I always like to talk about how travel provides growth and valuable personality traits that are helpful everywhere in the world including empathy, patience, tolerance, open-mindedness, and independence. It also provides and improves skills like communication and interpersonal relationship skills. While travel is helpful, actually living abroad and spending considerable time in a foreign country can make you smarter, science has proved it!
There have been several scientific studies that measured cognitive skills, creativity, problem-solving and more. It compared those that have lived abroad to those that had not. Pretty consistently those who lived abroad scored higher in the different studies. For example, learning a second language improves the cortical thickness of your brain, which is responsible for memory, thought, and consciousness.
“William Maddux’s study showed that living abroad and engaging with foreign cultures improved students’ critical thinking and their ability to make connections between disparate ideas.” source
“People who have international experience or identify with more than one nationality are better problem solvers and display more creativity, our research suggests.” source
And these are just a few of the things that living abroad can do to one’s intelligence. The infographic below features five cognitive benefits that improve brainpower just by living abroad.
Thanks for the infographic to Work The World
Have you lived abroad? Do you think it made you smarter or improved your cognitive skills?
A New Life Wandering 
This is a great post! I don’t know if I’ll ever live abroad for an extended period of time, but I do love to travel. 🙂
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Great article 🙂
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Woo ho 🙂 I can say that all are true, though to get there you need to go through a million headaches! Worth it though!
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Ha, that’s true! It’s not always, (or ever) easy to adapt to a new country.
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i absolutely love this! so true on all fronts for us!
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Never thought of any of this before. Thank you.
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I completely agree! 😀 I have been living abroad since about 5 years now, and in two different countries within these years. I also love to travel. it definitely has tremendously helped me in self-development.
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Isn’t it so true?
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All of this is really, really true. Living abroad has totally made me a more open, thoughful and considerate person and that is something that i would not have gained if i didnt live abroad since i was a kid!
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Travel and living abroad really does open our minds in many ways huh?
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