I suggest that you read the text below me and see if you have any of these traits
The signs I'll be listing out are to an extent — quite circumstancial (with exceptions taking place situationally) nor are these characteristics absolute of low intelligence. This list is also non-exhaustive. That being said, these are some common characteristics people of low intelligence exhibit;
These are just some general identifications, though I’ll be happy to discuss exceptions and situ ations which these may need not apply.
The signs I'll be listing out are to an extent — quite circumstancial (with exceptions taking place situationally) nor are these characteristics absolute of low intelligence. This list is also non-exhaustive. That being said, these are some common characteristics people of low intelligence exhibit;
- Poor emotional control; yes, IQ and EQ by definition — are often directionally proportional. This is because people with higher IQ and EQ all have one thing in common; exceptional neurological development. People with low IQ are mentally less developed, and are bound to lacking control in both their thoughts and emotions
- Religion; not necessarily religion itself nor much of the beliefs it holds (there are so many devout Christians on Quora with exceedingly high IQs) but literacy itself. Most low IQ people tend to almost be Fundamentalists and take things very literally due a lack of imagination, intuition, open-mindedness, cognitive flexibility, comprehension, critical thinking and are always relying on very direct impressions because of the lacking of depth in their thoughts and understanding of things. This however, caps at some point because people of an exceedingly low IQ can't comprehend religion itself and are therefore, not religious. Religion doesn't correlate to a low IQ, but Fundamentalism does.
- Substance abuse ; though high IQ people are also prone to this, but for entirely different reasons. Low IQ people get into substance abuse not to dull and numb the senses, but because they crave for the sensational stimulation itself. They also rarely think about the consequences and only see the direct pleasure they derive from their reward system, because of a lack of future-order consideration and thinking ability. With poor impulse control, low IQ people easily fall into addiction. Speaking of impulse control;
- Low impulse control; low IQ people are very impulsive and terribly impatient. This, again, had to do with their reward system and a lack of future-order thinking. The inability to think deep and long-term is overwhelming which will lead to poor planning and judgments on their part. Rule of thumb; people only ever act as soon as they're done thinking about what to act on. In this case — unintelligent people never ever think which means they act almost instantaneously upon any given situation.
- Poor vocabulary; low IQ people are almost very uneducated — and can't even pretend to be an intelligent person if they wanted to. Being verbose and esoteric is out of the question, because their poor mental capacity restricts their articulation in their thoughts translated into words. However, this isn't to say that someone with poor vocabulary is always unintelligent, as their mental effort can always be channeled elsewhere, or they could even know more than 5 languages which stretches them thin.
- Superficiality; low IQ people are almost always superficial, and are only as concerned with depth as deep as a tea-cup. Because they fail to see the depth and nuance of things (and they can't, even if they try), they also tend to be literal minded. They also equate secular and black-white thinking with intelligence — namely success, wealth, and fame are all associated with intelligence to them.
- Black-white mentality and literal thinking; being a Fundamentalist, seeing things very linearly, only seeing the surface of a facade, and other very equatorial aspects of life is a true sign of low intelligence. Because they never think of circumstance and situations, everything is too rule-driven and by-the-book. With a severe lack of critical thinking, nothing is ever grey, and there are always absolutes in everything rather than reasoning.
- Sum-zero thinking; low IQ people almost always see a gain and a loss everywhere, much like basic arithmetic, where anything and everything is always linear. They almost always make an attempt to climb over each other, abiding by the rule of “my gain, your loss" where there is never an attempt for synergy or attempt to work cohesively to mutually benefit. Low IQ people also maintain friendships in a very superficial manner which often don't last, due to them being very fair-weather and only because its convenient.
- Poor moral compass + poor empathy; people with a low IQ are often either very immoral or amoral and again, the perpetrator is; low comprehension and critical thinking ability. This is also due to the fact that people with a poor moral compass also can’t look outward and beyond themselves and actualize other people’s thoughts and feelings via abstraction and awareness. This is also why people who tend to be less intelligent also tend to have less empathy, hence a possessing a lower EQ and is a sum-zero thinker (see #1 and #8). If you heavily lack imagination, you also lack the ability to imagine and contrive other people’s needs.
- Poor tolerance; people with a low IQ also have very poor tolerance, which translates into a flurry of complications. Because they’re only able to see things their way and are inflexible to differences and variations of all things, they are usually;
- Bigots; racist, sexist, homophopic, xenophobic, etc.
- Inflexible; stubborn, not able to accommodate others, inability to change, etc.
- Easily irritated; anything remotely usual or different to what they expect or understand will push their buttons.
- Intellectual reliance; because people with a low degree of intelligence are not capable to think in-depth, they tend to over-rely on other people or things to think and decide for them. This in return, lowers their individualism, making them followers and herd-minded people who blindly appeal to;
- Authority.
- Doctrine (see #2 for fundamentalism).
- Peer-pressure.
- Overestimation of one’s abilities; i.e. the Dunning-Kruger Effect. People who are weaker in logical reasoning also often overestimate themselves because they’re lacking in context and in understanding of depth and difficulty in many subjects and topics — not to mention fields of study. Because they don’t see or understand nuance, all they ever do is skim the surface and that’s the furthest they ever see, leading them to believe they’re mastered a lot more than they actually think. The graph speaks for itself.
These are just some general identifications, though I’ll be happy to discuss exceptions and situ ations which these may need not apply.
