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People with High IQ May Be Better at Blocking Distractions
That is, people with high IQ scores aren’t just more intelligent, they also process sensory information differently.
The study findings, published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, explains that the brains of people with high IQ are automatically more selective when it comes to perceiving objects in motion.
As such, they are specifically more likely to suppress larger and less relevant background motion.
“It is not that people with high IQ are simply better at visual perception,” said Duje Tadin, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester.
“Instead, their visual perception is more discriminating. They excel at seeing small, moving objects but struggle in perceiving large, background-like motions.”
The discovery was made by asking people to watch videos showing moving bars on a computer screen.
Their task was to state whether the bars were moving to the left or to the right. The researchers measured how long the video had to run before the individual could correctly perceive the motion.
The results show that individuals with high IQ can pick up on the movement of small objects faster than low-IQ individuals can. That wasn’t unexpected, Tadin says.
The surprise came when tests with larger objects showed just the opposite: individuals with high IQ were slower to see what was right there in front of them.
“There is something about the brains of high-IQ individuals that prevents them from quickly seeing large, background-like motions,” Tadin adds.
In other words, it isn’t a conscious strategy but rather something automatic and fundamentally different about the way their brains work.
Researchers believe the ability to block out distraction is a significant advantage – especially in our information-overloaded environment. It helps to explain what makes some brains more efficient than others.
An efficient brain “has to be picky,” Tadin says.
Source: Cell Press
Abstract of a person thinking photo by shutterstock.
Anxiety Can Hobble Men in Job Interviews
“Most job applicants experience interview anxiety prior to and during interviews,” said University of Guelph psychology professor Dr. Deborah Powell, who conducted the study with Ph.D. student Amanda Feiler.
Anxiety often shows up as nervous tics, difficulty speaking and trouble coming up with answers, all of which are known to influence hiring outcomes, she said.
While men are no more anxious than women during job interviews, they experience significantly greater impairments from anxiety, find the authors.
The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, involved 125 undergraduate students who participated in a mock interview: 43 men and 82 women.
Participants rated their own anxiety levels and had their anxiety and interview performance evaluated by an interviewer.
Overall, anxious men and women were rated lower on interview performance than their less-nervous counterparts. But nervous men were penalized the most, ranking far below equally nervous women in post-interview measures.
The researchers have several theories to explain the results.
“It could simply be that people have stereotypes about anxiety and that it’s more socially acceptable for a woman to be anxious,” Powell said, “while for men, it may look out of character. They may be expected to be less emotional and more assertive.”
Another reason could be that women and men might deal differently with anxiety, with women more likely to use effective coping strategies.
“They may practice being interviewed with a friend or seek emotional support by talking about their fears,” said Feiler.
“On average, men tend to engage more in avoidance. As a result men do less to prepare for the interview and perform worse.”
But what is clear, the researchers said, is that anxiety impairs candidates’ ability to perform in the job interview.
“It would be advantageous for both men and women to learn to effectively deal with their interview anxiety,” Feiler said.
More awareness among interviewers would also help, Powell added.
“Employers need to remember that interviews are anxiety-provoking. If people are feeling anxious, they might do more poorly in an interview than they would otherwise, and employers may be missing out on good candidates.”
Telling job candidates what to expect during the interview, including the types of questions to be asked, may reduce anxiety, Powell said.
The next stage of the research is to explore possible treatments.
“We know that interview anxiety is detrimental to performance in the job interview, so the logical next step for me is to discover strategies that are empirically based that would help,” Feiler said.
In the meantime, Powell has a few tips for job candidates to help reduce interview anxiety:
- Learn as much as you can about the company and about the selection procedures you’ll go through so that you’re not surprised on the day of the interview. Taking some of the uncertainty away from the selection process and interview might lower interview anxiety.
- Practice employment interviews by having a friend interview you. Trying to anticipate interview questions would be helpful and spend some time thinking about your past work experiences (so you’re not fretting about recalling past job experiences in the moment).
Research also suggests that when people are anxious, they appear less warm and enthusiastic, two key determinants are of interview performance, Powell said. “It is important that job candidates’ nerves do not affect the impression they are giving to interviewers.”
People should also remember that interview anxiety is not necessarily transparent, she added. “You may not look as nervous as how you feel. Try not to think too much about how nervous you appear to the interviewer.”
Source: University of Guelph
Nervous man at a job interview photo by shutterstock.
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