Books are the best way to escape reality and for some people, reading a book is the most entertaining experience they can ever have. People sift through pages, and they lose track of time. They get lost in the world described between pages, and they don’t even realize for how long they have been sitting in the same place, digging through the pages. There are mental health benefits of reading.
For most people reading is a pleasant way to spend time and relax, but there is more to reading than just this. Studies indicate reading can improve your intelligence.
Defining Intelligence
Intelligence is mainly associated with IQ. IQ tests evaluate fluid and crystallized intelligence, but there is more to intelligence than just IQ.
There are many ways to enhance your intelligence, and reading is one of them that can help you boost your emotional, fluid, and crystallized intelligence.
- Crystallized Intelligence consists of all the knowledge and skills you have learned through your past experiences and education like vocabulary and dates etc.
- Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to understand and manage your emotions along with the emotions of the ones around you.
- Fluid Intelligence is the reasoning ability, and it helps to solve problems, think speedily, and navigate new situations.
How does reading improve intelligence?
Consistent reading improves vocabulary, creates connections with prior knowledge, develops emotional intelligence and empathy, improves creativity, and helps you focus. I know you are wondering how reading can do all this, so let’s look at five ways reading helps you get smarter.
- IT ENHANCES YOUR CREATIVITY:
Reading enhances your creative skills, makes you confident, and plays an important role in improving your writing skills.
According to a study, individuals who learned to read as adults, and people who were illiterate, showed that readers have a more developed occipital lobe and strengthened parietal lobes.
The developed occipital lobe helps build confidence, make better decisions, and visual processing, while the parietal lobes help in reading comprehension and writing. Reading equips the brain to function in the best way and process information verbally and visually.
- IT BOOSTS YOUR EMPATHY:
Reading helps you explore different worlds and different personalities. All the literary fiction you read in your school may seem redundant at this point, but they somehow contributed positively to your personality.
A research from 2013 states that reading literary fiction improves your theory of mind and helps you make and maintain interpersonal relationships and understand them better.
Fiction helps you explore the life and experiences of another person without going through them in reality. It equips you with understanding and experience of life and develops your character.
- IT ENHANCES YOUR VOCABULARY:
When you go through a book, you not only encounter new lessons, but you learn new words and phrases. You learn to decode different words, and you absorb the rules of written grammar which helps improve your sentence structure and spelling.
A study indicates that reading helps in vocabulary enhancement and increases the ability to comprehend different texts and comprehension.
- IT MAKES YOU A BETTER PROBLEM SOLVER:
Reading connects you to different worlds and scenarios. It expands your imagination and equips you with ways to look at problems differently and derive unique solutions. While fiction helps you develop compassion and empathy, nonfiction books, including self-help and guidance books, give you a more straightforward approach to life.
You not only go through different problems, issues and scenarios, but you learn creative ways and imagination to see and approach things differently.
- IT EXPANDS YOUR CURRENT KNOWLEDGE:
Books are a storeroom of knowledge. They keep you in touch with what’s happening around, social issues, trends, rising problems, and struggles of people. When you are more aware of your surrounding, you develop gratitude and an urge to make a difference.
Books also boost your cultural and global awareness. You may have noticed that all the great people in the world read books because it helps shape their personalities and envision a better world.
Through these ways, you can get novels, science fiction, poetry books, biographies, dictionaries, and any book of any genre that intrigues you. You can research online for a book recommendation, or you can ask a friend.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Intelligence can be enhanced in several ways, and reading books is just one of them. Read new books, and explore different genres. You will find yourself getting better at thinking, writing, and approaching problems and people differently.
