Are gamers smarter?

[Hammerhead]

Of course gamers are more intelligent...just ask...

I've seen a broad spectrum of intelligence in people and in gamers, some smart people and some dumb ones. I just hang around with the smart ones. I've seen no evidence that gamers are any smarter than non-gamers. Most of the ideas about gamers being smarter are former high school nerds convincing themselves that those 'dumb jocks' are less intelligent because they don't share their own unique hobbies or know how to program in eighteen different languages.

I've found most people to be generally pretty smart most of the times.

 

[Buttercup]

The gamers I play with range from average intelligence to very bright. I don't think that says as much about gamers as it does about who I choose to spend time with. All of the people I play with bathe regularly too, if you see what I mean.

I'll agree with P-Kitty that gamers are probably more creative than average.

 

[Oni]

Based on the people I've gamed with I'd say that gamers aren't really any more or any less smart than most other groups of people. They however like to think they are.

 

[Simplicity]

C: "Here we are, at the University of California Irvine. In theory, the UC System admits the top 4% of students in the state, right?"
M: "In theory..."
C: "And we just walked out of an honors class which in theory comprises the top 1% of those students, right?"

Sorry for the temporary hijack, but I didn't know there were other
UCI CHP'ers on this board... That's a pretty small group. I was in the Campuswide Honors Program at UCI from 1994 - 1998... Computer Science/Math double major. I wonder if we ran into each other...

You gotta love any school with a sports cheer of "Give 'em tongue!"
Not that we really had any sports...

 

[Dark Jezter]

No, gamers aren't smarter than the average person.

However, that dosen't stop a lot of them from acting as though they're mentally superior to the "unwashed masses."

 

[Impeesa]

Assume for a moment that intelligence can be rated on some sort of linear scale. The people at the very bottom end, below some arbitrary cutoff point, will not have the capacity to really play role-playing games - or at the very least, will have a difficult enough time that they won't want to try. Assuming that gamers are comprised of a random sampling of people above this cutoff point, they are, by trivial example, of above average intelligence.

*bows*

--Impeesa--

 

[Krieg]

Assume for a moment that intelligence can be rated on some sort of linear scale. The people at the very bottom end, below some arbitrary cutoff point, will not have the capacity to really play role-playing games - or at the very least, will have a difficult enough time that they won't want to try. Assuming that gamers are comprised of a random sampling of people above this cutoff point, they are, by trivial example, of above average intelligence.

*bows*

--Impeesa--

Of course this assumes that there isn't a similar cut-off point on the high end of the scale.

 

[The Sigil]

Sorry for the temporary hijack, but I didn't know there were other
UCI CHP'ers on this board... That's a pretty small group. I was in the Campuswide Honors Program at UCI from 1994 - 1998... Computer Science/Math double major. I wonder if we ran into each other...

You gotta love any school with a sports cheer of "Give 'em tongue!"
Not that we really had any sports...

I'll humor your hijack. I was in the program from 94 to 2000 (took a 2-year leave of absence from April 96-98 for a two-year LDS mission, so I graduated six years after starting instead of four). So I imagine at some point (probably 1994) we were in the same classes. I was a Physics major.

Hit me up off-thread and we can discuss.

/hijack.

--The Sigil

 

[xrpsuzi]

I'm not as smart as I used to be, but that's because I'm wiser.



joe "once again posting under suzi's account--ironic in this case isn't it?" b.

 

[Gothmog]

Nope, not in my experience. Generally, I tend to associate with other people in my field or related fields (science)- so the gamers I know probably ARE way above average intelligence. But I have also run into gamers who were very much below average intelligence. Like the fellow who tried to have his gnome thief put a halberd under his cloak and steal it from a weaponsmith, only to be killed by the same weaponsmith with the stolen halberd. Funny thing was- he was pissed because he thought the DM was out to get him and he got robbed. Gamers are just like all other folks- dumb and smart. I don't see there is any skew to the distribution.