Are Sex Differences in Self-estimated Intelligence An Elusive Phenomenon? Exploring The Role Of Working Memory, Creativity, And Other Psychological Correlates in Young And Older Adults Part 1

Abstract

Background: 

Although there is research examining the demographic predictors of self-estimated intelligence (SEI) in young adults, so far SEI in old age is little investigated. This study aims to examine the influence of additional variables such as self-estimated emotional intelligence (SEEQ), physical attractiveness, health, general optimism, religiousness, and working memory (WM) on SEI both in young and older adults.

Emotional intelligence and memory are two different but closely related concepts. Emotional intelligence refers to a person's ability to handle one's own and other people's emotions, including self-control, interpersonal communication, emotion recognition, and emotional coping. Memory refers to a person's ability to remember information, including short-term memory, long-term memory, and working memory.

Although emotional intelligence and memory are different concepts, there is a close relationship between them. Personally speaking, the level of emotional intelligence will have an impact on memory. Because people with relatively high emotional intelligence will be more balanced and rational when dealing with thinking and emotions, without so much interference, which helps improve memory. If the emotional intelligence is relatively low and the mood swings are relatively large, the thinking will also be affected, and the memory will naturally decline.

In terms of interpersonal communication, the level of emotional intelligence will also have an impact on the performance of memory. When we interact with others, we need to remember the other person's name, contact information, hobbies, and other information. If our emotional intelligence is relatively high, we can better process this information, and remember and use it in a short time. On the contrary, people with low emotional intelligence are more likely to forget words and information during communication.

In addition, emotional intelligence and memory can also enhance each other. When we have high emotional intelligence, we will be more confident and motivated, which will encourage us to pay more attention to things and learn, thereby improving memory. And when our memory is better, we will also be more confident and practical, resulting in better interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence.

In short, emotional intelligence and memory are inseparable and closely related. We can improve memory levels by improving emotional intelligence, and we can also promote emotional intelligence by improving memory. Therefore, in daily life, we should focus on improving emotional intelligence and memory so that they can promote each other to achieve positive results. Cistanche deserticola can significantly improve memory because it can also regulate the balance of neurotransmitters, such as increasing levels of acetylcholine and growth factors, which are important for memory and learning. In addition, cistanche deserticola can also improve blood flow. Sex promotes oxygen delivery, which can ensure that the brain receives sufficient nutrients and energy, thereby improving brain vitality and endurance.

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Methods: 

A total of 159 young (90 women, Mage = 28.77, SD = 8.83) and 152 older adults (93 women, Mage = 71.92, SD = 6.84) completed a measure of SEI as well as questions regarding the abovementioned variables. Given that WM is considered a very strong predictor of intelligence, the neuropsychological assessment included the measurement of WM and phonologically cued semantic retrieval–verbal storage and processing in WM, as assessed by the Digit Span Forward and Verbal Fluency Task. 

The visual storage in WM was assessed with a variation of the Visual Patterns Test, and the visual storage and processing in WM with the Corsi blocks task (backward). Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-X) was also administered as a possible influence on cognitive performance and SEI.

Results:

Young males rated their intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) higher than young females. This was not confirmed for older adults, for which surprisingly the reversed pattern was found. 

Older women reported higher IQ and EQ than older men. Correlations showed for all participants that the higher they rated their IQ, the higher their ratings of EQ, physical attractiveness, health, and religiousness. No significant correlations between objective tests regarding WM and SEI were found, supporting SEI overestimations. Age, sex, physical attractiveness, and SEEQ were significant predictors of SEI.

Discussion: 

For the first time, a reverse sex difference across age groups in SEI is found. Implications for individuals and healthcare professionals involved in assessment are suggested.

1 INTRODUCTION

Self-estimated intelligence (SEI) refers to the self-estimates of people regarding their intellectual abilities (Hollig & Preckel, 2005). Although SEI has attracted the interest of researchers as mentioned in numerous reviews (Freund & Kasten, 2012; Heck et al., 2018; Kaufman, 2012, 2019; Neto, 2019; Syzmanowicz & Furnham, 2011; von Stumm, 2014), most studies find weak to moderate correlations between self-estimated and tested intelligence aspects (Hollig & Preckel, 2005), while other researchers support that there is a reasonably accurate estimation of intelligence score, with correlations between estimates and actual scores ranging between Pearson’s r = .2 and r = .4 (Furnham, 2001). 

A possible explanation behind this may be the “self-esteem bias” (Felson, 1981), which can be described as the tendency for people to evaluate themselves in a way that is consistent with their general self-esteem. Thus, someone who is high in self-esteem will tend to see themselves as brighter and more capable than someone lacking in self-esteem even if they are indeed demonstrating a higher objective intelligence (Reilly et al., 2022; Syzmanowicz & Furnham, 2011).

The cross-cultural perspective reveals additionally a significant sex difference, with young adult males reporting higher estimates than females (Furnham & Grover, 2020) in relevant cross-cultural research in Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States (von Stumm et al., 2009). 

