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THURSDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Next time grumpy Aunt Gertrude growls at her bridge partner or one of her well-wishing nephews, look at it from this angle: She just may be smarter than all the rest.
New research suggests just that, revealing that older people with above-average intelligence tend to be disagreeable.
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The study authors noted, however, that superior intelligence does not always go hand-in-hand with surliness -- with smart young people more likely to be open to new situations, rather than being disagreeable.
"It appears that at younger ages, openness to experience is the most important personality factor correlating with the attainment of facts, vocabulary, and book learning," said study co-author Jacqueline Bichsel, an associate professor of psychology at Morgan State University, in Baltimore.
"But when we get older -- and this hasn't been found before -- it appears that openness to experience is no longer as important, and what is important is a disagreeable nature," she added.
Bichsel and her colleagues reported their findings Thursday at the American Psychological Association's 2006 Convention in New Orleans.
The authors focused on 381 healthy adults between the ages of 19 and 89, who had various degrees of education ranging from completion of high school to graduate school.
The 246 adults who were over the age of 60 were classified as "older." That group was further divided into two equally sized smaller groups -- older adults with cognitive abilities comparable to that of the younger group, and older adults with cognitive abilities superior to all the rest, both young and old.
The remaining 135 adults below the age of 60 were classified as "young."
All the participants were given the same battery of tests and questionnaires to gauge both intelligence and personality traits such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
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