‘What is incorrectly perceived as a sign that someone is intelligent?’ – 27 most frequent misconceptions

We obviously don’t mind when people are more intelligent than us – heck, if we did then our lives wouldn’t be worth living.

But it does get our goat just a little bit when people are perceived to be so much cleverer than they actually are.

Why are we wanging on like this, you may ask? Because we were thinking of the time Redditor Indianfattie asked this.

“What is incorrectly perceived as a sign of intelligence?”

And it prompted lots of smart – genuinely smart! – responses. We reckon these 27 hit the nail hardest.

1.

‘Being in charge.’
Ifyouhav2ask

2.

‘Silence. I’ve been told so many times that I’m thoughtful and a deep thinker but really I can’t figure out what to say lol.’
RecreationalParks

3.

‘Arrogance portrayed as confidence.’
athnme

4.

‘Wealth.’
richardec

5.

‘A cromulent vocabulary.’
jinxes_are_pretend

6.

‘Being able to memorise. Having a good memory is definitely helpful and often shows intelligence but just being able to spout facts does not mean you understand them or can think about things critically.’
potatoes4chipies

7.

‘Age.’
mseopswife

8.

‘Talking fast even if you’re saying the dumbest shit.’
WorkIsCool

9.

‘Having an opinion on literally everything. Especially having the need to share the opinions with everyone they encounter.’
TheMightySweater

10.

‘Grades.’
AllTheSmoke77

11.

‘People seem to think if you are rich with a good job you must be smart. Generally speaking I’ve only met one rich person I would consider smart. The rest? Ooooooof. I seriously wonder how some of them passed gradeschool.’
Cthulhubot666

12.

‘I was surprised when I learned that knowledge isn’t necessarily correlated to intelligence. I met a lifelong academic who knew damn near everything about her topic …. but just the facts.

‘It’s like, she was a walking encyclopedia, could cough up any info about her field, but she couldn’t really process it that well, or draw conclusions, or apply it to a different topic. It’s hard to explain.

‘She had a nice 2TB SSD drive full of info in her head but she had a substandard CPU. Since then I’ve met several people like that. All academics, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with it.’
SkyPork

13.

‘Cornering people in arguments with bullying tactics and acting like it means they “won”.’
RoboKraken3

14.

‘Being emotionally stunted. High IQ does not equal low EQ, you can be a dick and stupid and you can be smart and charismatic. It’s not one or the other.’
Blissfully_Arrogant