First thing’s first, I need to clear one (possible) misunderstanding: strictly speaking, IQ is correlated with introversion, not shyness. Someone who is shy will exhibit an unusually strong fear response towards social interaction, whereas an introvert might not; introverts simply prefer to be alone and get exhausted from being around too many people very quickly, without necessarily being scared of social interaction. Of course, shy introverts do exist – common, even – but talkative introverts, and shy extroverts for that matter, do exist as well. To the best of my knowledge, intelligent people do seem to be disproportionately introverted, but not necessarily shy.
With that out of the way, onwards with the rest of the answer – I shall list out a few interesting traits and behaviours which are at least seemingly affected by IQ:
- Obedience. More intelligent individuals are less likely to respect a higher power, as they are much quicker to question the competence or authority of their superiors than their peers – for the obvious reason that they are smart enough to notice the mistakes made by their superiors.
- Aggression. People falling between around 80 to 95 IQ points commit a disproportionate number of crimes. I suspect this is due to them being just smart enough to pull criminal acts off, but too dimwitted to fully consider the consequences of their actions. Not entirely certain on the causal link here, though.
- Speech. This is a big one – in fact, this is probably the quickest and most accurate metric by which you can estimate someone’s intelligence. A very intelligent person (say, above 120 IQ points) is likely to use more complex sentence structures and more sophisticated vocabulary than your average Joe. They are also more likely to use abstractions and hypotheticals as they communicate, and frequently expect their listeners to read between the lines. On the other hand, someone with a very low IQ (say, 80 and below) is likely to speak like Forest Gump: simple, direct sentences with little sophistication, and a nonexistent ability to read between the lines. Of course, there are a number of people who use complex words without actually knowing what they mean in an attempt to look more intelligent, but they usually won’t speak with a complexity comparable with someone who actually is smarter than average.
- Tidiness. This one I’m not so certain about, but supposedly highly intelligent individuals dont tend to bother tidying up their rooms or desks as much as their peers. I’m guessing this is because intelligent people are more able to keep track of everything in their own heads – they might even perform better when their senses are saturated, such as in a messy room or desk – and so they don’t feel the need to keep everything organized, whereas their less able peers do. I’m a little iffy about this one though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
Was Reinhard Heydrich possibly more evil/cruel than Hitler?
Yes.
Reinhard Heydrich
What makes Heydrich so terrifying was that, in contrast to Bormann, Himmler and Goebbels, he wasn’t a fanatical Nazi.
Yes, you read that correctly.
A rather shocking fact about the organizer of the most infamous genocide was that he didn’t loathe the targets. Although Heydrich disliked the Jews and had right-wing anti-semitic sympathies, his Anti-Judaism was far more subtle than that of Hitler. It played little role in his private life, and his Anti-Judaism was comparable to that of the average German at the time, it was very moderate. Heydrich did not have the hostile feelings that Hitler had against the Slavs and Gypsies, he didnt care about the “German Master Race”, and his feelings towards the Holocaust targets, really, was simple indifference.
He only played a major role in the Holocaust because he was a very psychopathic, ruthless and ambitious careerist who took all the chances that were thrown at him, and was able to carry out any kind of order without hesitation or second thoughts and expected the same from all of his subordinates. And, unfortunately, he had chosen the perfect people for these tasks: Heinrich Müller and Adolf Eichmann. This characteristic simply came from his strict Catholic childhood by his mother, who, along with his father, helped instill fervent nationalism, absolute obedience, ambition, music and “sacrifice for your community” ideals into their children. He organized the Holocaust simply to advance his own career and status in the society. It is these characteristics that earned him the nickname ‘Hitler’s Hangman’ because he was literally Hitler’s dog: an very intelligent, ambitious but submissive man who did anything he was told, no matter how immoral it was, because the leader always knows what’s best for the German community (in his mind). His wife, Lina, encouraged him to join the Nazi Party in 1931, beforehand, he couldn’t care less about the Nazis.
Is American Childhood Creating an Authoritarian Society?
More so than any other generation, parents and educators have instilled in millennials the idea that, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt put it, “life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm.”
.. kindergartens have “changed radically in the last two decades.” Exploration, exercise, and imagination are being deemphasized and play has “dwindled to the vanishing point.” Instead, kindergartens are introducing “lengthy lessons” and “highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests”—curricula often taught by teachers who “must follow scripts from which they may not deviate.”
.. parents since the mid-1980s have purchased fewer multi-purpose, unstructured toys like clay and blocks that “encourage play that children can control and shape to meet their individual needs over time.” Today’s bestselling toys like action figures and video games “promote highly-structured play.”
.. practically every declining health outcome in children can be traced to the sedentary, indoor, micromanaged lives that now define American childhood.
.. children with mothers fearful of neighborhood safety are more likely to watch over two hours of TV per day, instead of playing outside. When American students are moving for only 18 minutes per day at school, it’s hardly a surprise that we’ve seen since the 1970s a more than threefold increase in the number of overweight 6 to 11 year olds.
Experts meanwhile are linking increasing rates of anger, aggression, and severe behavior problems to a lack of free play. These outcomes are consistent with evolutionary psychology theories that consider play to be a critical part of child development, teaching children to cope with, and ultimately master, fears and phobias.
- .. Angst over hypercompetitive college admissions.
.. University of Chicago law professors Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg ask whether the United States is at risk of democratic backsliding. Huq and Ginsburg found that the risk of incremental but ultimately substantial decay in democratic norms has “spiked” and now presents a “clear and present” danger. The authors argue that a “larger shift toward an illiberal democracy” is well within the cards.
.. social scientists have long argued that the origins of authoritarian societies can be discerned in childhood pathologies.
.. In the case of Nazi Germany, Miller is convinced that Hitler would not have come to power but for turn-of-the-century German childrearing practices that emphasized “unthinking obedience” and discouraged creativity. The millions of Germans who ultimately supported Nazism, in Miller’s views, were coping with the legacy of a “hidden concentration camp of childhood”—one enforced by the “clean, orderly citizens, God-fearing, respectable churchgoers” who comprised the ranks of Germany’s authority figures.
.. More so than any other factor—identity, religiosity, income etc.—it was voters’ attitudes on childrearing that predicted their support for Trump. Those who believe that is more important for children to be respectful rather than independent; obedient over self-reliant; well-behaved more than considerate; and well-mannered versus curious, were more than two and a half times as likely to support Trump than those with the opposite preferences.
.. This shouldn’t be surprising considering that few institutions in American society have embraced authoritarianism as decisively in recent years as academia—the arena where helicoptered millennials increasingly get their first taste of independence.
.. Behind these authoritarian efforts are an army of “chief diversity officers”—75 of whom have been hired between 2015 and 2016 at colleges and universities. Their mandate: train students against “subtle insults,” “environmental microaggressions,” and “microinvalidations.”
.. Jonathan Chait sees not simply a “rigorous commitment to social equality” but rather an “undemocratic creed” and a “system of left-wing ideological repression.”
Richard Rohr: Drawn from Within
Our carrot-on-the-stick approach to religion is revealed by the fact that one is never quite pure enough, holy enough, or loyal enough for the presiding group. Obedience is normally a higher virtue than love. This process of “sin management” has kept us clergy in business.
.. The good news of an incarnational religion, a Spirit-based morality, is that you are not motivated by any outside reward or punishment but actually by participating in the Mystery itself. Carrots are neither needed nor helpful.
.. Henceforth, you do things because they are true, not because you have to or you are afraid of punishment. Now you are not so much driven from without (the false self method) but you are drawn from within (the True Self method). The generating motor is inside you now instead of a lure or a threat from outside.