Mastering Among Us with the Ultimate Strategy Guide

This is how you win Among Us every time. A couple of weeks ago, the long- awaited Among Us TV show suddenly dropped out of basically nowhere. Much like an imposter, it snuck up on us and delivered the killer blow when we least expected it. So, while we at Theorist HQ are currently scrambling to figure out a theory, it did make me kind of nostalgic for the good old days of classic among us. And even though the game has continued to evolve with new maps and new roles, a basic mind games that would help you win all those years ago are still incredibly valuable. So, let's take a space walk down memory lane, loyal theorists, and go over the best strategies to win the OG Friend slot

game so that you don't look sus. Matt, take it away. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that spent years trying to convince you that your favorite video game characters are all evil imposters. And today, I'm taking it to its logical conclusion by convincing you that all your loved ones are also evil imposters. That's right. Today we're covering Among Us, a $5 indie game from 2018 that over the past few weeks has blown up in a huge way. Seriously, as I'm writing this on the first week of September, it is the second most watched game on Twitch. Bigger than Fortnite, bigger than Fall Guys, and only just behind League of Legends, which got to say, good on you League for staying so strong for so very

long. Among Us is a social deduction game where your goal is to root out the killers hidden in your group. Basically, it's like Werewolf or Mafia, except it's 10 times cooler since now you're in space. The game takes place over a series of rounds where you wander around a science station as either a crew member trying to complete science tasks or as an impostor who's secretly trying to sabotage the station and kill the crew. You alternate between gameplay and meetings, which can be called whenever someone finds a dead body. The meetings are the real heart and soul of the game since those are the times when everyone hops on a voice chat to try and figure

out who the imposters are before holding a vote to pick someone to throw out into the airlock or throw into the lava or just push to their death. The crew wins if they manage to kill all the imposters or complete all the tasks on the station. And the imposters win if they manage to kill enough crew members that the imposters outnumber them. Long story short, it's a game all about deception, murder, and twist reveals, which means it lends itself to some pretty incredible online video reactions. Disguised toast. He's probably my current favorite. We vote TOAST FIRST. WHAT? RED. NO. But today isn't about over-the-top reactions or secret lore or how this game further fuels our distrust of

fellow human beings. No, I've played this game a lot. I mean, you've all just adopted Among Us, but I was born in it, molded by games like it. And being the overly competitive nerd that I am, I've kept track of my win- loss records in this style of social deduction game. It's at 87%. Not perfect by any means, but with me on the winning side far more often than chance, and while playing Among Us, it stayed around the same rate. There are obviously some more complications in this game than the usual mafia or werewolf scenario, but at the end of the day, regardless of what side I'm playing on, I have a pretty proven winning strategy that I've worked on for years and one that continues to function really well in Among Us. All

these other jelly beans online dealing with strategies in the 200 to 400 IQ range, ha. If you're playing like a theorist, we're talking about strats in the thousand IQ range. So, today I'm teaching you the perfect strategy for Among Us. how to win regardless of what side you're on. And it all boils down to one thing, game theory. That's right, the namesake of this show. So, are you ready to start winning like a theorist? Then, let's begin. Well, actually, small thing before we get started. Sorry for the interruption, but I do have to give a quick shout out to the partner of today's video, Diablo Immortal. And since I've been playing it for myself, I noticed something. The Warlock has been

added to Diablo Immortal as part of the 5.0 update. They're the first and only class that allows you to play a ranged caster while also commanding demons. And one of these demons is the soul gorgger. The interesting thing about these guys is that they can evolve and get stronger midfights. Now, I know we're talking about demons and magic, but that kind of fast evolution seems unrealistic, right? Evolution typically takes many, many years. Charles Darwin even proposed it took millions. But since then, we've learned that it's actually much faster. And it all comes down to how fast a species reproduces because that is what

allows you to pass on your survival of the fittest genes. Something like bacteria that can double its population in just 20 minutes evolves much faster than humans that take 9 months. However, the soul gorge is evolving in just mere seconds and without doing any of the devil's tango. So, it's likely less of an evolution and more of a metamorphosis. Creatures like caterpillars already contain the instructions for multiple developmental forms within a single lifetime. Once they're triggered by things like growth or environmental cues, hormones tell the body it's time to transform. In the case of the soul gorgger, the trigger would be gaining enough XP. And that's just one idea that came to mind. There's a

