[HN Gopher] Humans peak in midlife: A combined cognitive and per...
___________________________________________________________________
Humans peak in midlife: A combined cognitive and personality trait
perspective
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 136 points
Date : 2026-02-09 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| psiops wrote:
| The best is yet to come!
| euroderf wrote:
| ... says the HR rep, as you are cleaning out your desk.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Derf, I challenge your next comment to be the opposite of
| which what you want to respond.
| throwaway713 wrote:
| > Fluid intelligence, which peaks near age 20 and declines
| materially across adulthood [...] while fluid intelligence may
| decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g., crystallized
| intelligence, emotional intelligence)
|
| As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point, I
| always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized
| intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation
| prizes no one really wants.
|
| I'd rather we instead perform research to identify how one might
| reverse the decline of fluid intelligence...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > are the consolation prizes no one really wants.
|
| If you can't figure out how to use accumulated knowledge and
| advanced people skills by your late 30s, then maybe you weren't
| so rational or adaptable to new situations in the first place.
| Things may not click for me like they did when I was 25, but I
| usually see right away when I have relevant knowledge to solve
| a problem or when I know someone who can help.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| That was harsh. So in addition to declining fluid
| intelligence there is no consolation prize in store for op or
| myself?
| usui wrote:
| I think you misunderstood
| piyuv wrote:
| YMMV, but I was too horny to actually make use of my superior
| fluid intelligence in my 20s, so I'm content with the tradeoff
| here.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I guess it depends on your definition of "fluid"
| intelligence, though I was bad with both of them in my 20s.
| komali2 wrote:
| Those of us that grew up stupid have the advantage here -
| our coping mechanisms never stop working! Everyone else has
| to relearn how to make it work.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Both of you take your well-deserved upvotes and scram.
| kranner wrote:
| > "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are
| the consolation prizes no one really wants.
|
| Strongly disagree.
|
| Crystallized intelligence lets me see analogies and relations
| between disparate domains, abstract patterns that repeat
| everywhere, broadening my vision from a blinkered must-finish-
| this-task to a broader what-the-hell-is-this-world-I'm-in. I'm
| old enough to realise life is finite. Nothing satisfies like
| understanding.
|
| Emotional intelligence lets me actually behave more like what I
| know a sane person should behave like. It lets me see I don't
| have to act on every passing whim and fancy, which are more
| like external noise than something of an essential expression
| from my inner self (which is a culturally-instigated fantasy).
| It lets me see how I'm connected to everyone else and
| everything in the world. Why I shouldn't stuff my own pockets
| at everyone else's expense. Why making other people unhappy
| ultimately makes myself unhappy. It wouldn't have been that
| hard to spot if I hadn't been caught up in fluid intelligence
| feats of strength.
|
| These are the real rewards of middle age, not anyone's
| consolation prizes.
|
| That said, I respect your right to disagree. But I feel this
| particular way.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't knock crystallized intelligence.
|
| In my 20s, I could learn a programming language in a weekend by
| reading a book. I could write code fast. I could figure out
| bugs. I felt so fast and so smart.
|
| In my 40s and 50s, I looked back at that guy with some
| amusement. Sure, I didn't type as fast. But I spent a lot less
| time debugging because I wrote it right the first time, because
| I could just see what the right thing do to was. Net result was
| that I produced working code in less time. 48 might have been
| my peak year.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| agreed, I may learn slower as I age... but I spend a lot less
| time making stupid mistakes as I do it
| rawgabbit wrote:
| The paper actually argues we peak in our 50s.
|
| _"Across both model weightings, humans appear to reach their
| peak in cognitive-personality functioning between the ages of
| 55 and 60."_
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Really? What did you achieve in those times of high fluid low
| emotional intelligence?
|
| I played a whole lot of video games myself. It's nice to look
| back at would i could have achieved with my current perspective
| but that's kind of the point of this.
| dlisboa wrote:
| Emotional intelligence is what allows you to actually raise
| kids. Having it at midlife is a benefit, not a downside.
| hbosch wrote:
| "Fluid intelligence" is not very valuable when it comes to
| long-term decision making.
| alphazard wrote:
| What they call "fluid intelligence" is just intelligence and
| the rest are skills/aptitudes. "Crystallized intelligence" is
| more plainly: efficacy/productivity and it's common knowledge
| that people are most productive during the middle of their
| lives. When they have the best balance of knowledge accumulated
| and raw intelligence.
|
| In humans, intelligence manifests as memory, spatial and verbal
| reasoning, pattern recognition, etc. What is so interesting
| about IQ and g (the general factor) is that all of these
| abilities trend together. A score in one area is a good
| prediction of the score in another area. There is no reason why
| that must be the case a priori, and LLMs are a great example of
| an intelligent system which is much better at recalling
| information than it is at reasoning.
