If you’re a genius wondering which profession will fit you like a glove, look no further than our list of 10 professions with the highest average IQ per employee.
While IQ scores are often used as standardized numbers to evaluate someone’s intelligence, the question is: is a high IQ all you need to attain the prosperous life you’ve always dreamed of? Do smart people just have it easy? Well, to put it in one sentence, the answer is yes, people with extraordinarily high IQs are generally more successful than those of average intelligence. But that is certainly not all there is to it.
Let’s look at Terman’s Study of Gifted Children, for example, a popular study in which Lewis Terman selected a group of 1,500 children exhibiting genius level IQs, and followed them all throughout their adult lives. Suffice to say, the subjects were brilliant in school: academic success chased them all. However, as they grew older, there seemed to be an imbalance within the group. While some of the selected children grew up to be excellent in their chosen field, earning even more success than one could have imagined, some actually ended up in unremarkable and tedious lives, for lack of better words.
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Therefore, it’s clear that although IQ plays a huge role in determining the level of your success, it is most definitely not the only factor involved. Persistence, self-belief and ambitiousness were qualities highly prominent in the ones from Terman’s group who rose to fame and riches, proving, to a certain extent, that your personality, attitude and behavior may be as important as the brains you so admire.
As Terman so aptly put it, in the 1947 volume of his study: “we have seen that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.”
This long lasting study which has still not concluded itself since other psychologists have taken it upon themselves to continue following the subjects even after Terman’s death, was carried out in America and I can’t help but wonder how different the results would have been if other nations were also considered. The US could not make it to our list of the 15 Countries with the Highest Average IQ in the World, but other countries on the list might hold a high IQ in higher regard. Maybe IQ and success are more closely related in such areas. Then again, maybe they are more dependent in areas where people generally have low intelligence. Nonetheless, I’m sure the geography would have had an impact on the outcome of the test.
That being said, there are some professions that require more intelligence than others or simply attract smarter people. In short, these occupations tend to hold within their realm individuals with higher IQs than other jobs. To compile a list of such fields, we referred to IQ Comparison Site, where professions have been arranged in order of the median IQs of their participants, using data from a study carried out by The University of Wisconsin – Madison. Admittedly, the study is pretty old but it can still be considered fairly reliable, as IQ distribution is not likely to change. I mean, smart professions will always be smart professions, in my opinion. So with that in mind, let’s get started.
