Does Trivia Make You Smarter? What the Research Shows for IQ | Riot IQ
Oct 30, 2026·Advanced Topics & Research
Does Trivia Make You Smarter? What the Research Shows for IQ
Does trivia make you smarter? It builds knowledge, which IQ tests do measure, but no study shows quizzing raises reasoning or IQ. Smart people know more trivia.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Trivia makes you more knowledgeable, yet no study has shown that it raises IQ or improves reasoning. What quizzing does reliably is help you remember what you are quizzed on: in a classic experiment, students who practised recalling a passage remembered 56% of it a week later, compared with 42% for students who simply reread it (d = 0.83, a large effect on memory for that passage).
General knowledge is a real part of intelligence, and people who score higher on IQ tests tend to know more facts. This page covers why trivia and intelligence are linked, what quizzing yourself actually does, why knowing more facts is different from reasoning better, and who ends up at the pub quiz in the first place.
Why trivia and intelligence are linked
Trivia skill is built on "crystallized intelligence," the store of knowledge and vocabulary a person accumulates through schooling and everyday experience. Our article on what crystallized intelligence is explains the theory. Knowledge questions are a standard part of professional IQ tests. The Wechsler scales and the RIOT IQ test both include an "Information" subtest that asks general-knowledge questions, described in our overview of the 15 subtests of the RIOT IQ test. On earlier test batteries, such items had moderate to high loadings on "g," the general factor of intelligence.
The research on adult knowledge points in the same direction:
• Knowledge hangs together: Rolfhus and Ackerman gave 141 undergraduates 20 academic knowledge tests. A general knowledge factor accounted for about half of the variation in scores, and knowledge was positively related to general intelligence, to verbal ability, to Openness to experience and to a habit of intellectual engagement. Extraversion was negatively related to every knowledge domain.
• Knowledge is not the same as reasoning: In a British sample, Lynn and Irwing found only a low correlation between general knowledge and "fluid intelligence," the ability to reason through new problems, measured with a grammatical reasoning test.
• Knowledge grows with age: Ackerman tested 228 educated adults aged 21 to 62 and found that middle-aged adults knew more than younger adults in many domains. Among contestants on the British quiz show Mastermind, older players scored higher in the general knowledge round, even though answers have to come quickly.
• Education matters most: In a Spanish online study of 48,234 people who each answered 60 general knowledge questions, years of study was a strong predictor of scores and socioeconomic status a weak one. Age predicted higher scores up to about 50, after which scores declined.
What quizzing yourself actually does
The best-supported effect of trivia is on memory for the trivia itself. Psychologists call it the "testing effect" or retrieval practice: pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it more than reading it again.
In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study of 120 undergraduates, students read short prose passages and then either took a recall test or reread them. Five minutes later, rereading looked better (81% recalled against 75%). After two days, the tested group recalled 68% against 54%, and after a week, 56% against 42%. Rereading also made students more confident, even though it led to more forgetting.
Pan and Rickard's 2018 meta-analysis of 192 effect sizes from 122 experiments (10,382 participants) asked whether this learning carries over to new questions. On average it did (d = 0.40), mainly to different test formats and to application and inference questions about the same material. After correcting for publication bias, positive transfer often disappeared unless specific conditions were met. Here, "transfer" means using what you learned about a topic in a new way, a much narrower thing than becoming more intelligent.
Two more findings help explain why trivia buffs keep getting better:
• Curiosity helps memory: In Gruber and colleagues' brain-imaging study, people remembered the answers to trivia questions they were curious about better than answers they did not care about, and they also remembered unrelated faces shown while they were curious.
• Knowledge builds on knowledge: Hambrick tested people at the start and end of a college basketball season. Prior basketball knowledge strongly predicted how much new basketball knowledge they picked up, while fluid intelligence had no effect. Thieu and colleagues found a related pattern: in a study of 132 people, greater trivia expertise predicted better recall of newly learned facts.
Knowing more facts versus reasoning better
Psychologists separate "near transfer," improvement on the practised skill and tasks very like it, from "far transfer," gains in broad abilities such as general intelligence. Trivia is near transfer almost by definition. Every fact learned for a quiz answers that question and closely related ones. It does nothing obvious for solving a matrix puzzle or rotating a shape in your head, and Sala and Gobet's reviews of chess, music and working-memory training found that claims of far transfer shrink as study quality improves.
Could studying trivia raise your score on an IQ test's knowledge subtest? In principle it could nudge that one subtest if you happened to learn the facts it asks about, much as practising a test inflates scores on that test. That would make the score a less accurate measure of how much you have absorbed from ordinary life, and it would leave your reasoning scores where they were. No study has measured this directly.
The link between trivia and IQ runs mainly the other way. Because knowledge is correlated with general ability, people with higher ability have usually absorbed more by the time they sit down at quiz night. Our page on Ken Jennings's IQ looks at what a 74-game Jeopardy! streak does and does not reveal about intelligence.
Who plays trivia, and does it help in later life?
Trivia is a self-selected hobby. The traits that predict broad knowledge in Rolfhus and Ackerman's study, especially Openness and intellectual engagement, are the same traits that draw people to quiz nights and game shows. Education is the strongest predictor of general knowledge, and it also predicts IQ. Any comparison of quiz enthusiasts with everyone else mixes up the effect of the hobby with the people who choose it.
