At school, the “clown” child is often likened to a enfant terrible, a dunce, a clown who does not want to study and only disturbs the other pupils. Could he actually be smarter than average? A scientific study gives us the answer.
L’humor is synonym of intelligence according to science, especially during childhood. In this sense, a study* conducted in 2021 by researchers from theanadolu university demonstrated that the “clown” children were smarter than average. To establish this observation, the researchers studied nearly 217 children attending primary school. They did an intelligence test called theAnadolu Sak Intelligence Scale (ASIS), but also a humor test. During these tests, the young schoolchildren were in fact responsible for caption a dozen cartoons. Seven experts (5 cartoonists and 2 humor specialists) were then commissioned to assess the intelligible, relevant, amusing and entertaining character of these legends (30,000 in total). Then they put them in touch with the level of knowledge and the verbal reasoning skills of the said children.
Result ? They found that for 68% of children observedthe ability to create funny captions was correlated with a higher level of intelligence. “We were particularly interested in the quality of humor made by children, but assessed by adults. Parents and teachers need to know that if their children or students frequently do good quality humor, they are most likely to have extraordinary intelligence”says Professor Ugur Sak, lead researcher of the study.
This link established between humor and intelligence obviously does not date from yesterday, but it is less evident in adults than in toddlers. Among the first, “humor is frequently used for entertainment” ; while for the latter, it takes on a dimension of socialization, more thoughtful. But how to explain it?
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Why is humor a sign of higher than average intelligence in children?
According to many scientists, humor is a personality trait associated with several forms of intelligenceranging fromlinguistic intelligenceat theemotional intelligencepassing through theintrapersonal and social intelligence.
The latter explain it as follows: to make jokes and joke with others, several cognitive abilities are actually required. Among them is theimaginationthe languagethe communicationbut also the ability to change perspective and to put oneself in another’s place. A funny child must often mobilize all these cerebral capacities when joking with someone.
First of all, you have to have imagination to set the context of the joke, tell its story, imagine a surprising fall that triggers laughter, design a “role” that they are not used to wear everyday.
Many scholars also associate humor withinterpersonal intelligencein particular through theempathy and the fact of put oneself in another’s place : Indeed, it is necessary to detect what can make the other person laugh when joking and clowning around. Moreover, as mentioned by the Turkish researchers, children mainly resort to humor “to be accepted by their peers” : they voluntarily seek to be funny because they know full well that by doing so, they will be appreciated by their classmates. They therefore consciously work, practice and sharpen their sense of humor to adapt it to their peers and achieve integration.
Humor often appeals toirony and at sarcasm. However, the irony implies that there are several levels and degrees of reading in a message. Children who manage to grasp the different degrees and to take the joke at face value, to decipher the communicative intention of the person who is joking, or to make one themselves, have highly developed socio-cognitive and linguistic skills. A study shows that some children are able to understand irony from the age of threewhile general average is more like 5 years ! These “precocious” children, in understanding and putting irony into practice through jokes, are therefore more intelligent than the others.
Finally, it is more generally the fact of using humor to one’s advantage which is a sign of intelligence in children. Indeed, scientists have found that many young girls and boys use it to divert the negative attention that can be brought to them and thus avoid uncomfortable subjects.
So yes, a “clown” child, funny, and endowed with humor is smarter than the average. However, is it an HPI child? Not necessarily. However, it is implied that he is smart enough to stand out from other school kids his age.
Open-minded and in love with life, Emilie likes to decipher the new phenomena that shape society and relationships today. Her passion for the human being motivates her to write…