bunch of other abilities and power-ups that are just waiting to be explored and theorized about. So, head on down to the description and click the link or scan the QR code on screen to download the game today. Find those secrets and tell me about them in the comments below. Thanks again to Diablo Immortal for sponsoring this video. But now, let's learn about how game theory can actually help you win a game of Among Us. So, game theory, it isn't just the name of a really awesome online show that you should totally be subscribed to. The phrase actually originates as the study of constructing mathematical models to analyze strategic interactions among people trying to make rational decisions. That is a really boring

definition for what's otherwise a really cool concept. It's basically the gameplay of Among Us. When you're in a situation where people are going to lie and manipulate information for their own gain, game theory is there to help you figure out what to do. And the first thing I got to tell you to do, my friends, in this game theory about game theory is kill people. Yeah, I know it sounds harsh, but let's face it, this channel is at its best when people are dying by the boatload. But the same holds true for your win loss stats in Among Us. Because there will always be more crew members than imposters. Any economist should be able to tell you the basic consequences of that. Imposttors

being more scarce need to treat their lives as more valuable than those of the crew members who are more abundant. If you're in a 10-player game and a crew member dies, the crew has only lost 12.5% of their team. But if an impostor dies, suddenly they've lost 50% of their team. Might seem like an obvious fact, but it actually comes with several consequences for how you should be playing the game strategically. For one thing, it means that crew members should be looking for opportunities when they can trade their lives for impostor lives. And it means that impostors should be trying to avoid getting themselves into these kinds of situations. Now, written that way, it's a bit confusing, but it becomes a lot

more clear in an example. Let's say that it's early in the game and a crew member, say, I don't know, Alpharad, has stumbled onto another crew member, Disguised Toast, who's standing over a dead body. Disguised Toast is one of our imposters. And while Alpharad doesn't know it for certain, it's pretty easy for him to put two and two together. One dead body plus one suspicious individual equals a probable impostor. So, Alpha calls for a team meeting and says, "Toast just killed someone. I saw him standing over the body." Now, one possible response for Toast is to counter accuse Alpharad. After all, both he and Alpha were near the body. He might come up with his own version of the same story, claiming, "Wait a

minute, Alpharad was the one who killed the crew member, and I was the one who stumbled onto him." I mean, this is a conversation that happens in literally every round of every game of werewolf mafia among us ever, right? But here's the thing. It is absolutely the wrong move to make in this sort of scenario. While it might be tempting for Toast to do this, once Alfred and Disguise Toast accuse each other, the crew knows that one of them is definitely the killer. Even if Toast survives that round, from this point forward, he's a marked man. At that point, the logical thing for the crew to do is just throw them both out of the airlock. True, they might be killing an innocent, but given how

abundant and expendable crew members are, it's a sacrifice that will in the long run preserve more lives and ultimately lead to a higher chance of winning the game. What Toast should do in this situation, and what your optimal play is, is to not counter accuse. Instead, he should try to come up with a lie that doesn't cast blame on Alpharad, saying something like, "I stumbled onto the dead body and was investigating the crime scene to see if the killer was nearby." Granted, people might not believe that story. In fact, they probably won't. but it's your single best chance of surviving the next rounds of voting. And that's the key takeaway here. If you're an imposttor, avoid putting yourself in situations that

allow crew members to sacrifice one of their own in order to get rid of you. On the other side of things, if you're a normal crew member, your main goal in the game is to not look suspicious. You probably were doing that already, but it's important to realize why. Most people want to avoid looking suspicious because it results in them dying by getting thrown out of an airlock. But as we've already established, your life is meaningless in the game. It's a pretty important clause to have added there. Your life in the game is meaningless. Slap that one on a demotivational poster. No, the real reason to avoid looking suspicious is that it distracts your team from identifying the real

killer. If they spend the round throwing you out of the airlock, obviously it sucks that you died, but the real loss here is that they wasted a round that they could have used to potentially identify the real killer. This is the reason why you should always travel in groups, not so much for safety, but rather for information. Because if one of you dies, the other will be left alive to give a report on how it happened. Adding one more wrinkle to this formula, if you're in a game with two impostors, you have to worry about the possibility of a double murder, where two imposters team up to kill two crew members, which means that contrary to what you might be thinking, traveling in groups of three can actually be

