5 steps to take to fake being clever

Want to impress the intelligentsia and charm the chatterati? No need to hit the books — faking clever is as easy as ABC, says Nick Curtis
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis16 August 2018

As summer eases towards autumn and the season of competitive dinner parties, we all need to sharpen our conversational game.

Boozed-up small talk and holiday snaps just won’t cut it any more — content is king and that includes the contents of our brains. Fortunately, I’m here to help: I can’t make you smarter, but I can tell you how to seem more clever. Because, some years ago, I and five colleagues (two other men and three women) took a Mensa test to see if women were outstripping men in IQ. And it turned out they were. The women overall did better, with a much higher average than the men. But the highest single IQ turned out to be… mine. I got 155 out of a possible 161 points, which supposedly puts me within touching distance of Bill Gates and Albert Einstein in the top 1 per cent of the world’s brains.

Now, does my telling you this make you think I’m clever? I imagine it makes you think I am an idiot tosser. And you’d be right. I can’t programme my television, understand the offside rule, or look at my tax return without hyperventilating. Plus, IQ tests are a terrible measure of intelligence. I’ve only mentioned my supposed — ahem — GENIUS IQ to make the point that people who boast about being clever rarely seem or are so. That’s especially true of the pleased-with-themselves gits who join Mensa.

Think of your friends who ostentatiously leave out Yuval Noah Harari’s books Sapiens and Homo Deus, and the new one, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, on their coffee tables. Do you think they have read them? Or do you think they are poseurs? Does a framed doctorate on a wall make you think its owner is smart, or desperately needy? Does the bloke mansplaining black holes, Neo-Endogenous Growth Theory or the coded messages in David Bowie’s Blackstar album at a party or on Twitter seem like an intellectual titan or a boor and a bore?

Most of us want to appear to be more clever — and more beautiful, and more wealthy — than we actually are. The key to all of these is understatement. Just as the owner of a 1955 gullwing Mercedes will outclass the playboy in a gold-painted Lamborghini, so smarts shine best from under a bushel. So here are my five rules for how to appear clever, even if you are as thick as mince. And I am, by the way, perfectly happy to be shown up and made to look stupid by anyone who knows better. Because to adapt a famous poker saying, if you look around the room and can’t spot the dimwit, it’s because it’s you.

1. Be succinct, funny… or quiet

Several studies, including a 2012 Princeton paper with the title ‘Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly’, have found that the use of jargon, long words and complicated terminology does not indicate intelligence. Instead, it makes people on the receiving end think you are bluffing. Those of us who actually ARE bluffing are better off saying as little as possible as briefly as possible. (Although you should also gauge your audience: people automatically assume that others who speak, work and walk at the same rate as themselves are smarter.) If you can be funny, that helps: there’s a reason it’s called wit. But don’t try too hard, especially if you don’t have the knack: Donald Trump claims to have the IQ of a ‘very stable genius’ but his efforts at humour undermine the idea. And if in doubt, just stay quiet. Once another man and I were both showing off at a party, each trying to be funnier than the other, while a third just looked on and smiled. Eventually, we asked him what he did for a living. ‘I write Peep Show,’ Jesse Armstrong replied. Guess who looked stupid?

2. Look the part

Articles in the journals Neurology and Psychology Today found that tall people, and those with a lower BMI, tend to be more intelligent, while a Czech study in 2014 found that people naturally assumed attractive women were smarter. So the rest of us have to work doubly hard to fake it. Multiple studies have shown that smartness and sobriety in dress are seen as a sign of smarts, though putting on a lab coat is probably taking it too far. Men and women are allowed a certain amount of eccentricity (see Einstein’s hair, Mary Beard’s colourful trainers). Oh, and wear glasses. One Scottish study found a link between intelligence and short-sightedness, and in general we associate specs with smarts: think of Brains in Thunderbirds. Rimless or dark-rimmed glasses in particular suggest intellectual gravitas (so those architects and ad men trying to advertise their creative chops with ‘witty’ coloured frames were barking up the wrong tree). Back in the Nineties, I once interviewed a stripper who said she earned more than her fellow dancers if she wore glasses, as the punters thought the conversations between the gyrations would be more learned and less embarrassing. Yes, men really are that dim.

3. Don’t go too far

If your parents are cultured and well-educated, it is likely you will be, too. But declaring to someone, ‘Hey, my parents were really cultured and well-educated’, will not impress them. Nor will saying, ‘Guess what, I’m the eldest of my siblings and I was breast fed’, even though those who fall into one or both of these groups tend to be more intelligent than those who don’t. Non-drinkers are perceived as more intelligent according to a joint study by the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania but if you find yourself in the midst of a tequila-shot orgy saying ‘no thanks, got to protect the old brain-box’ while tapping your head, you’ll sound like a tool. Best to down a few shots then complain later that it took you longer than your usual 20 minutes to complete The Times crossword.

4. Lie carefully

Two studies by psychology professor and music and cognition specialist E Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto showed that children who learn how to play musical instruments exhibit higher intelligence, although their higher intelligence may come first. Nevertheless, anyone can pretend to be a whizz on an instrument but you don’t want to be caught out. So don’t pick one about which you might at some point have to prove your skill — guitar, piano, recorder, triangle. Also, picking something really obscure like a cor anglais or a theremin might get you trapped in a lie if anyone with genuine musical knowledge comes along. ‘I used to sing in a choir/a band/at La Scala until I got nodes on my vocal chords, sadly,’ will shut down most further inquiries.

5. Don’t be a snob

The old opposition between high and low culture no longer applies. Pretending that you don’t know who Logan Paul is or that you don’t watch Love Island won’t make you seem smart. Expressing polite but fascinated bafflement at the level of interest in both might. Ditto ridiculous positions such as: ‘I never watch television/read modern novels/eat fast food.’ A middling line — ‘I generally listen to Radio 3/I’m doing an Ottolenghi recipe/I’m trying to get through Thackeray’s Vanity Fair before the new BBC version arrives’ — implies superiority without asserting it. And the best way of making others think you are clever is to treat them as if they are more intelligent than you. Nobody likes a smart-arse.

Illustrations by Cachetejack.

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