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Intelligence and emotional disorders: Is the worrying and ruminating mind a more intelligent mind?

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Highlights

  • Verbal intelligence was weakly correlated with generalized anxiety and depression.

  • Verbal intelligence was a unique positive predictor of worry and rumination.

  • Non-verbal intelligence was a unique negative predictor of post-event processing.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that anxiety and depression symptoms are negatively associated with measures of intelligence. However, this research has often not taken state distress and test anxiety into account, and recent findings indicate possible positive relationships between generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), worry, and intelligence. The present study examined the relationships between GAD, depression, and social anxiety symptoms, as well as their underlying cognitive processes of worry, rumination, and post-event processing, with verbal and non-verbal intelligence in an undergraduate sample (N = 126). While the results indicate that verbal intelligence has positive relationships with GAD and depression symptoms when test anxiety and state negative affect were taken into account, these relationships became non-significant when overlapping variance was controlled for. However, verbal intelligence was a unique positive predictor of worry and rumination severity. Non-verbal intelligence was a unique negative predictor of post-event processing. The possible connections between intelligence and the cognitive processes that underlie emotional disorders are discussed.

Introduction

Intelligence has long been recognized as playing a key role in human evolution. Adaptive emotional regulation is also considered to be critically important for survival and reproduction (Darwin, 1872). More recently, some theorists have extrapolated the evolutionary framework to encompass the maladaptive extremes of emotions – the emotional disorders (e.g., Gilbert, 1998, Gilbert, 2001, Marks and Nesse, 1994). In this view, experiencing the “right” emotion (e.g., anxiety, sadness, or happiness), with the optimal intensity and duration, in the correct context or situation, would clearly enhance an organism’s fitness. Emotional disorders, therefore, represent the extreme and non-adaptive tails of a normal distribution of individual variability in emotional reactions. For example, given the adaptive value of an emotion like anxiety, which would permit an individual to anticipate and plan for potential threats, it seems clear that anxiety might have co-evolved with increased intelligence. Moreover, given the potentially fatal costs of “false negatives” in decision-making about threats, selection pressures may have favoured errors in the other direction, or “false positives”. From an evolutionary standpoint, there are fewer costs associated with worrying about a threatening event that does not occur than failing to anticipate, plan for, or avoid one that does.

Relevant research exploring these relationships has provided mixed results, however. Researchers have often found a negative relationship between intelligence and emotional disorders, across a diverse range of samples (Feldhusen and Klausmeier, 1962, Kerrick, 1955, McCandless and Castaneda, 1956). A recent meta-analysis indicated that gifted children are less likely to have anxiety than non-gifted children (Martin, Burns, & Schonlau, 2010). Multiple studies have also found that depressed individuals score lower on measures of processing speed and visual–spatial reasoning than they do on measures of verbal intelligence (Kluger and Goldberg, 1990, Zillmer et al., 1991). However, it is possible that the symptoms of acute depression might decrease an individual’s ability to perform optimally on an intelligence test, and that the individual may not have lower intelligence. Aligning with this, Ruisel (2000) argued that state anxiety and test anxiety should be taken into account when interpreting the relationship between anxiety and intelligence, and Moutafi, Furnham, and Tsaousis (2006) found that test anxiety mediated the relationship between neuroticism and intelligence. This research suggests that the negative relationship between emotional disorders and intelligence may be an artifact of the testing itself.

Recent studies by Coplan et al., 2006, Coplan et al., 2012 compared healthy controls to individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and found that individuals with GAD had higher intelligence. Worry severity also positively correlated with intelligence within the GAD samples. Unfortunately, both studies had very small samples, and the authors did not investigate the role of other cognitive processes. While worry is the proposed cognitive process underlying GAD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), rumination and post-event processing are thought to be the primary cognitive processes involved in major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder, respectively (Clark and Wells, 1995, Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).

This study sought to further examine the relationships between emotional disorders and intelligence. Using a large undergraduate sample, we examined the relationships of GAD, depression, and social anxiety symptoms, as well as the relationships of worry, rumination, and post-event processing, with verbal and non-verbal intelligence while controlling for state negative affect and test anxiety.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 126 undergraduate students participated. The sample consisted primarily of Caucasian (85.7%), young adult (M age = 20.46, SD = 4.53) women (77.0%). This study was reviewed and approved by the university’s research ethics board.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire-IV (GADQ-IV; Newman et al., 2002)

The GADQ-IV is a 9-item self-report measure, with higher scores indicating a higher amount of GAD symptoms. The GADQ-IV demonstrates strong convergent and divergent validity, as well as good internal consistency.

Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990)

The PSWQ is a 16-item self-report questionnaire. The

Results and discussion

When controlling for test anxiety and state negative affect, the VCI positively partially correlated (pr) with the GADQ-IV, pr(122) = .18, p = .045, and with the CES-D, pr(122) = .20, p = .023. The VCI also positively correlated with the PSWQ, pr(122) = .21, p = .018, and the RRS-BR, pr(122) = .24, p = .007. The VCI did not correlate with the SPIN or the PEPQ-R, ps > .590. The SPM negatively correlated with the PEPQ-R, pr(122) = −.20, p = .027, but did not correlate with any other measure, ps > .085. Table 1 reports

Authors’ note

We would like to acknowledge Stephanie Cottrell for her assistance with preparation of study materials, data collection, and data entry. We would also like to thank Alyssa Mervin for preparation of study materials and data collection, and Kimberly Ongaro, Amy Killen, Sarah Kaukinen, Dylan Antoniazzi, and Matthew Nordlund for assisting with data collection.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This study was not funded by any external funding source.

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