Smart soldiers easily die

A study found that Scottish soldiers who survived World War II had lower IQs than those who had fallen.

British soldiers participated in the attack on Nazi Germany in Caen, France in 1944. Photo: Daily Mail.

In 1932, the entire Scottish school conducted an IQ test for students born in 1921 to obtain data for an educational investigation. All students do a quiz.

A team of experts from the University of Edinburgh (UK) decided to use the data of this competition to understand the intelligence index of dead Scottish soldiers during World War II. They collected information about 491 martyrs and found that their average IQ was 100.8. The team then synthesized the results of the thousands of Scottish soldiers who survived the war and obtained an average IQ of 97.4.

According to Ian Deary, a psychology doctor at the University of Edinburgh, World War II forced soldiers to use their minds more than previous wars. 'We think weapons in World War II are much more complicated than previous wars. At that time, the technology of producing weapons was one of the predominant factors of the factions on the battlefield. So people need smart young people to use them, ' Ian commented.

A previous study demonstrated that Scottish average men 's attempts to reduce significantly after World War II. At that time, many experts said that during that period, the army did not want to recruit young people who were less intelligent. So the soldiers' IQ on the front is higher than those at home. However, Ian's research results show that this hypothesis is not true, because young people rejected by the military have a higher IQ than surviving soldiers.

Ian and colleagues analyzed the data according to the rank of the martyrs to clarify some other issues. They found that the low-level soldiers who died in battle accounted for about 3/5 of the martyrs and their average IQ test score was 95.3. The fatal officers accounted for only 7% of the martyrs but their average IQ scores reached 121.9. The percentage of officers who did not directly participate in combat in the total number of martyrs was 20% and their average IQ score was 106.7.

Many studies show that the life expectancy of people is proportional to the intelligence index and the intelligence index of children plays a decisive role in thinking ability in later stages of life.