People who believe they are more intelligent than everyone around them tend to give themselves away through the words they choose, according to the relationship and lifestyle outlet Your Tango. The publication says this kind of behaviour undermines genuine relationships and breeds resentment among the people who have to deal with it.
Your Tango explains that whatever drives someone to act this way, if they see themselves as the smartest person in any group they join, it shows up in how they speak. Their words are inherently demeaning and hurtful, the outlet says, because the person is more focused on being right than on showing empathy.
The outlet then lists 13 phrases it says are typical of people who consider themselves smarter than everyone else.
Putting others down to sound superior
The first is a version of let me explain this more simply. Your Tango describes this as condescending behaviour that is a direct way of making someone feel unheard and undervalued, reinforcing the speaker's mistaken sense of superiority in the conversation and belittling the other person for supposedly knowing less than they do.
Two similar phrases follow: you just don't understand and you wouldn't understand this. By undermining someone's grasp of a topic or idea, the outlet says, such people chip away at that person's confidence and dismiss their views so they cannot be reasonably challenged, which only feeds a cycle of power and a sense of superiority. Hinting that someone is not smart enough to grasp an argument also lets the speaker avoid having to explain it at all. According to Your Tango, this is really about controlling access to ideas to feel more important, even when the person has little real knowledge of the subject.
A fourth phrase, well, strictly speaking, is used by people with formal qualifications and without them alike, the outlet notes, but it serves the same purpose: making the other person feel less intelligent so the speaker can show off their own knowledge, often dismissing the other person's opinions or feelings, or undercutting their point of view entirely.
Fake depth and false humility
Next comes we need to think about this more deeply, which Your Tango says hints at the speaker's own supposedly complex thought process and implies the conversation itself is shallow, indirectly belittling the other person's intelligence and understanding through a simple phrase.
The outlet also flags I really don't want to be the one to tell you this. People who rely on a sense of their own superiority, it says, often struggle when they do not know something, and because they are so used to convincing others of their intelligence, they treat gaps in their own understanding as something to be demonised rather than explored. In conversation, they offload their own discomfort onto someone else, missing the fact that not knowing everything is a normal and healthy state to be in.
No offence, but is another example. Your Tango says people who think they are smarter than they are often describe themselves as brutally honest rather than admitting their words cause pain, and if someone consistently hurts another person's feelings or makes them feel bad this way, it is worth stepping back and reassessing that person's place in one's life.
The phrase it's just common sense rounds out this group. If someone is trying to learn something new or struggling with a concept and keeps hearing this line, Your Tango says, the speaker is clearly not as smart as they are trying to appear, coming across as both unintelligent and a know-it-all.
Unwanted advice and self-protection
Let me give you some advice is next. Unsolicited advice tends to land badly even from someone close who means well, the outlet says, and when it comes from someone who considers themselves smarter than everyone else, the atmosphere in a conversation turns tense very quickly.
Well, actually is described as particularly grating. The word actually is normally used to point out a contrast between an opinion and the truth, but Your Tango says it sounds far more condescending coming from someone who believes their intelligence exceeds the average person's, turning what should be a correction into an attempt to protect their own ego.
The phrase I'm just telling the truth is linked by Your Tango to narcissistic behaviour. Citing research published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, the outlet says many narcissistic people rely on a false sense of intellectual confidence to assert dominance, driven by self-preservation instincts and a need for external validation, and are always ready to put others down to boost their own image and sense of superiority.
Refusing to explain
You're missing the point implies the other person is not smart enough to grasp even a simple question, Your Tango says, and such statements undermine a healthy atmosphere for productive discussion regardless of how complex the topic actually is.
The final phrase, you just need to do it, can sound harmless if the advice was actually requested, the outlet notes, since it can be tough love from a friend or a nudge from a parent encouraging someone to get on with something necessary. But when the same words are said unprompted, Your Tango says, they turn into something else entirely.
