Can a high IQ cause some emotions to be extremely more sensitive than others?

Answer 1

The parts of the brain used for those two functions are different. The limbic system that controls our emotions consists of mostly the hippocampus, amygdala, and basal ganglion which are located mostly in the diencephalon. The reasoning skills that are associated with IQ are located in the cerebrum, above the diencephalon, mostly in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. Since our brains process emotions and IQ in different parts, it would be logical to assume that the two are not necessarily related. A person then could have a high IQ and not have emotional sensitivity, and visa versa. On the other hand, people with exceptionally high intelligence are forced to engage with the world around them at a much higher level of complexity and multi-dimensionality than most of us. At that level, or in those terms, this simple, straightforward logic breaks down. For example, imagine that you are comparing the emotional sensitivity of a severely mentally-retarded person and an individual of average intelligence. The mentally-retarded person would respond emotionally at the sight of a large barking dog, or a piece of chocolate cake. But how would they react to hearing that the stock market had just crashed? Or that they had a malignant growth on their kidney? Or that their mother had just filed for divorce? Of course, they'd have no emotional reaction at all, because all of those problems are beyond their cognitive grasp. One cannot react to what one does not perceive or grasp mentally. The exact same gap exists between an average person and one with exceptionally high intellectual faculties. The gifted person is continuously bombarded with stimuli-- threats, potential rewards, problems, possibilities, contradictions, potentialities, wonders, mysteries, ironies, complications, ramifications, and parallel or underlying meanings-- all of which are utterly invisible to the average person. The significant factor isn't the IQ of the less intelligent individual, but rather the difference between the two IQs-- and the cognitive gap between 100 and 150 (50 points) is, of course, the same as that between 50 and 100. (In actually, IQ isn't an accurate or even meaningful gauge of actual intelligence, but we'll ignore that fact here for the sake of keeping things simple.) It may sound insulting for an individual with an IQ of 150 to claim that average people seem mentally-retarded to them, but it's not. The REAL insult lies in how individuals with an IQ of 100 view and treat those with an IQ of 50. In any event, to continue, the cerebrum, the thinking part, has two hemispheres. The left one is usually associated with speech and reasoning, while the right one is more artistic and emotional. An interesting fact is that women have a larger bridge between the two called the corpus callosum that allows them to talk more freely about their emotions, while men tend to be less able to verbalize their emotions because the pathway between these two processes is more limited. Just to even things out for the men, this is also why men tend to be very task oriented and can do a certain activity really well, while women tend to be good at multitasking. There is far too much emphasis put on IQ. This is a test given in most schools or, in some cases Universities. It means little in the broad point of things. Many people who have not had the good fortune of a high education have a high IQ. Yes, I do believe that people with a high IQ are considered a little "off" at times. They are usually introverted and prefer to surround their whole lives with privacy. Usually a person with a high IQ doesn't really know about it until someone brings it to light. There are so many facets in life, so one person may be wise in one area and another person knows more about another subject. Saying a high IQ is like saying "what is normal." No one can define normal, because it's society that predicts this, not science. A person can be highly educated and have knowledge on one certain subject, but know nothing about life at all. If we don't balance both we are sunk!