Psychological Notes: Why aren't the intelligent happier?

THE EXAMINATION season is upon us. Parents everywhere will be urging their children to revise, but at the same time worrying about how their feckless progeny will survive the coming ordeal. Airless halls, sweaty palms, lucky totems, and restless innards - the emotional cost of academic excellence is high. Yet, it is a cost that we as a society are prepared to accept, because our educational rites of passage are founded on a specious premiss: that IQ points eventually are traded for a roughly equivalent return of happiness.

Since the 1920s many psychologists have argued that all specific skills depend on the presence of a single underlying mental capacity called "general ability". General ability can be measured by IQ tests and is supposed to be a very good predictor of examination results and success in later life. Indeed, research shows that high-IQ individuals (120 and above) experience less unemployment, less divorce, have fewer illegitimate children, rarely commit crimes, and are much better off. But are they happy?

Such statistics tell us about the relationship that exists between intelligence, success, and social conformity, but very little about the relationship between intelligence and happiness.

As a general rule, children are exhorted to do well in exams so that they can collect qualifications. These, in turn, permit entry into professions that command respectable incomes; however, neither educational attainment or salary are particularly good predictors of happiness. The best predictors of happiness are more personal.

High self-esteem, sociability, the feeling of being "in control", religious conviction, and the ability to maintain intimate relationships, are all much more important than educational attainment and wealth. Consideration of personal happiness before academic success might seem to invite the charge of irresponsibility, but the pursuit of happiness is by no means trivial. People who declare themselves "happy" tend to suffer from fewer illnesses and live longer than their "unhappy" peers.

On the moot point of intelligence and happiness, history can furnish us with many instructive examples; however, the case of William James Sidis is illuminating. Sidis could read at the age of two, had invented a new log table at the age of eight, had mastered six languages and joined the Harvard Mathematics faculty at the age of 11. Unfortunately, his achievements owed much to his "pushy" father. At the age of 16, William could take no more. Deeply unhappy, he left Harvard to drift from one mindless clerical job to another. At the age of 28 he employed his colossal intellectual gifts to write an exhaustive work on the classification of "streetcar transfer slips". At the age of 46 he died from a brain haemorrhage. Alone.

The fact that intelligence does not seem to be a very good predictor of personal happiness has not escaped psychologists. If it is intelligent to pursue happiness, why aren't the intelligent more happy? The reason might be that "general ability" itself is a poor measure of intelligence.

IQ tests and academic examinations have always favoured those with well- developed reasoning skills and good memories; however, to define intelligence in such narrow terms does little justice to the rich diversity of human mental life.

Such considerations are forcing psychologists to reconsider the concept of general ability. Howard Gardner of Harvard has defended the notion of multiple intelligences. He suggests that, in addition to reasoning and memory skills, psychologists should also recognise attributes such as social and existential intelligence. The former is necessary for the formation of successful relationships while the latter equips the individual to probe philosophical and spiritual questions.

It is perhaps these other intelligences which determine whether an individual is "clever" enough to be happy.

Frank Tallis is the author of `Killing Time' (Hamish Hamilton, pounds 10)