Long yawn indicates high IQ?

Intelligence betrays unexpected signs

Intelligence is the totality of human abilities. It is the ability to learn, to remember new information, to grasp new situations and disciplines quickly, to make connections, to find solutions to problems, to create, and to express ideas.

It is a set of many mental abilities that often go beyond cognitive processes. True intelligence goes beyond how well a person does at school or how well they score on IQ tests^[1].

A person's overall intelligence also includes his creative side, his open-minded attitude to the world, and his ability to adapt to the world in which we exist. Emotional intelligence, which is more focused on understanding and managing one's own and others' emotions, is also important.

Scientists have been interested in intelligence for a long time, and thousands of studies have been carried out. They have identified general signs that a person is indeed intelligent.

However, there are often other signs of a person's mental capacity. You've probably heard it said many times that left-handed people, or people who are extremely musical, are more intelligent?

In fact, there are many other similar signs of intelligence. It can also be a yawn. Here, various groups of psychologists have spoken in the past about the fact that yawning can tell us a lot about a person's emotional capacity.

It was thought that the contagiousness of the yawn only affects people who are particularly empathetic but does not affect those with antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy or sociopathy). And now it is argued that the longer we yawn, the smarter we are.

The longer you yawn, the smarter you are

A recent study has shown that there is a link between yawning and intelligence. According to a study published in the journal Biology Letters, the cortex of the brain of the person who yawns the longest has the most cells^[2].

A large animal study conducted in 2021 also found that vertebrates with larger brains and more neurons tend to yawn longer. Researchers found a strong positive correlation between how long an animal yawns and the size of its brain^[3]. 

"The average length of a mammalian yawn is a reliable indicator of brain size and the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex," says Andrew Gallup, head of the psychology research team at the State University of New York, noting that humans yawn much longer than other animals and that further research may lead to a better understanding of what yawning is really for.

Indeed, today, we still do not know exactly why we yawn. In the past, researchers thought that this behaviour was more to do with a social impulse, where if one person starts to yawn, the urge to yawn spreads to the whole group.

However, Gallup argues that social impulse is not the only factor and that the real reason is probably the increased blood flow to the brain, which cools it down, as better blood flow increases brain power and is thought to stimulate the formation of new neural connections.

Height and sleeping habits signal a large mind

Intelligence can manifest itself in many different ways, such as receptivity and responsiveness. Maybe you can't explain how to get to a particular place, but your body seems to automatically know the way? Or do you remember complex dance steps immediately after the instructor has demonstrated them just once?

This is a high level of bodily and kinesthetic intelligence that can determine your agility and coordination. This is why you may be able to do well in sports and other physical activities seemingly without any extra effort^[4].

Studies show that people who are more prone to black humour may be more intelligent. This is because in order to enjoy more subtle humor, a person needs to be relaxed and secure in their surroundings and also have the ability to pick up a comedy or a joke that has not been told directly.

Some studies have shown that people with larger pupils have higher intelligence and greater working memory capacity. According to psychologists, pupils dilate mainly in response to changes in light but also in response to the speed at which the brain works.

A person's taller stature is also one of the many signs of intelligence. This is because genes linked to height are also linked to intelligence. The conclusion was reached after analyzing the DNA of 6,815 people.

Another sign of high intelligence is the habit of going to bed and getting up later. One study by researchers looked at the sleeping habits of 20 745 American teenagers and found that on a weekday, people of average ability went to bed at 11:41 pm and woke up at 7:20 am. And the extremely crafty went to bed at 12:29 a.m. and got up at 7:52 a.m. At the weekend, the differences were even starker.

Smarter people are also thought to be messier. A study published in Psychological Science found that working in a messy room actually boosts creativity, while a 2015 study at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that a messy environment makes people more goal-oriented. The findings suggest that we are conditioned to seek order in our lives whenever possible and that when we are faced with chaos, we are motivated to pursue clear goals and, therefore, think faster^[5].

Another sign that a person may be highly intelligent is writing with the left hand. In the past, left-handedness was associated with criminality, but modern research links it to a form of creativity, where, given any new task, a person keeps coming up with lots of new ideas.