Do you worry a lot? Do not be afraid about it, because your anxiety can be a high intelligence sign. The proverb: Ignorance is bliss indicates the opposite: Knowledge involves anguish. Now it is beginning to be scientifically valid.
In a new research, Alexander Penney (psychologist) and his coworkers tracked over 100 students from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. They asked them to describe their worry levels.
These researchers discovered that those students with more angst – for example, students who agreed with the statement “I am constantly worrying about something”, got a higher score on a verbal intelligence test.
The belief that those who worry are smart is proved by an experiment by Psychologists Orgad Tal and Tsachi Ein-Dor in 2012, from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. During this experiment, 80 students were inflicted on identical bursts of stress.
The students who were included in this study were told to evaluate artwork presented by a software program – and this was, of course, a false story. While working on it, they activated a virulent computer virus “by accident”. (Regardless of the behavior of the participants, this, of course, occurred automatically) Then, the students were urged to seek technical support immediately.
If you worry habitually, you are, for sure, a “sentinel”, not a neurotic nerves bundle.
While trying to do so, the participants were presented with four challenges. For example, in the hall somebody asked them to do a survey and some of the students dropped books on their feet. The higher students’ scores on the anxiety measure, the more bent they were to focus on fixing the computer problem.
“We discovered that nervous persons were difficult to interrupt on their way to deliver the warning message,” said Tal and Ein-Dor. Anxiety never proved more effective.
Some other study, led by psychiatrist Jeremy Coplan from Suny Downstate Medical Center in New York, included people with anxiety disorder. Jeremy Coplan and his coworkers discovered that those with serious symptoms had a higher intelligence than people with milder symptoms.
The statement that people who worry a lot are cannier than usual makes sense. The mind that worries is the mind that searches, smarter people can have the agility to investigate the situation from different aspects. “More intelligent persons may have the ability to look at the future and past issues in detail, which leads to more intense worry and rumination,” wrote Penney and his coworkers.
The real relationship can work in the two directions. For example, kids who are predisposed to be nervous can be more diligent or attentive in school, and thus improve their intelligence. Smart individuals can find more things to worry about.
According to Manhattan psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, somebody who suffers from flying fear will conjure up every kind of scenario in the head. “The sufferer might worry that the mechanic failed to check properly the plane or can worry about a bird flying straight into the motor,” said Alpert.
According to Los Angeles therapist Allen Wagner, if the imagined agitation is based on a real future event, it may lead to solutions that are safe and that can stop disasters.
This interpretation of nervousness opposes the other research showing the negative connection between nervousness and intelligence. For example, in the study of Coplan, lower worry correlated with higher IQ in the control group.
The smarter you are, according to the psychologist at the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, Robert Epstein, the chilled you are. “Even if there are exceptions, the basic discovery is sound. This explanation is straightforward: When one is nervous, one does not think clearly,” said Epstein.
Anyway, the doubt persists that an inclination to be worried can bequeath a mental advantage. Most of the brilliant thinkers, such as Nicola Tesla, Kurt Gödel, and Charles Darwin, suffered from anxiety as well. And Abraham Lincoln described himself as naturally of an anxious temperament.
The following stanza features a poem that is ascribed to the formidable orator:
To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink
And wallow in its waves.
“The Scream”, a masterpiece by Edvard Munch, was written during an attack of panic that ended as a blood-red-sky vision. “I stood there trembling with anxiety and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature,” Munch said.
No matter your creativity level, if you are persistent in fear, the attribute can mean you can avoid danger.
So if someone tells you to relax, say that anxiety has its virtues.
Via Slate