Accord­ing to Lab Notes, new research is sug­gest­ing that a higher IQ is an indi­ca­tion that you may live a longer life.

A num­ber of recent stud­ies have been find­ing that peo­ple who score lower on intel­li­gence tests (notice how care­ful I am not to say “smarter peo­ple”) tend to die ear­lier than those who score higher. The effect doesn’t seem to arise from socioe­co­nomic fac­tors (well-off peo­ple score higher on IQ tests and also tend to be health­ier), leav­ing sci­en­tists to reach for hypothe­ses. Maybe high-IQ peo­ple smoke less? eat health­ier? fol­low doc­tors’ advice more?

Now a new study, reported in the Sep­tem­ber issue of the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, finds an even more intrigu­ing connection.

via Seed