better than traveling in a group of four. This also applies to the team meetings. It can be easy to want to skip to the part where you try to accuse the person that you think's the killer, but that more often than not just winds up being a big argument where everyone's tossing out accusations. Rather than starting things off with the question of who seems guilty, start instead with the easier and more evidence-based question of who seems innocent. Determine first where the body was found and who wasn't close enough to have killed him. Then figure out which crew members can verify each other's alibis. Focus on the facts before you move into speculation. Give each person a chance to say where they

were and give them a chance to say anything that could vouch for another crew member's innocence. Once you have a better idea of which crew members seem the most likely to be innocent, you're in a much better position to root out the real killer. Because at that point, you'll know which accusations are coming from people who are actually credible and which crew members are just trying to spread misinformation. And if you're an imposttor, well, you should be trying to do the exact opposite of all of that, but not in the ways that you might initially think. When people think about deception in games like this, they usually think about it in obvious ways, like when you accuse an innocent person

of being the killer. But those kind of lies and misinformation are often the most blatant and easiest to catch. It immediately puts a target on your back. While a false accusation can have short-term benefits, it's often better to focus on the smaller, more subtle ways that you can steer the conversation away from discovering who the real killer is, i.e. you. If someone starts rambling, don't interrupt them. Let them ramble. eat up the time that could have been spent more productively. Then you have room to accuse them by claiming that their rambling might have just been a tactic to waste valuable meeting time.

Try and find subtle ways to go the crew members into wasting time. Ask them questions that seem like legitimate questions but don't actually reveal any sort of useful information. It makes it look like you're contributing to the team when in actuality you're just burning time and adding lots of useless information onto the pile. If the meeting ends with everyone confused and just voting more or less randomly, well, that is usually the ideal outcome for the imposttor. But what about all that time spent outside of team meetings? We already talked about how groups of three are ideal for the normal crew mates. But what should you be doing as the impostor? Since, let's face it, it's the

best part of the game. Well, first off, try to give yourself an alibi. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is by killing someone in a place where their body won't be discovered for a while. After the kill, go hang out with some other crew members, preferably a group that's not near the body. And don't kill anyone else or wander away. When the body finally does get discovered, you'll have a group of people who can report that they spent a bunch of time watching you not killing and they'll be able to vouch for your innocence. Alternatively, if you can't find an isolated individual to kill, instead try to kill in a place that has a lot of people in it, but obviously not close enough to see you do the deed. If

there's a bunch of people who could all plausibly have committed the murder, then most people will be reluctant to vote since there's a high probability that they'd be voting for someone who's innocent. Lastly, team up with your imposttor mates. They are your built-in alibis. As people are breaking off to do chores in the station, go with your imposttor mate and then on the way break apart and each do a kill. As long as you always show up to the group together, no one will ever be the wiser. Vouch for each other as long as you're able to, and you'll go far. The final wrinkle in Among Us that other games like Mafia and Werewolf don't have is the sabotage mechanic, which creates a temporary

problem that the crew either has to go out and fix or just wait out. The sabotage function has a cool down. So, there's this real question of what the best way to sabotage the station is. Should you sabotage the life support system and try to suffocate everyone for an early game over? Should you sabotage the doors to make it harder for the crew to get around the station and complete their tasks? Should you disable the security system? Now, this is probably going to be the most subjective part of this video because it's based on my experience playing with the game's different mechanics and not actual game theory, but I'm firmly of the belief

that the best way to use your limited sabotage opportunities as an impostor is leaving everyone in the dark. Literally, it all comes back to the thing that we've been talking about for this entire episode, information, and specifically the limiting of information. When the lights are off, crew members have a limited vision cone. Well, the imposttor, meanwhile, isn't affected. That gives you a hugeformational advantage. You can see crew members coming before they can see you, which makes it all the easier to plan your escape and get away with murder. That might seem like it's stating the obvious. Duh. Of course, killing the lights makes it harder for the crew members to see you committing murder.

