Opera Users Are the Smartest, IE6 Users the Dumbest, Study Finds

We now have scientific proof, as scientific as web-based studies go, of what plenty of smug Firefox and Chrome users have been saying for years, Internet Explorer users aren't as smart as those that use alternative browsers.

What's more, the older the browser version, the dumber users tend to be. AptiQuant is basing these results on over 100,000 IQ tests completed by users and the browser they ran.

This rather simple correlation, which, with a sample base of 100,000 people, should be fairly accurate, shows that IE6 users barely go over 80 on the IQ tests.

On the other end of the scale, Opera users come close to 130 points in the IQ tests on average, placing them in the most upper echelons.

"Internet Explorer users scored lower than average on the IQ tests. Chrome, Firefox and Safari users had just a teeny bit higher than average IQ scores. And users of Camino, Opera and IE with Chrome Frame had exceptionally higher IQ levels," AptiQuant writes.

The results should be fairly self-explanatory and obvious to a degree, but the distribution of browser usage according to IQ is interesting.

It seems that the smartest people use Opera. Camino users, a Gecko-based browser for Mac OS X, also score high. Those that managed to get Google's Chrome Frame for IE running have average scores of over 120 points.

The small number of people that actually use these browsers may have something to do with the results, but they're interesting nonetheless.

Firefox, Chrome and Safari users are all fairly intelligent individuals on the whole as well. IE users, regardless of the version, score lower than users of any other browser.

"The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser. From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers," the study concluded [PDF].

UPDATE: It seems that the study in question may have been the result of an elaborate joke and, while there's no definitive proof, you should probably take the results with a healthy dose of skepticism.