Social/emotional intelligence and midlife resilience in schoolboys with low tested intelligence.

Seventy-three inner-city boys with a mean IQ of 80 were followed prospectively from age 14 until age 65. Their adult adjustment was compared to a socioeconomically matched sample of 38 boys with a mean IQ of 115. Although childhood social disadvantage did not distinguish the groups with low and high IQs, half of the low-IQ men enjoyed incomes as high and had children as well-educated as did the high IQ men. These resilient low-IQ men were more likely to be generative, to use mature defenses, and to enjoy warm object relations than the high IQ group as a whole.