Fast thinkers are more charismatic / Nicole Torres

In an interview, Professor William von Hippel of the University of Queensland talked about why fast thinkers are more charismatic. He thinks people sense that charismatic people tend to be quick on their feet. They say things that you find compelling but that you don't expect. They come back with an entertaining answer or a surprising association, and you never quite know what will happen next. They're interesting. It's sort of like humor. What surprised him, however, was that mental speed didn't seem to correlate to social skills overall. Just to charisma. Mental speed is one of the most reliable predictors of actual IQ, so he expected IQ would be an important predictor of charisma -- that how much you know would affect how quickly you made associations. But it's important to note that mental speed is not the same thing as IQ; some smart people are pretty slow and some fast people aren't too sharp.

Business