Answered on Quora.
What do you mean by geniuses?
- A. Over 140 IQ? Over 140 IQ is genius range on tests. But it’s not as impressive as it sounds, as 1% of the population has this score. We have 3.3 million people with genius IQ’s in the US! That’s a lot of “geniuses.”
- B. Do you mean genius in the more typical way of someone with an exceptional mind or who accomplishes exceptional things due to some mental talent? In that case, there are fewer geniuses, especially the purely intellectual kind. How do you know if you are one? If people are calling you a genius, that’s a good sign!
Of course all B type intellectual geniuses are curious. B type musical and artistic geniuses also tend to be quite curious. Curiosity tends to correlate very well with this sort of intelligence. In fact, it seems to be a necessary but not sufficient factor.
The type A geniuses are hard to figure. The men are typically very curious. The women in that range, maybe not so much, but they are still rather curious. The women in that range are just as smart as the men but they tend to be less intellectual. The airy world of purely intellectual ideas seems boring to a lot of these women. They are much more interested in people, relationships, etc.
Now, are there people who are not either A or B who are curious? Of course! But they do tend to be towards the higher end of the IQ range, often above 113 IQ. I have met a few people with average IQ’s (97 and 106) who were quite curious. They were also far smarter than their scores. However, generally average intelligence people are not particularly curious, but some can be, especially as they get older and crystallized intelligence kicks in.
People with IQ’s >90 are not very curious at all. They regard most novel ideas and discussions as boring. “Why would anyone want to talk about that?” is a typical response I hear.
In short, you don’t have to be a genius to be curious, but curious people tend to be smarter than non-curious people, and as IQ rises, it seems that curiosity does also.
If you are a curious person, consider yourself lucky! It’s a great trait in a human being!
