I suspected it all along

My friend Soon-To-Be-Married-George (formerly known as “Undead George”, “MacJones”, “Jorge”, “35-year old burnt-out trucker”, etc.) sent me a link today to a Virginia Commonwealth University study on the relationship between brain size and intelligence.

Here’s a bit of quote from the press release:

“For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related,” said lead researcher Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D., an industrial and organizational psychologist who specializes in the study of intelligence and other predictors of job performance.

The study is the most comprehensive of its kind, drawing conclusions from 26 previous – mostly recent – international studies involving brain volume and intelligence. It was only five years ago, with the increased use of MRI-based brain assessments, that more data relating to brain volume and intelligence became available.

So now I think I can turn the ha-ha around on certain people who may have mocked my huge head:

To that clerk at the Stetson factory who enjoyed pointing out that they only had hats up to 7 1/2, and didn’t even make 8s: I believe we can now deduce that this says something about the likelihood of highly intelligent people purchasing Stetsons.

To the nurse at Sarah’s delivery who made the humourous comment that if her husband’s head was as big as mine she would have just scheduled a Caesarian: Your child will work for mine some day. (Actually Sarah has a pretty huge head, so I guess that’s a good sign in terms of future nerd potential.)

Oh, and Freakboy–well, just sorry, I guess.

Having said all that, I’m sure I read a study at some point in the past that suggested that it was actually brain surface area that was correlated to intelligence. If that were true, it’s entirely possible the size study was confounded, since large brains would on average have a larger surface area. I kind of like that idea, since then you can say things like “intelligence is proportional to brain kinkiness” or “the more convoluted your brain, the smarter you are”.