallmark of low intelligence. It keeps people stuck at their present level of knowledge. They know just enough to get by in the world. They don’t ask questions and seem to be satisfied with where they are intellectually.
4. Closed-mindedness
Being closed to new ideas, opinions, perspectives, and information keeps low-intelligence people stuck where they are. Closed-minded people tend to confirm their preexisting beliefs, so they cannot learn new things. Knowing when to be open-minded and when to hold on to your stance is key. As they say, your brain may fall out if you’re too open-minded.
As a general rule, the rate at which people change their opinions indicates the rate at which they’re learning new things. While intelligent people change their position on things from month to month or week to week, low-intelligence people hold on to the things they learned years ago.
Having too strong an opinion on anything is generally a sign that a person is only considering part of the story.
5. Not reflecting on things
One of the humans’ greatest cognitive skills is the ability to reflect on things. It helps us understand the causality behind events. Keen observation and the ability to reflect have been the drivers of human progress. Those with low intelligence do not take the time to reflect on things. They’ve been told that taking action is all that counts, which isn’t true. Taking action and then reflecting on your actions gets you to your goals.
6. Lacking critical thinking
Critical thinking is difficult because it goes against what’s easy for the mind to do. The mind assimilates information as beliefs and then confirms those beliefs. That’s easy to do. Testing the validity of those beliefs takes up significant mental energy. Yet, it’s the only way to get closer to the truth. Unwillingness to change beliefs in light of new evidence that contradicts those beliefs is a sign of low intelligence.
Instead of taking in the new information, the mind is prone to ignoring, dismissing, and devaluing the contradictory information.
7. Lacking cognitive flexibility
As mentioned earlier, changing one’s mind often is a sign of open-mindedness. It’s opinion-flexibility, i.e., not being rigid in one’s opinions. Similarly, cognitive flexibility means not being rigid in one’s ways of thinking. Cognitive flexibility is the ultimate goal of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. The ones who develop it can significantly improve their mental health. But it takes significant mental effort that people with low intelligence are unwilling to expend.
8. Not seeking novelty
They seem to have an aversion to novelty in general. You’ll see that they avoid exposing themselves to new ideas and anything new, new art, new music, etc. On the contrary, novelty is very stimulating to high-intelligence people. They seek novelty to keep expanding their mind and to see things in a fresh light.
9. Lacking creativity
As they lack novelty-seeking, low-intelligence people also lack creativity. Creativity doesn’t emerge out of a vacuum. The most creative people constantly expose themselves to other creative people in their fields. This way, creativity feeds on itself and produces beautiful things in the world.
Social and emotional deficits
1. Poor emotional regulation
They tend to be primarily governed by their feelings. As a result, they tend to be impulsive and short-tempered. Their emotions are all over the place. The more intelligent and mature a person becomes, the less they’re controlled by their own emotions. Not being able to control your emotions can have huge personal and interpersonal costs.
2. Lack of empathy
Socially unintelligent people tend to have empathy deficits. They’re unable to put themselves in others’ shoes, and they don’t think about how their words and actions might affect others. They’re self-centered and tend to have a win-lose mentality.
3. Unaware of social cues
They can’t read the room. Since they can’t gauge the mood of the room, they say the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times. They don’t pay attention to the non-verbal signals others send out in a social setting.
4. Easy to manipulate
They get manipulated easily because their emotions run their lives. There’s nothing a manipulator likes more than seeing their victims being governed by emotions. Almost all manipulation is emotional manipulation. You won’t be easily manipulated if you can learn to control your emotions.
5. Herd mentality
Humans are a social species, and herd mentality is at the root of human nature. However, after a certain point in one’s intellectual growth, one should be able to overcome it. Those with low intelligence are easily influenced by what others are doing. They’re busy keeping up with the Joneses and trust authority figures blindly.
6. Overconcern with status symbols
All humans want to look good to other humans. That’s how we increase our social value and self-esteem. How do you gain social value? Do something that’s valuable to others. That’s what intelligent people focus on. It automatically increases their value. Low-intelligence people put the cart before the horse and focus on the end result- money, titles, etc. that focusing on creating value can eventually bring. They want to take shortcuts in their quest to appear valuable, like scamming, deceiving, robbing, etc.
7. Unfair blaming
Those with low intelligence have too much ego to admit their own mistakes. Since they’re so concerned with looking good, they blame others unfairly and avoid taking responsibility for their actions. They employ deflection tactics and ego defense mechanisms to protect their fragile egos.
