News You Can Use: "How to Look Smarter, According to Science"

Carry your Nobel Prize proudly and in front of you when walking into a meeting.

From Inverse:

Maybe you’re trying to land a job. Or maybe you’re stuck in class while some intellectual nerds are debating something or other and you feel left behind. Or maybe you just want to impress some cutie. If you want to look smart, here are the five best techniques — or as researchers refer to them, “impression management strategies.”

It can be as simple as using a middle initial or just slipping on a pair of glasses. Here are more tips, and why they work according to science.

Become a critic.

We celebrated Roger Ebert's opinions because they were so critical of media. 

And the glasses didn't hurt either. 

[That's Roger's Special Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, not a Nobel]

One of the most significant ways that people try to boost their intelligence, or at least people’s perception of it, is by becoming hypercritical. After all, you must be hella insightful if you can point out the flaws in a film or someone else’s views. 

In a study where participants were told to assess a film and then an essay while trying to either appear smart or be well-liked, the “appear smarter” group rated both the film and essay as worse than both the “well-liked group” and the control. Meanwhile, participants assumed that those with more neutral or positive opinions weren’t as intelligent. According to the study, people who wanted to appear smarter deliberately chose worse films so that they would have more to pick on, indicating an automatic association within our society.

The key is to find a way to be critical without being a jerk, which is unfortunately much harder than it is to just put things down. But it’s an important distinction that will help with another thing that people associate with intelligence....MORE

The article also references a paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology: 

The imbibing idiot bias: Consuming alcohol can be hazardous to your (perceived) intelligence 

Abstract

Alcohol consumption and cognitive impairment frequently co-occur....

I think I still prefer:

"How to Enter a Room Like a Boss"

One simple trick is backup singers.
Entering a room with at least three backing vocalists garners one immediate attention and respect....