Although there are additional data that confirm the sex difference in countries, such as Austria (Stieger et al., 2010), Spain (Perez et al., 2010), Switzerland (Proyer, 2011), Russia (Kornilova &, Novikova, 2012), Wales (Workman, 2004), Pakistan (Shahzada et al., 2014), Tanzania (Dixon et al., 2016), as well as Uganda (Furnham & Baguma, 1999), no study so far has compared sex differences in SEI in Greece. Several factors have been proposed as predictors of SEI, such as gender, prior experience with intelligence testing, and extraversion (Zhang & Gong, 2001). 

This “male hubris, female humility” (MHFH) problem (Furnham et al., 2001) is also found in adolescents (Neto et al., 2009), but cannot be supported by objective differences in general intelligence, as gender differences are only found for specific cognitive abilities and more specifically for verbal and visual–spatial tasks rather than psychometric intelligence (Halpern et al., 2011). 

A possible mechanism explaining this could be that individuals in general are motivated to keep their self-concept consistent with traditional gender norms of their biological sex, which is characterized as appropriate for or of one sex rather than the other (Maccoby, 1990; Martin & Ruble, 2004), and these implicit beliefs about gender and intellectuality may influence self-reports in the form of higher estimates and overconfidence about their intelligence if they are males and lower estimates/lack of confidence if they are females (Reilly & Mulhern, 1995). 

Additionally, research investigating personality supports that sex and personality effects are largely independent (Stieger et al., 2010). Besides gender, another moderator is the level of education regarding self-estimates of specific aspects of intelligence (Rammstedt & Rammsayer, 2002) as evidence supports small education effects, with better-educated people tending to give higher SEI (Furnham et al., 2002; Rammstedt & Rammsayer, 2002).

Self-estimated emotional intelligence (SEEQ) has been also investigated (Giannouli, 2017a). Overall, psychometric intelligence is considered to be a primarily masculine attribute in contrast with emotional intelligence (EI), which is perceived as a primarily feminine attribute (Petrides et al., 2004; 2010). Although it is supported that males estimate their spatial and mathematical intelligence higher than females, they tend to estimate lower EI than females (Furnham, 2017). These differences between males and females regarding EI are reversed in another study, as males believe that they have higher trait total EI than females (Petrides & Furnham, 2000).

Creativity on the other hand is a novel and still little-investigated concept (Giannouli, 2018), regarding SEI research. Males again have been found to give higher estimates than females in SEI and creativity (Furnham et al., 2005). SEI and creativity, as well as the Big Five personality traits, seem to predict psychometric intelligence (Furnham et al., 2005).

Although attempts have been made the develop reliable and valid self-report measures of cognitive abilities in older individuals (Herreen & Zajac, 2018), so far objective cognitive abilities have not been thoroughly examined along with SEI in large samples not only of young but also older adults. Preliminary research has shown discrepancies in objective cognitive abilities and self-reports in older patients diagnosed with cognitive deficits (Giannouli & Tsolaki, 2015). Thus, one more relevant variable to consider in objective cognitive testing should be working memory (WM), which is considered not as isomorphic with intelligence factors, but as a very strong predictor (Oberauer et al., 2005). 

Finally, positive and negative effects at the time of neuropsychological testing were also included as neglected possible influences on cognitive performance as well as on SEI (Giannouli, 2017b), based on findings supporting that negative effects (e.g., taking the form of stress) influences both intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) (Jung et al., 2019), but also on findings supporting that state negative affect influences self-estimates of cognitive performance especially in older adults (even those without a diagnosis of depression [Giannouli & Tsolaki, 2022a]).

Furthermore, although there are no reported age differences in SEI, as so far males of all ages have been found to estimate 5−15 IQ points higher than females in Western settings (Furnham, 2017), SEEQ-increased EI and related perceptions are found in old age compared to younger adults (Chen et al., 2016; Sharma, 2017). 

Regarding creativity, there is an open debate on the adverse effects of age in later life (Lindauer, 2003; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003), as age differences are the disadvantage of older adults in some studies (e.g., Abra, 1989; Ruth & Birren, 1985), but there are contrasting findings showing that creativity as well as perceptions of creativity do not decline in the later years of life in other studies (e.g., Fisher & Specht, 1999; Lorenzen-Huber, 1991). It is worth mentioning that there is a plethora of studies about sex and age differences in WM variables, supporting a male advantage in visual–spatial WM (Voyer et al., 2017), but for verbal WM a female advantage is reported (Voyer et al., 2021).

Estimations of physical attractiveness and physical health have been examined in a recent study about SEI, showing a high positive correlation, something that means that those who rate their IQ highly also believe that they are more attractive and healthy (Furnham & Grover, 2020). Men’s and women’s ratings of self-perception of attractiveness do not significantly differ (Talbot, 2012), but there is contrasting evidence regarding physical health, as it has been found that women tend to evaluate their health as “poor,” and on average report more symptoms than men (Anson et al., 1993), while other studies support that regardless of disease burden, no such sex differences exist (Sood et al., 2019). 

