People who score poorly on intelligence tests also seem to have a higher risk of heart disease, fatal accidents and suicide, according to new research reported in the Telegraph. The study, which looked at the health records of one million Swedish army conscripts, established a connection between IQ and mortality. “People with higher IQ test scores tend to be less likely to smoke or drink alcohol heavily. They also eat better diets, and they are more physically active. So they have a range of better behaviours that may partly explain their lower mortality risk,” explains Dr David Batty, a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Medical Research Council’s Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, and one of the researchers involved.