People with lower IQs tend to be less happy and have poorer health in general than individuals with higher IQs, researchers from University College London reported in Psychological Medicine.
The authors explained that “background happiness” and IQ (intelligent quotient) are independently associated with positive health outcomes. However, previous studies had not been consistent regarding the relationship between IQ and levels of happiness.
The same university carried out a study in 2011 which found that people with higher levels of happiness tended to have longer lifespans, regardless of their overall health status or income.
Dr Angela Hassiotis and team set out to determine what the link between IQ and happiness was and whether social and clinical factors could me compounding factors, and if so, to what extent.
The researchers gathered and studied data from the Adult Psychiatric Survey, England, 2007. All the participants were aged at least 16 years and lived in private households. They included information on 6,870 of them. Happiness was rated according to a validated question on a three-point scale, while verbal IQ was gauged according to the National Adult Reading test. The team analyzed both categorical and continuous IQs.
The authors found that there was a significant link between IQ and levels of happiness:
People with the lowest IQs (IQ of 70 to 99) were found to have the poorest levels of happiness
People with the highest IQ (IQ of 120 to 129) were found to have the highest levels of happiness
Some factors, such as income levels, health, neurotic symptoms and activities of daily living had an impact on people’s levels of happiness. They were found to reduce the link between happiness and IQ by about half