Old and Cranky, or Old and Smart?

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

15 Aug 2006 02:32 PM

A new study is making connections between above-average intelligence and disagreeable behavior in the elderly!

The study, done by Morgan State University in Baltimore, tested nearly four hundred healthy adults between the ages of nineteen and eighty-nine. The participants had varying degrees of educational achievement, from high school grads to those with graduate degrees. The participants over the age of sixty were divided into two groups: those with average cognitive abilities and those with superior cognitive abilities.

All of the people in the study were given the same tests and questionnaires to test both intelligence and personality traits: openness, extraversion, agreeability, neurotic tendencies, and conscientiousness.

And the results? The older adults in the superior cognitive ability group outperformed everyone.

Researchers concluded that being agreeable was not necessarily connected with intelligence in older adults. They took that to mean that being unfriendly may actually relate with being intelligent. For one, highly intelligent people tend to be very independent. Independent people don't necessarily need to be agreeable. Highly intelligent people may also be able to see more than one side of an issue, and may be perceived as disagreeable if they take an opposing viewpoint.

As for the younger participants in the study, researchers found that openness was the key to gaining knowledge. Intelligent young people are open to new experiences and situations, which helps them learn. In smart older people, that openness to new experiences seems to be replaced with a case of the grumpies! Older people have already acquired a great deal of knowledge over the years, and may not need to be open the way younger people are.

The study authors conclude that it may be good for older folks to be a little argumentative -- it can show that they are still firing on all cylinders mentally. This doesn't necessarily mean that every cranky older person is a secret genius! Some people are just cranky because that is their nature.

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