High IQ

A smart brain might help you do well in tests, but there are many other ways it can affect your life, both positively and negatively. Exams are not the only [blank] to success, as billionaire businessmen Richard Branson and Alan Sugar - who left school aged 15 and 16 - will attest. Nevertheless, good grades can open doors, and intelligence certainly helps [blank] it comes to educational attainment. IQ test performance accounts for roughly two-thirds of the variance in people's school exam scores - other factors including motivation and mental and physical health also influence how well children do. But intelligence isn't just useful in school. IQ predicts how people will respond to workplace training and how well they will do their job, even in non-academic [blank] such as being a car mechanic or carpenter. This is, perhaps, because general intelligence reflects people's ability to handle complexity in everyday affairs. Many tasks, from supermarket shopping to juggling our diaries, require us to deal with unexpected situations, to [blank] and make judgements and to identify and solve problems. This is true of our social interactions too.