The Barefoot Corporate Warrior
Paul Bird discovers how intelligence changes with age.
Our brains are front-and-centre for the growing cohort who are living longer. Those of us on the other side of 60 look back with nostalgia to our 20s and 30s when we felt at our sharpest and most capable mentally. A youth-oriented culture reinforces this view that it is basically all downhill once we hit 40.
The human body – and our mind – is powered forward by an energetic whirlwind in our formative years. Our youthful, nimble bodies also house a nimble brain which uses its freshness to attack the dilemmas of life in ways that are quite different to more seasoned grey matters. So it does seem that as we move into mid-life that we can only pine for those younger, rapid-fire capabilities from which so much invention springs.
But wait! Before you can blurt ‘neuroplasticity’ three times rapid-fire without stumbling, comes along deep, insightful research which prises open the two forms of intelligence which we experience at different times in our life to reveal that we actually peak in brain power in our mid-to-late 50s.
‘Crystallized intelligence’ and ‘fluid intelligence’ are recognised neuroscience states which help us understand some of the differences between the mental capabilities of youth and aged.
Crystallized intelligence refers to the knowledge, facts, and skills acquired through experience, education, and learning over time – what we might call wisdom or experience-based decision-making; fluid intelligence is the capacity to reason and solve novel problems independently of any knowledge from the past – what I would judge as intuitive or instinctual reasoning often associated with speedy decision-making.
Our brains are wired differently at different times in the life cycle.
We gain crystallized intelligence as we age and lose fluid intelligence as we move out of the teenage and young adult years. The fluid intelligence of the young is exciting and sharp, but fleeting.
Researchers have recently brought together the findings from various studies to look at overall functioning and found that, despite middle age being often portrayed as the time of life where “everything is falling apart” this is when we are actually at our sharpest.
We might be missing some of the speed of youth but we make up for that with a different kind of smarts. While our physical peak remains stuck in our 20s and 30s, it seems our mental and emotional peak is a moment best honed in life’s experiences over decades.
We know that our brain, this most powerful of engines, is assailed on all sides from the moment we are born.
Mental and emotional illnesses, problem-solving challenges, physical degeneration etc take their toll on our ability to navigate through the world.
From a purely physical standpoint we are up against it as our brains begin to decline in volume from our early 30s.
The research shows however that we are on a slow burn towards a more mature type of intelligence and cognition which peaks around the late 50s.
Scientists call this ‘overall cognitive-personality functioning’.
This mid-life peaking has been revealed by a research paper published in the psychology journal, Intelligence. The study, across 16 cognitive and personality dimensions, resulted in the formulation of the very fancy and authoritative-sounding Cognitive-Personality Functioning Index (CPFI) pinpointing our peak from ages 55-60.
The researchers analysed age-related trends across nine life success areas: cognitive abilities, personality traits, emotional intelligence, financial literacy, moral reasoning, resistance to sunk cost bias (continuing to persist with a lost cause even when it is obvious we will continue to lose), cognitive flexibility, cognitive empathy, and need for cognition. They also looked at reason, memory, vocabulary and speed and suggest this later peak could be associated with mid-life career highs.
They also suggest that those under 40 may not be best-suited to what they call “high-stakes” decision-making.
The bad news is that there seems to be a pronounced decline from around ages 65-70, bringing decision-making abilities into question from this age on.
I was happy to note that financial literacy and moral reasoning continue to rise into the 60s and 70s, so all is not lost. Hope abounds – I am destined to both be ‘in the money’ and a ‘better man’ in coming decades.
Does wisdom bring timidity? Is fluid intelligence a form of courage?
I think the challenge for those of us with crystallized (moving to hardened diamond phase I predict) intelligence is: how do we retain/extend/recapture some of this fluid intelligence for as long as possible?
Can we extend the peak? Are there methods and techniques which we can employ or do we simply wait for the pill to emerge in the next decade or so which will solve this problem?
As someone who is on the ‘wrong’ side of 60 I feel it to be my civic duty to mount an argument that the peak is in fact a plateau which lasts well into the 60s and beyond. I will be waiting for the research to catch up with that one.
One element missing from all this is the impact of self-awareness, consciousness or spiritual awakening to the universe and our place in it. Many people discover a mature spiritual life beyond conventional institutional religion as they age.
As a post (slightly)-peak/plateau individual I now have the evidence to suggest to “she-who-must-be-listened-to-at-all-times” that I have actually gained in mental maturity (she hasn’t always agreed). No more arguments.
