Contents
Are the most clueless people the smartest?
Psychology
People with more imagination tend to be less careful and more forgetful
Just as people are divided into introverts or extroverts, rational or more impulsive … we can also be classified into two large groups: the clueless and those who are not. And why are we or not? What is it that makes some people always keep every detail in mind and others try not to forget at least what is important?
Laia Giménez, a psychology specialist at Laia Giménez, comments that our level of care is diverse and fluctuating through circumstances and time, but that the factor that most influences someone being more or less clueless is imagination. “Very fanciful or imaginative people tend to be in ‘the clouds’ for a long time. And while they are in the clouds they are not in reality. Have the mind in one part and the body in another», Says the professional.
Look at the environment
On the other hand, Andrés Córdoba, a psychologist at Blua de Sanitas, explains that “the more attention we pay to environmental stimuli, the less confused we will be.” He points out that our brain never stops working, and therefore, that “we could consider less clueless people who focus their attention more on the environment, and more clueless those who spend more time in the neural network by default.” Likewise, the psychologist comments that, «more than with some type of personality», we can relate being clueless to some personality traits, such as impulsiveness. “With this, the attention could jump quickly between stimuli relevant to the person, neglecting others, or with obsessive traits, in which the stimuli would filter very rigidly”, he points out.
It is often said that clueless people are smarter. This is because, as Laia Giménez explains, confusion is associated with people with greater intelligence in the sense that it increases the growth of neurons in the hippocampus. “Perhaps the brain forgets specific details about a past event but remembers the big picture, and then allows it to better generalize past experiences,” he explains, although he cautions that not being clueless is not indicative of low intelligence. “There are zero clueless and very intelligent people,” he recalls. Add to this Andrés Córdoba that “the most clueless people filter the most relevant information for them, so they” free “the memory of less useful information, which would lead them to make better decisions.”
selective screening
Being clueless does not have to apply to all areas of our life. As both professionals explain, it depends on what information is filtered in each area. “In one area they may have to pay more attention and gather more information, and in another area filter more and retain less information,” says the Blua Sanitas psychologist. Laia Giménez adds that “it is possible to be confused in one plane of our life (for example personal), but be very attentive in another (for example work)”. “The brain biases the data, segments it, so differentiating by areas is not a problem,” he points out.
Finally, it should be noted that being clueless not associated with having a poor memory. «There are very clueless people who have an amazing memory in different areas; confusion can be segmented according to the importance determined by the brain, and that means that memory can also be segmented “, explains the psychologist. «Clueless people optimize memory more, storing the most relevant information for them. Therefore, they would have less information stored in memory, but it would be information already filtered, ”concludes Andrés Córdoba.