Geniuses: From Suicidal to Criminal

Now the latter is under investigation:

Dr. James Clinton Oleson, an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Auckland, turned up this fascinating nugget of information after conducting anonymous surveys and interviews with 465 members of a high IQ society, who possessed an average IQ of 149. He compared their levels of self-reported criminality with those of a control group of 756 ‘bright’ individuals with an average IQ of 115, fifteen points above the societal mean score of 100. The ‘geniuses’ admitted to more crimes overall, and particularly committed more property crimes, white-collar crimes, and violent crimes.

I’ve discussed the suicidal aspects of genius in The Geniuses Commit Suicide, with some backup. As a society we make peoples’ lives miserable over observations about intelligence, and breathe “intelligence” and “meritocracy” in the same breath. But on the other hand we are obsessed with socialisation and, behind the facade, we are worried that the gifted will take over, so we beat them down. The result is that, in practical life, superior intelligence is a liability rather than an asset.

If we could just find a way to let people rise to their potential and let that benefit everyone, we’d have less suicide and criminality in those who happen to do well on IQ tests.