Classical Music Linked to High Intelligence - Miller-McCune
Is a preference for classical music a sign of superior intelligence? Newly published research suggests the answer is yes, but — cue an ominous minor chord — not for the reason you might think.
Like Mozart or Mahler, researcher Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science takes a few imaginative leaps to arrive at his conclusion. His latest paper, just published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, may prove as controversial as his last one, which suggested highly intelligent people are more likely to be atheists and political liberals.
Using theories of evolutionary psychology, he argues smart people populate concert halls and jazz clubs because they’re more likely to respond to purely instrumental works. In contrast, pretty much everyone enjoys vocal music.
His reasoning is based on what he calls the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, which suggests intelligent people are more apt than their less-brainy peers to adopt evolutionary novel preferences and values. Pretty much everyone is driven to some degree by the basic behavior patterns that developed early in our evolutionary history. But more intelligent people are better able to comprehend, and thus more likely to enjoy, novel stimuli.
Novel, in this context, is a relative term. From an evolutionary viewpoint, novel behavior includes everything from being a night owl (since our prehistoric ancestors, lacking light sources, tended to operate exclusively in the daylight) to using recreational drugs.
Songs predated sonatas by many millennia. So in evolutionary terms, purely instrumental music is a novelty — which, by Kanazawa’s reckoning, means intelligent people are more likely to appreciate and enjoy it.