A Correlation Between Nail Biting And Intelligence?

A Sign Of Genius?

Nail biters, listen up. There is a rumor circulating that those of us who engage in the act known as the biting of nails may be smarter than the average bear. There is also a belief that perfectionism may be a reason for some destructive behaviors and that when certain emotions are triggered, it can lead to a person biting their nails.

There is no definitive research that suggests that nail biting and high intelligence are correlated although many articles online suggest it without providing proof. Research does however suggest that nail biters may be more likely to be perfectionists, mostly bite nails out of habit but that it’s at least partially due to stress, boredom and frustration when they don’t reach goals that they’ve set.

Nail Biting And Intelligence

If you go online and search for “nail biting and intelligence” you can undoubtedly quickly find a number of results that state it as if it’s a fact in the headline and then go on in the article to tell you nail biting and intelligence are correlated. Except that none of these articles ever quote a legitimate (or any) research paper and instead quickly pivot to how nail biting and perfectionism are correlated. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

Intelligence ≠ Perfectionism. They are two different things that describe different traits.

The suggestion of a link between nail biting and intelligence seems to be rooted in the idea that people with higher intelligence tend to go further in life and thus have more stress and anxiety than people with lesser intelligence. Nail biting is often put down to resulting due to both of these emotions as well as boredom and frustration. This is just a theory or thought however.

While there doesn’t appear to be any actual scientific proof that this higher level of intelligence exists among nail biters, there is research that suggests that there might an explanation for adult nail biting outside the normal excuses of stress and anxiety.

Perfectionism

A 2015 report from The University of Montreal concluded that some emotions can cause nail biting, hair pulling and other destructive behaviors to occur when certain emotions are triggered. Specifically, it was suggested that nail biting might be a result of people being perfectionists who bite their nails when stressed or out of frustration or boredom when they were either prevented from completing a task or weren’t allowed to finish it as quickly as they’d like.

In order to evoke different emotions from nail biting test subjects, they were put in several situations to see how they responded:

Stress: Subjects watched a movie of a plane crash.

Relaxation: Subjects watched a movie with waves.

Frustration: Subjects were given a puzzle that they were told was easy but was in fact difficult to complete.

Boredom: Subjects were left in a room alone for several minutes with nothing to do.

Subjects eventually began to take part in the negative activity (ie. nail biting) in each instance except in the case where they watched the relaxing movie. So when faced with stress, frustration and boredom, the negative activity occurred. The negative activity didn’t occur when they were relaxed.

Personally, I do find that when I can’t complete a task, get frustrated or otherwise distracted from doing what I’m trying to do, my go-to move is to start on the nails. I also find that I’ll pick at my nails if under stress or if something happens that I’m not expecting that causes me to worry. But many times, I just subconsciously start picking them when I’m bored, even if only for a few seconds.

I do also find that I tend to bite my nails when I’m alone or can do it discretely. Probably due to the number of times I’ve been called out by my wife and younger daughter and previously my mum for nail biting when I was a kid.

Nail Biters Profile

While people of all ages bite their nails, research shows that nail biting tends to occur mostly in puberty and that after age 10, more boys bite their nails than girls. It’s also understood that most nail biters quit by age 30 on their own although it isn’t uncommon for adults to continue biting their nails well into adulthood.

Conclusion

• There is no research evidence that nail biters are more intelligent than non-nail biters even though it’s easy to find many posts online that suggest (without proof) that this is the case.
• There is some evidence to suggest that perfectionism may contribute to nail biting especially when certain emotions such as stress, frustration or boredom are triggered.
• Conversely, relaxation appears to reduce the chances that nail biters feel the need to bite their nails.
• This would also jibe with the belief that nail biters tend to also avoid nail biting when they are scolded or otherwise told off for doing so.