Your brain might just be higher functioning than you think if you tend to do these 11 things.
Talking through problems
Sit down and assemble some furniture and you may find yourself muttering under your breath. Stuck on a problem? You might quietly talk yourself through it.
But why do we talk to ourselves? Well, it turns out researchers have studied this behavior.
A study published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that stating the name of an object people were searching for impacted the time it took to locate. Additional studies have shown that talking yourself through a process can improve your planning and problem-solving skills.
So next time you find yourself muttering, “Okay, this piece goes here, now I need to screw this in,” you might not be that strange. Vocalizing your actions can help you plan out what you’re doing.
Open to change your mind
It’s possible to be passionate about your beliefs and also accept that you’re wrong if new information is presented.
Psychologists refer to one aspect of this behavior as intellectual humility. It’s the awareness that you don’t know everything.
Research from 2019 suggests that intelligence and open-mindedness are tied to how willing we are to change our minds when presented with new information.
So don’t think it’s always a negative to change your mind. It can also show that you are intelligent enough to value truth over ego.
Stop and reconsider an answer that feels obvious
You give what feels like a straightforward answer, then pause and wonder, “Hold on, is that actually right?”
What this means is you have the capacity to challenge your immediate answer to a situation and give it more consideration. Looking at many studies in 2022, researchers saw a clear connection between this tendency and different mental talents, including those for numbers, words, and remembering things.
However, just because you’re a naturally bright person, you might not question every decision you make. But pausing to reconsider your initial answer helps you prevent from making silly errors.
Can handle uncertainty
When faced with two opposing explanations, you aren’t compelled to pick one right away. You’re quite able to say, “I don’t know yet. I need more information.”
This is what psychologists identify as, to a degree, tolerance of ambiguity. Essentially, it is the ability to remain comfortable when a situation or answer is unclear.
In 2023, researchers conducted a study with 3,836 adults to explore their capacity for dealing with uncertainty. And they found that those who tolerated ambiguity had higher IQ scores.
This doesn’t mean that if you hate uncertainty, you aren’t smart. But being able to sit with uncertainty and wait for further details can really boost your critical thinking abilities.
Daydreaming
You’re washing the dishes, driving home the same way you always do, or taking a shower. Suddenly, your mind wonders.
Daydreaming may say something about your intelligence.
Researchers at Georgia Tech analyzed brain scans and interview data from more than 100 participants. They wanted to figure out how daydreaming related to intelligence and creativity.
Researchers found that the more often people daydreamed, the higher they scored on some IQ and creativity tests. And those people’ brains also had stronger connections between different areas.
This doesn’t mean daydreaming is always productive. But if you drift off in the middle of a boring task, it might not be ruining your brain.
You’re comfortable saying “I don’t know”
You happily say things like, “I don’t know,” or “I’ve never heard of that.”
Again, this ties back to intellectual humility. One large study from 2019 found connections between intelligence, open-mindedness, and being willing to accept your lack of knowledge on a subject.
A 2025 study similarly showed that individuals with greater intellectual humility achieved higher scores on certain reasoning and self-monitoring assessments.
Just because you say you don’t know, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly brilliant. But it’s generally smarter than pretending to know something when you don’t.
You catch logical conflicts
Someone’s telling a story, and you spot a mismatch in the timing. Or you hear an argument being made, and it strikes you that the conclusion isn’t supported by the evidence provided.
Researchers call this type of reasoning conflict detection. According to a 2018 study, most people are able to recognize some defects in their reasoning, whereas a limited number find it notably more challenging.
However, catching contradictions doesn’t automatically mean you’re genius. But catching when things don’t add up is a key component of rational thinking.
Thinking for fun
You might spend an hour trying to understand how an unfamiliar machine operates. Or you might spend long hours thinking about why a particular event happened in history.
You’re not forced to do these things. You choose to. And curiosity won’t come easily to everyone.
Psychologists refer to this desire to know as the “need for cognition.” It’s the tendency to enjoy thinking about challenging concepts. One large-scale 2025 study found a modest association between “need for cognition” and a variety of intelligence and memory scores.
This study doesn’t prove that people who love puzzles and brain-teasers have higher IQs. However, those who enjoy tackling challenges often perform better on certain cognitive evaluations.
Love deep research
Maybe you become fascinated with ancient alphabets, shipwrecks, airplanes, abandoned buildings, or origin of an odd word. You click on one article and it leads to another and another. Before you know it, you’ve spent hours reading about something you hadn’t thought of that morning.
This is pretty much a reflection of the drive to be cognitive. A 2023 review analyzing 136 research papers and over 53,000 individuals revealed a correlation between a fondness for mental challenges and higher academic success.
Really, it could be any topic. The point is you love learning new things just because you find it interesting.
Enjoy dark humor
You probably like jokes that are slightly dark, uncomfortable, or weirdly ambiguous.
Science has looked into this. In 2017, researchers from the Medical University of Vienna surveyed 156 adults about black humor. They also gave the participants tests on verbal and nonverbal intelligence.
The study found that participants who enjoyed dark humor more often performed better on specific IQ tests, especially when they grasped the jokes.
However, that’s not to suggest that enjoying dark humor makes one intelligent. But humor comprehension can require many cognitive abilities working together.
You reserve judgment
A person might strike you as rude, or perhaps charming, or maybe just plain odd or incredibly cool, yet your instinct is to hold back and observe. You’d prefer to see how they behave over time.
Related to this is intellectual humility and being comfortable with ambiguity. You understand that your initial judgement may be inaccurate.
Again, this doesn’t mean if you make quick judgments about others that you’re not intelligent. It just means that taking the time to gather more information before forming an opinion can be a helpful mindset.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
Like our content? Be sure to follow us.
10 complaints you’ll never hear from intelligent people
Smart people get annoyed like the rest of us, but the difference is that they don’t have some of the most common complaints.
