WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE USEFUL TO LINE LAB RATS' CAGES WITH THE MONEY:

Cranky? It may benefit you in long run (Joe Burris, 9/27/06, The Baltimore Sun)

Are you a forty-something grouch who's first to shout invectives in a slow-moving checkout lane? A youngster who mocks your dad's counsel? A graduate student known for driving your professor crazy with sardonic verbiage?

Take hope: Today, you might be dismissed as a smart-aleck. In your old age, you might be viewed as smarter than average.

Or at least that's what Jacqueline Bichsel suggests.

Bichsel, a psychology professor at Morgan State in Baltimore, recently co-authored a study that invites the conclusion that upon reaching 60, disagreeable people maintain a higher level of intelligence than more easy-going seniors.

"These individuals have a higher vocabulary," she said. "They have a better use of words, a better knowledge of facts."

It also suggests that those dismissed as grumpy old men and women are often smarter in some ways than the young.

What monstrous dumbass needed a study to determine that Father knows best?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 27, 2006 9:28 AM