Living Smart

We all know someone who scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT and flunked out of college by the second semester. That’s because success in college, and in life, has little to do with raw intelligence. 

IQ predicts success about 20% of the time. Behavioral scientists have discovered that 80% of success depends on emotional factors.

Harvard students from the 1940s—a time when there was a wider range of IQ at that school—were tracked into middle age. The high IQ men were not anymore successful than the lower in intelligence. 

Similarly, 450 boys from Boston slums were followed into middle age. Success in this social group was not dependent on intelligence. Ten years after 81 valedictorians and salutatorians graduated from their high school, only four were at the highest level of young people of comparable age in their chosen profession. 

Academic intelligence fails to predict how one will react to the vicissitudes of life. Psychologists gave col­lege freshmen tests to measure optimism. Four years later, the psychologists found that optimism predicted grades better than SAT scores or high-school grades.

In a Met-Life Insurance Company study, insurance executives hired a special group of applicants who failed the normal screening tests, but scored high on optimism. The first year on the job, the "dumb" optimists sold 21% more insurance than the "smart" pessimists. The second year, the optimists sold 57% more insurance than the pessimists. " Dumb" opti­mists sell more insurance than "smart" pessimists.

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