Pub quizzes are often recommended as a way to keep the mind sharp in older age. I could not find a trial that tested trivia nights or pub quizzes against a control group on cognitive outcomes, so the claim has no direct evidence. The nearest research concerns mentally engaging activities in general:
• The Victoria Longitudinal Study: Hultsch and colleagues followed 250 middle-aged and older adults for six years. Changes in intellectual activities went along with changes in cognition, but an alternative model fitted just as well, in which high-ability people lead intellectually active lives until cognitive decline limits what they do.
• The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936: Gow and colleagues studied 1,091 people tested at age 70 who had also taken an intelligence test at age 11. Activity was linked to better cognition (r = .08 to .32). After controlling for childhood IQ and adult social class, only physical activity remained significantly associated with general cognitive ability.
That pattern suggests that much of the link between engaging hobbies and sharp minds in old age reflects who was sharp to begin with. Quiz nights are sociable and enjoyable, which is reason enough to go. Anyone worried about changes in memory should speak to a doctor, since a quiz score is not a clinical assessment.
Frequently asked questions
Does trivia make you smarter?
Trivia makes you more knowledgeable, and knowledge is one part of intelligence. No study has shown that playing trivia raises IQ or improves reasoning.
Do trivia buffs have higher IQs?
On average, people who know more facts score higher on IQ tests, because general knowledge is correlated with general intelligence. The link mostly reflects bright, curious people learning more, rather than trivia making people bright.
Does general knowledge count on an IQ test?
Yes. Most full-scale IQ tests, including the Wechsler scales and the RIOT IQ test, include an Information subtest of general-knowledge questions. It is one subtest among many, alongside measures of reasoning, memory, speed and spatial ability.
What is the best way to remember trivia facts?
Test yourself rather than rereading. Retrieval practice produces much better memory after days or weeks than rereading does, even though rereading feels more effective at the time.
Are pub quizzes good for your brain as you age?
They are social and mentally engaging, and there is no evidence they do harm. No controlled trial has tested whether they protect memory, and studies of mentally active lifestyles suggest that earlier ability explains much of the apparent benefit.
The takeaway
Trivia is a good way to learn facts, and quizzing yourself is one of the most effective study methods psychology has found. It builds knowledge, which IQ tests do measure, but there is no evidence that it improves reasoning or raises IQ, and the people who are good at trivia were usually knowledgeable before they started. To see how your knowledge and reasoning compare, try a professionally developed IQ test.
References
1. Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. [doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x](. doi.org
2. Rolfhus, E. L., & Ackerman, P. L. (1999). Assessing individual differences in knowledge: Knowledge, intelligence, and related traits. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 511-526. [doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.91.3.511](. doi.org
3. Lynn, R., & Irwing, P. (2002). Sex differences in general knowledge, semantic memory and reasoning ability. British Journal of Psychology, 93(4), 545-556. [doi.org/10.1348/000712602761381394](. doi.org
4. Ackerman, P. L. (2000). Domain-specific knowledge as the "dark matter" of adult intelligence: Gf/Gc, personality and interest correlates. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 55(2), P69-P84. [doi.org/10.1093/geronb/55.2.P69](. doi.org
5. Maylor, E. A. (1994). Ageing and the retrieval of specialized and general knowledge: Performance of Masterminds. British Journal of Psychology, 85(1), 105-114. [doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1994.tb02511.x](. doi.org
6. Buades-Sitjar, F., Boada, R., Guasch, M., Ferré, P., Hinojosa, J. A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2022). The predictors of general knowledge: Data from a Spanish megastudy. Behavior Research Methods, 54(2), 898-909. [doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01669-4](. doi.org
7. Pan, S. C., & Rickard, T. C. (2018). Transfer of test-enhanced learning: Meta-analytic review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 144(7), 710-756. [doi.org/10.1037/bul0000151](. doi.org
8. Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486-496. [doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.060](. doi.org
9. Hambrick, D. Z. (2003). Why are some people more knowledgeable than others? A longitudinal study of knowledge acquisition. Memory & Cognition, 31(6), 902-917. [doi.org/10.3758/BF03196444](. doi.org
10. Thieu, M. K., Wilkins, L. J., & Aly, M. (2024). Episodic-semantic linkage for $1000: New semantic knowledge is more strongly coupled with episodic memory in trivia experts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(4), 1867-1879 (correction published in 31(6), 2866). [doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02469-5](. doi.org
11. Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 515-520. [doi.org/10.1177/0963721417712760](. doi.org
12. Hultsch, D. F., Hertzog, C., Small, B. J., & Dixon, R. A. (1999). Use it or lose it: Engaged lifestyle as a buffer of cognitive decline in aging? Psychology and Aging, 14(2), 245-263. [doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.14.2.245](. doi.org
13. Gow, A. J., Corley, J., Starr, J. M., & Deary, I. J. (2012). Reverse causation in activity-cognitive ability associations: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 250-255. [doi.org/10.1037/a0024144](. doi.org
Hero image: Trivial Pursuit cards, by Dirk1981, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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