For religiousness, only one research has examined its impact on SEI revealing a significant positive correlation (Furnham & Grover, 2020), but there is no data in settings where the dominant religion is other than protestant or catholic, as is the case of Greece. Findings in the Greek Orthodox religious and cultural setting support moderate positive correlations between self-esteem and perceived religiousness (Giannoulis & Giannouli, 2020a) as well as between EI and religiousness (Giannouli & Giannoulis, 2020). Relevant prior research supports no sex differences in religiousness between healthy Greek younger and older adults (Giannoulis & Giannouli, 2020b).

Based on the above, this study aims to extend previous research (Furnham & Grover, 2020) by examining SEI, and its hypothesized correlates such as SEEQ, ratings of physical attractiveness, health, optimism, and religiousness, along with estimations of creativity, and objective cognitive functions, such as WM, for the first time in Greece in a sample of participants, with varying ages. Thus, this study addresses two important research questions, namely, (1) are the frequently reported sex differences in SEI present in samples of older adults, and (2) what are the psychological correlates in old age compared to younger adults? 

The choice of different age groups was based on the fact that all previous studies mainly focused on young adults (e.g., undergraduate students [Zhang & Gong, 2001] and/or young adults [Furnham & Grover, 2020]). In addition, since cultural characteristics may influence not only perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs, but also cognitive performance (Lezak et al., 2012), this is the first study to present data from Greece.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Participants

Overall, there were 311 adults, of which 128 were male and 183 females. They were, on average, 55.86 years old (SD = 23.00). The average years of formal education for the whole sample were 11.08 (SD = 4.39). More specifically, 159 were young adults (90 women; Mage = 34.77, SD = 8.83; Meducation = 14.35, SD = 1.39) and 152 were community-dwelling older adults (93 women; Mage = 77.92, SD = 6.84; Meducation = 7.65, SD = 3.79). The two age groups were similar in terms of gender distribution (χ2(1) = .673, p = .422). Participants were recruited from a pool of volunteers who had participated in a previous study of cognitive aging and did not receive financial compensation (Giannouli, 2018). 

The choice of 65 years as a cutoff for grouping younger and older adults (defined here as persons aged ≥65 years) was based on the fact that most studies worldwide have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of “elderly” or older person. Although some participants from the group of older adults (aged over 65) had been following medication related to cardiovascular diseases, they had no official diagnosis of a cognitive deficit/neurocognitive disorder and had scored above 27 points on the Greek version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), which is used to exclude neurocognitive disorders. This test was included as previous research supports the overestimation of cognitive abilities in dementias by the patients themselves (Giannouli & Tsolaki, 2021).

Exclusion criteria for both groups of younger and older participants were a history of psychiatric, neurological, or substance abuse dependence, a history of head injury, or any other medical condition (including significant perceptual deficits such as visual and/or hearing impairments not corrected sufficiently by aids) that might affect neuropsychological performance and non-native speakers of the Greek language.

2.2 Questionnaire of Estimates

Participants were asked to estimate, on a scale from 0 to 100 as in the original study by Furnham and Grover (2020), their overall intelligence (Male = 77.92, SD = 13.01; Female = 74.92, SD = 13.30;t(309) = 2.016, p = .04), EI (Male = 76.79, SD = 12.71; Female = 77.06, SD = 10.96; t(309) = 0.199, p = .842), physical health (Male = 75.01, SD = 14.24; Female = 77.02, SD = 38.40; t(309) = 0.564, p = .573), and physical attractiveness (Male = 76.73, SD = 12.93; Female = 76.95, SD = 10.93; t(309) = 0.163, p = .870). 

Using a 9-point scale from 1 = Not at all to 9 = Very, they rated to what extent they were an optimist (Male = 3.21, SD = 1.08; Female = 3.32, SD = 1.12; t(309) = 0.873, p = .383) and how religious they were (Male = 4.03, SD = 1.71; Female = 4.13, SD = 1.81; t(309) = 0.489, p = .625).

2.3 Neuropsychological tests

Different aspects of WM were assessed with four standardized neuropsychological tests for which there are research data of their appropriateness for the Greek population, namely, Visual Patterns Test, Corsi blocks task (backward condition), Digit Span Forward, and Verbal Fluency Task. Although studies have demonstrated inconsistent evidence concerning the characterization of these tests as appropriate for the assessment of WM or short-term memory (STM) (Engle et al., 1999; Shao et al., 2014; Shipstead et al., 2016), research, on the other hand, supports that spatial WM is assessed by the Corsi blocks task (Higo et al., 2014; Milner, 1971), WM verbal storage ability is reflected in digit forward span (Kremen et al., 2008), WM is needed for both letter and category fluency (Rende et al., 2002), and Visual Patterns Test is used in neuropsychological assessment protocols of WM (Brown et al., 2012; Kouvatsou et al., 2019).

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