I disagree that this is about IQ or intelligence. A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know. It is only those who think they are intelligent who have they ego to think that things will always come easy.
"A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know"
This is one of those statements that really bother me, almost as much as someone telling me I need to prove the non-existence of God if I want to be an atheist. Yes, intelligent people should have a good understanding of how big and complex the universe is and how little they know compared to the total amount of knowledge available. And given that they are aware of such, it wouldn't make sense for them to walk around claiming they are a big deal. However, people do not always act rationally, even geniuses. There is no negative-correlation between claiming to be smart and being smart, in spite of the obvious contradiction. Claiming to be smart and being cocky about it, it's just a personality trait. Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not.
"Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not."
I don't know whether the two claims you made are true (the one about IQ may be, the personality one probably is) but "there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not" doesn't follow. It's possible that your personality may often continue to develop after your IQ is mostly set, but only in a highly restricted way dictated by what your personality was before. In fact this seems to me likely to be a common outcome.
