« Moderate voices of Islam | Main | Physics of a spaghetti »

March 31, 2006

The most intelligent Europeans

A study published by Richard Lynn from the University of Ulster has brought it to light: Germans are the most intelligent people of Europe! With an average IQ of 107 the Germans beat the Dutch (107) and Poles (106). The Swedes follow close enough (104) and then the British (100). There's already a considerable gap between British and French (94). The last three places are held by Romanians, Turks and Serbs.

Professor Lynn says that the colder climate in Northern and Central Europe favoured the volume growth of brains in these areas. (That instantly reminded me of Terry Pratchett's Trolls whose brains work much better inside than outside a freezer.) Another point he makes is that his findings also explain why the British could always beat the French over the centuries: according to him it is a simple law of history that the army with the higher IQ always wins. Except, of course, if the more intelligent army is hopelessly outnumbered, as the Germans were during WWII.

The fact that Richard Lynn published another study last year in which he stated that men are more intelligent than women lets me hesitate to readily believe his new findings. I do not think that there is a direct link between intelligence in terms of IQ and success. An IQ test usually only measures cognitive abilities. But especially when we deal and interact with other people in our career we need additional skills for success.

One of the most important is probably "emotional intelligence" a term that became popular in the early 90's. Emotional intelligence is

  • the capacity to accurately perceive emotions
  • the capacity to use emotions to facilitate thinking
  • the capacity to understand emotional meanings
  • the capacity to manage emotions.

    • Emotional intelligence will eventually enable you to read, be sensitive to, and influence other people's emotions, and also to enter and sustain satisfactory interpersonal relationships. Now I wonder - where does influence stop and manipulation begin?

    Posted by Mausi at March 31, 2006 07:30 PM

    Trackback Pings

    TrackBack URL for this entry:
    http://mt3.mu.nu/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4092