There is a whole oil slick of questionable websites making
the rounds on social media at the moment claiming that people who curse, are
messy, and stay up late are more intelligent or have a higher IQ than those who
don’t. The same websites often make some pretty sensationalist claims,
sometimes taking research out of context and other times just making stuff up
(see link at the bottom of the page). There are two studies (and one
questionable article) involved when you dig into the subject. There may be
more, but here are the two that keep coming up.
Let’s address language first. The actual article is “Taboo
word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: deconstructing the
poverty-of-vocabulary myth,” published in Language Sciences Volume 52, November
2015, Pages 251–259. It addresses the long-held myth that people who swear are
less intelligent or do so because they cannot find better words to use. It
argues that there is no real correlation between a wide range of swearing and a
lower intelligence. It never mentions that people who swear more or have a
wider range of curse word vocabulary have a higher IQ or are more intelligent.
It dispels the idea that they are inferior. There are a few related articles
once you find this one, and they mostly seem to agree with this research. Taboo
words (AKA “swear words”) are only taboo because for cultural reasons. They are
not mandated to be bad words. They are words used by people, and do not
indicate a single thing about intelligence.
Now let’s address messiness. The actual article is “Tidy
Desk or Messy Desk? Each Has Its Benefits,” published in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. It says that while a
clean desk may promote behaviors like eating healthy, generosity, and conventionality,
a messy desk may promote creativity and new ideas. It does not say that people
who live in messy environments are more intelligent or have a higher IQ than
people who keep their environments clean.
Now for staying up late. The actual article is “Why Night
Owls Are More Intelligent Than Morning Larks,” Published in Psychology Today in
the Scientific Fundamentalist blog by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary
psychologist at the London School of Economics. This article does claim that
people who stay up later are more intelligent than others. He is famous for an
article in this same publication about why black women are allegedly not as
attractive as white women, using the opinions of interviewees as the “unbiased”
control for this study (http://tishushu.tumblr.com/post/5548905092/here-is-the-psychology-today-article-by). That article has since been pulled and the London
School of Economics prohibited him from publishing in non-peer-reviewed outlets
for a year. Take what you want from that one. I’m still trying to figure it out
myself.
A final note: I swear a lot. My apartment is messy. I have
been known to stay up until 7AM at 32 years old. This does not always make someone
more intelligent in my opinion, because I know plenty of people who do the same
things and are complete idiots. For all I know, I may be one of them.
The fact that so many
people take all this research out of context and use it justify things that no
one needs to justify like swearing and messiness and staying up late is
ridiculous. Live how you live, folks. You don’t need to answer to anyone. I get
a lot of flack for my apparent “conservative values” and my “Christian
upbringing.” Well, whatever. I can respect that, but I would also like to point
out that I am an atheist, because a Christian upbringing means nothing, and “conservative”
is a relative word, depending on who you talk to.
My point is, even though these studies exist, they do not
exist in the capacity or context that the people reposting this kind of
clickbait would like to believe. But no one cares to do the research, so no one
knows any better. We have made science a huge thing, praised well-known scientists, made them our heroes, but most of us would still rather not look into anything. We find something that agrees with our worldview, we like it, we share it. We spread the ignorance.
Oh well. We're all on a big, dying ball of dirt floating in a soundless void. What do facts matter, when you can have... SENSATIONALISM? :D
PROMISED LINKS:
Out of context: http://www.sciencealert.com/the-brain-literally-starts-eating-itself-when-it-doesn-t-get-enough-sleep?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1