|
| Human aging doesn't seem to affect all of these abilities
| uniformly. e.g. Everyone seems to complain about memory the
| most (and that matches my experience), but I've been pleasantly
| surprised how well neuroplasticity and pattern recognition have
| held.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| LLMs in my opinion is pattern recognition of text sequences
| at an almost infinite scale. My understanding is that "world
| models" is an attempt to replace the text sequences with more
| realistic approximations of the world. But they still plan to
| use pattern recognition.
|
| In the meantime, humans would still need to do the reasoning.
| tomrod wrote:
| Then perhaps the peak identification is wrong -- surely they
| haven't tested solid comparison groups for such claims, like
| individuals that didn't receive education later in life.
| UK-Al05 wrote:
| Isn't fluid intelligence learning? and crystallized
| intelligence stuff you already know?
| jampekka wrote:
| Crystallized intelligence makes you good at solving problems,
| emotional intelligence makes you good at life, fluid
| intelligence makes you good at solving puzzles.
|
| I'd gladly trade in some of the fluid intelligence I have left
| for more emotional intelligence.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Or you could just join me and be in denial of it.
|
| I'm only half joking. I think it's notable that chess players
| tend to peak in their mid to late thirties. But that's only
| looking at world class players who have reached something
| relatively close to their genetic potential for the
| understanding we have today. It's entirely possible for
| 'regular' humans to continue seeing major improvement well past
| 40. I know that some players have achieved the GM title in
| their 50s and 60s. These were already strong players
| beforehand, but maintaining the level of play to get those
| norms and ratings is a very significant task for anybody.
|
| It's entirely possible that these observations are 100%
| consistent with the reported observations and analyses, but if
| so then those analyses don't really matter in the way that we
| intuitively think they'd matter.
| dsign wrote:
| > As someone well past "peak" fluid intelligence at this point,
| I always hate reading research like this. "Crystallized
| intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are the consolation
| prizes no one really wants.
|
| At the end, I agree with you, but for a different reason. My
| fluid intelligence is still doing well, but my newly acquired
| "crystallized" and "emotional" intelligence are just good to
| let me understand why people want to write existential horror
| stories. Hell, I now realize that some of the dark stuff I
| didn't want to touch with a long pole three years ago are in
| fact escapism to a rosier parallel universe. I liked myself
| better when I was sixteen years old and I couldn't understand
| that boy one year older than me who said he despised our
| prisons of flesh. May you be doing well Y.P., and if you happen
| to stumble upon this paragraph, know it took me 25 years to see
| what you saw so clearly.
| ajuc wrote:
| > "Crystallized intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are
| the consolation prizes no one really wants.
|
| Speak for yourself. I'd happily retroactively trade a dozen IQ
| points back in my 20s for emotional intelligence. I'd be much
| happier.
| keiferski wrote:
| Crystallized intelligence sounds like "wisdom" to me, and
| emotional intelligence sounds like "charisma + tact + empathy."
| Those are all things a person should definitely want, probably
| even more than raw intelligence itself.
| glerk wrote:
| An individual can improve their fluid intelligence ("variance")
| through a variety of means well into adulthood. Yes, more
| research is needed (and I'm sure a lot of research is being
| done), but I can guarantee you can already do this reliably
| right now.
| ivandenysov wrote:
| Which approaches do you think work well?
| tmoravec wrote:
| > Yet, human achievement in domains such as career success tends
| to peak much later, typically between the ages of 55 and 60. This
| discrepancy may reflect the fact that, while fluid intelligence
| may decline with age, other dimensions improve (e.g.,
| crystallized intelligence, emotional intelligence).
|
| Isn't it about accumulated human capital (aka social networks)
| and experience more than anything else?
| hbosch wrote:
| Experience hardens crystallized intelligence.
| arctic-true wrote:
| Yes, and that's also why "career success" here really only
| means "modern era white collar career success". In other times
| and other fields it can look very different.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Yes - I suspect this doesn't apply to blue collar or fields
| like art and sports.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| This definitely is not true, outside of physical domains.
|
| I chose a random domain (philosophers writing their seminal
| work) and found that most wrote them in their 40s. Kant wrote
| the critique of pure reason at 57 years old!
| eaandkw wrote:
| Reading the abstract it would seem a good reason for positions in
| government like the President to be restricted to ages 40-65.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| that's before you even look at medically-related and late age
| cognitive decline, but unfortunately there are massive socio-
| economic effects that work against this
| randcraw wrote:
| More than socio-economic, the chief factor that advances US
| political candidates is, simply, fame. These days fame is
| achieved by somehow becoming an outlier: loud extremism,
| incessant self promotion, and spending truly insane amounts
| of money. Intelligence of any kind is irrelevant.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Voting as well.
| AndroTux wrote:
| Hell naw
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Fluid intelligence is the confidence you feel at trivia night in
| the third round
| gowld wrote:
| Is this a "How to lie with statistics" paper, where investigator-
| selected parameters for the weighted average determine the
| result?
