In one minute, 175 university students in Norway had to explain how they would help a group gather food efficiently—and their partners judged not just their intelligence, but their value to the team.
The experiment explored a question about human intelligence: why did advanced thinking skills become so important in our species? One idea is that intelligence helps people work together. A person who can solve a shared problem may help a whole group, and the group may respond with respect and trust. Researchers led by Jonathan Egeland tested this idea in a study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
The students first took a cognitive test, then planned a hypothetical food-gathering strategy on their own. They had to decide how many hours each member of a group should spend gathering food. More hours could mean more food, but also more fatigue. Each student briefly explained their reasoning to a partner, who then rated their intelligence and status, including their respect for the person and their potential as a leader. The study included 85 complete pairs as part of a preregistered experiment, meaning the researchers set out their plan in advance.
Students with higher cognitive test scores tended to do better on the group food task. But the key finding was not that intelligence alone brought status. Partners gave higher respect and leadership ratings to people who performed better at the task. In the researchers’ statistical model, cognitive ability was linked to prestige through task performance; its direct link to status was not significant.
That distinction matters. The results suggest people may value intelligence most when they can see how it helps others. In this study, a strong test score by itself did not reliably earn someone more status. Showing a useful way to solve a shared problem did. The authors describe prestige as respect and perceived leadership value, and argue that it can grow when people offer skills that benefit a group.
The pattern could help explain how cooperation and intelligence became linked in human groups. A capable problem-solver may gain influence, while other group members benefit from that person’s ideas. In turn, respect may encourage skilled people to take on roles that help the group coordinate or resolve problems. The experiment does not prove how intelligence evolved, and its hypothetical task is only one small test of a broad idea. Still, it offers evidence that social value—not intelligence in isolation—may shape who earns respect.
The researchers also found that students’ judgments of their partners’ intelligence broadly matched the partners’ cognitive test scores, even after a brief interaction. That suggests people can pick up on signs of another person’s thinking ability quickly. The next question is whether the same link between useful problem-solving and respect holds in other settings, where the challenges and group relationships are more complex. For now, the study points to a simple lesson: people may notice intelligence, but they respect what it can do for everyone.