8. Lacking intrapersonal intelligence
When laypeople in a study were asked what behaviors represented intelligence, they mentioned ‘intrapersonal intelligence’.2Giraudeau, C., Chasseigne, G., Apter, M. J., & Mullet, E. (2007). Adults’ lay views about intelligence: A Reversal theory approach. Personality and Individual Differences, 42(1), 169-179. Lacking intrapersonal intelligence means lacking self-awareness and self-understanding. If you don’t even understand yourself, people don’t expect you to understand them.
Behavioral patterns
1. Prone to addictions
People with low intelligence always want to have fun. As a result, they develop bad habits and addictions. The movie Idiocracy depicted this well. It features a futuristic world where humans have degenerated into a bunch of instant gratification-seeking idiots.
More often than not, addictions are unhealthy coping mechanisms. People seek pleasure when they’re in some kind of emotional pain. Not understanding your emotions, i.e., having low emotional intelligence, has been shown to be a predictor of substance abuse problems.3Riley, H., & Schutte, N. S. (2003). Low emotional intelligence as a predictor of substance-use problems. Journal of drug education, 33(4), 391-398.
2. Ego dependent on intellect
You can have a highly intellectual person, but if their ego is tied to their intellect, they’re still unintelligent. They’re using their intelligence to feed their egos. It’s not a pure pursuit of the truth. They get offended when their opinions are criticized because their identity and ego are wrapped up in their intellect. They’re emotionally attached to their logic, which is anything but logical.
3. Needing instructions
Step-by-step instructions are useful and make life easier. But sometimes you have to think for yourself. If you understand the principles of things, you can come up with your own instructions. You gain the ability to adapt how you’ll apply your principles in different situations. Since those with low intelligence aren’t into deep understanding, they want step-by-step instructions for everything.
Low-intelligence people avoid thinking when they can. They always need to be told exactly what to do and won’t use their own minds. They thrive in formal education structures requiring rote learning but lack street-smartness. Put them in a novel situation where they’re required to think on their feet and watch them crumble.
Thinking and judgment issues
1. Judgmental
Being judgmental is a sign of low intelligence. Often, judgments are based on little information, not the whole story. People without intelligence expect others to be like them and see the world as they do. They don’t understand that each human being is unique with unique experiences. There’s no point in judging others for being different than you because they haven’t lived your life. Your past experiences haven’t shaped their life, only yours.
2. Lacking intellectual humility
Intellectual humility is the ability to recognize the limits of one’s knowledge and beliefs.4Porter, T., Elnakouri, A., Meyers, E. A., Shibayama, T., Jayawickreme, E., & Grossmann, I. (2022). Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 524-536. Curiosity and intellectual humility are the engines of intellectual growth. Intellectually humble people are undogmatic and can tolerate ambiguity.5Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., Jongman-Sereno, K. P., Isherwood, J. C., Raimi, K. T., … & Hoyle, R. H. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(6), 793-813. They’re comfortable with not having all the answers. Their ego is independent of intellect.6Krumrei-Mancuso, E. J., & Rouse, S. V. (2016). The development and validation of the comprehensive intellectual humility scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98(2), 209-221.
3. Not detail-oriented
Because people with low intelligence are biased thinkers who oversimplify things, they tend to miss the important details. They miss the trees for the forest. They also miss the forest for the trees in that they will overfocus on unnecessary details, unable to put things in their broader context. Knowing when to be detail-oriented and when to focus on the bigger picture is a sign of intelligence.
Practical struggles
1. Bad with money
This is related to their inability to plan. They don’t think budgeting and expense tracking are important. Because they can’t regulate their emotions, they make big impulse purchases and end up in a financial mess. They like borrowing money and taking loans, spending money they haven’t earned.
2. Poor verbal communication
They can’t articulate their opinions and feelings. They’re uneconomical in their use of words and talk for the sake of talking. They beat around the bush and talk about irrelevant things before they come to the point, if at all. Their talk moves in 100 different directions instead of moving from A to B.
3. Missing sarcasm and implied meanings
They take words literally, so they struggle with understanding irony and sarcasm. Also, they struggle with understanding what’s implied because they’re only focused on what was said.
4. Difficulty focusing
Being able to control your attention makes you intelligent.7Cowan, N., Fristoe, N. M., Elliott, E. M., Brunner, R. P., & Saults, J. S. (2006). Scope of attention, control of attention, and intelligence in children and adults. Memory & cognition, 34, 1754-1768. That’s because intelligence requires deep and hard thinking, which is only possible when you’re focused and distraction-free. People with low intelligence are constantly distracted. They do nothing to overcome their distractions because they don’t think about the consequences of their actions.