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Whoop!
|
| Still in the game :-)
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| This is pretty silly. Your memory obviously gets a little worse
| as you age, with most of the noticeable decline coming in very
| late age. But the artificial measures/definitions of things like
| "fluid" intelligence are mostly useless. Just pulling up one of
| the studies cited in the article which is supposed to measure the
| "reasoning" aspect of "fluid" intelligence, presents a huge host
| issues immediately [1].
|
| Aside from the lack of randomization, you have obvious validity
| problems. The interpretation of nebulous words like "reasoning"
| as being accurately measured by e.g. accuracy on Raven matrices
| (construct validity?) and younger participants having been primed
| by recent test-taking experience while real-world reasoning
| skills aren't really reflected - it's all quite specious.
|
| Real-world decisions are value-laden and constraint-laden!
| "Intelligence" does not mean "maximizing abstract pattern
| detection". If you keep your brain active with a wide range of
| creative, interesting problems, you will be fine apart from
| neurodegenerative diseases, which have real effects.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30211596/
| squidbeak wrote:
| I'm a layman to this jargon, but are 'crystallized intelligence'
| and 'emotional intelligence' in any actual sense 'intelligence'?
| I can't see how these terms mean anything other than judgement,
| experience, maturity etc, which are already good enough labels
| for this stuff. Can anyone explain what these flashier new terms
| offer over them?
| eudamoniac wrote:
| They offer the dilution of the word "intelligence" so that we
| can pretend ever more strongly that it doesn't really exist as
| a concept, and therefore eventually stop measuring it
| (especially across populations)
| jltsiren wrote:
| Intelligence is a vague concept anyway.
|
| One way to look at this is that "fluid intelligence" represents
| potential intelligence or raw processing power. "Crystallized
| intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are then actual
| intelligence, or the intelligence another person can see.
|
| Or maybe a bit less seriously: In my experience, fluid
| intelligence often manifests as stupidity in young people, for
| whatever reason. Crystallized intelligence and emotional
| intelligence then represent intelligence as a lack of
| stupidity.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I quite like this paper. Does a great job laying out scientific
| support for things we already "knew" in our guts - like having
| retirement ages at around 65, for instance, being an ideal
| milestone to start transitioning folks from leading hard work to
| supporting activities.
|
| Where I worry is that these papers will be used to justify
| ageism. Looking through these comments, there's quite a lot of
| positions being bandied around that I've heard justify some truly
| atrocious hiring/firing decisions before, and we need to be
| cognizant of the reality that age alone is not an indicator of
| success or failure for a given role or task. It's helpful to keep
| looking into this, but we also need to be aware of our own
| biases.
| shafoshaf wrote:
| I don't know that people are really looking for things to
| justify their ageism, just like I don't feel that racists are
| actually trying to justify their view.
|
| As a seasoned citizen myself (55), what I've experienced is
| that ageism seems to be more about having common points of view
| and cultural references. It is similar to how several studies
| show that people tend to hire others just like themselves
| despite actual credentials. This is the challenge with age,
| race, culture, and even sex.
|
| I do like that this paper shows that I will be just coming off
| my peak of power at 65 and that all I need to know is what 6-7
| means so I can talk to my younger colleagues. :)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I peaked in high school
| randcraw wrote:
| Intellectually, maybe. But emotionally, let's hope not. I was a
| major twerp in high school.
| randcraw wrote:
| If fluid intelligence is based on the ability to recognize new
| patterns (unsupervised learning) and crystallized intelligence on
| recognizing known patterns (supervised learning), then more than
| physiology, age alone may differentiate the two.
|
| Youngsters know no patterns so they can't match new events to
| known ones. Oldsters know that most seemingly new stuff is not
| really new, it's just the same old stuff, so they reduce the cost
| of thinking and reject the noise by adding the new unlabeled
| event to an existing cluster rather than creating a new noisy
| one. That's wisdom. But that's also a behavior that will
| inevitably increase as we age and our clusters establish
| themselves and prove their worth.
|
| So aren't those two forms of intelligence less about a difference
| in brain physiology and more about having learned to employ
| common sense?
| epsilonsalts wrote:
| Do we peak or are there fewer patterns than we want to believe
| and eventually accept and just quit looking?
|
| Sure we can generate syntactic and semantic descriptions
| endlessly but to use software as an example, we made a lot of the
| same things that look different only in the symbols used.
|
| Ansible and Chef. Terraform and Pulumi. Ruby and Python. Windows
| and Linux. Burger shack 1, burger shack 2. They all solve the
| same problem.
|
| Being able to generate semantics endlessly does not upend our
| daily patterns and routines. Life on Earth is pretty obvious.
| indycliff wrote:
| Perhaps fluid intelligence peaks at 20 because the drinking age
| is 21.
| indycliff wrote:
| Since when is 20 midlife?
| tsoukase wrote:
| Fluid intelligence must be the classical one that the IQ
| measures. Crystallized and emotional must be the experience,
| professional and social respectively.
|
| In my case I was quite good with numbers in my 20s, not any more
| in my late 40s. But I believe now I know the world best in my
| life and that is increasing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-09 23:01 UTC)