However, the underrated aspect of it is that sabotaging the lights also makes it harder for the crew members to see each other. This means that not only is it easier for you to escape from the crime scene undetected, but it's harder for the crew members to give each other alibis. Not only are you placing less suspicion on yourself, but you're placing more suspicion on all the rest of the crew. Remember, social deduction games are all about deception. I know that's something that a lot of people just intuitively grasp, but it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that deception just means you're good at lying. The thing is, there is way more to deception than just being able to

say, "I'm not the killer," with a straight face. It's about controlling the flow of information, both by spreading misinformation as well as by limiting the crew's ability to access the real truthful information. Hopefully, operating this way will help you if you're an impostor, and it'll help you know what to guard against if you happen to be a crew member. But more importantly than anything in a stupid game, hopefully these are the sorts of lessons you keep in mind out in the real world because there's always going to be someone out there trying to sell you on something that they're not. Consider that episode Among Us 101 to 2011. It's important to master the fundamentals.

You have to learn to walk before you can shoot your tongue through their eyeballs, killing them brutally. But this week, we're getting into graduate level Among Us strategy. level 2,000 IQ tactics that will give you the extra edge you need to come out on top more often. Some you may be familiar with. Most probably not. But when combined, all of these will take you from an experienced player to an elite one. So, no time to mess around. Let's get started. First, I'd like to start with a common rule of thumb that a lot of players seem to have adopted. The idea that when you start a meeting with seven players left alive, you should probably skip voting. It's something that you've

probably heard if you watch a lot of streams of this game. We don't vote on seven, right? That's the rule. And if you ever forget that don't vote on seven rule, Valkyrie will be sure to remind you. Do not vote on seven. WHY ARE WE VOTING ON SEVEN? WELL, it's a rule that streamers and players will often repeat, and it's often a good piece of advice to follow. It's something that might leave some people asking why. The answer actually comes down to some pretty basic math. The overall reason for not voting when you get to seven players is this. If you vote to throw someone out of the airlock

at seven players, then you're down to six players. Obvious math is obvious. Here's the most important part. In a two impostor game, starting a round with six players puts the imposters at a huge, huge advantage. In fact, there's a tactic that they can use that almost guarantees a win in that situation. All they have to do is sabotage reactor or O2, which forces the crew members to come repair it or risk an automatic game over. Then the two imposters just camp there and kill the first two crew members who come and repair it. That just leaves two imposters plus two remaining crew members, equaling an impostor win. It's incredibly difficult for the crew members to avoid this sort

of double kill trap even when they know it's coming. Thus, if there are two imposters remaining, do not set the imposters up for an easy win by letting them start a round with two imposters and only six players. Or, as so many streamers have put it so eloquently so many times, there's good advice there, Ninja. Wait a minute. You were the impostor that round. That's dishonest and twisted and a really good illustration of the next piece of advice today, which is that you shouldn't always blindly trust conventional wisdom. It's true of life in general, and it is especially true in a game like this. The rule of don't vote on seven makes mathematical sense, but keep in mind that an impostor could

always use that rule to try and delay a vote if people are onto their scent, as Ninja does in that clip. If you're playing with a group of people who all play a certain way or expect you to play a certain way, it can often be strategic to buck conventional wisdom. For instance, killing and immediately self-reporting is generally considered to be a noob tactic. It's usually something done by impatient players after making risky kills that they shouldn't have gone for in the first place. Self-reporting is often seen as an obvious ploy that's easy to see through. Most intermediate and advanced players know that a smart player would never kill and self-report. Which means that once you start reaching the

advanced levels, it can sometimes be smart of you to self-report if you're prepared to start a team meeting with a lie that immediately deflects suspicion off of you. Again, most of this depends on what level of gameplay you're dealing with. Ninja's little bit of deception worked there because he was playing with a group of experienced players who understand the quote unquote proper way to play the game and he was able to twist that knowledge and use it against him to survive that round. If you're playing as an impostor with a bunch of smart and experienced players, sometimes the real bigrained play is to be unexpected by doing the thing that no smart or experienced player would ever

think to do. It's reverse psychology. noob tactics win because everyone is overthinking the game. And those are the kinds of galaxy brain strats that tend to work best when you're in a play group of people that you know. But there are also plenty of things to be aware of that will help you out even if you're playing with randoms. And most of them boil down to properly understanding the game's mechanics in and out. First off, when you're a crew member, pay attention to the task completion meter at the top of your screen. You probably know by now that the imposters have the ability to perform fake tasks to blend in with the crew. What you might not realize is that while completing a real task will cause

the team's meter to fill up, the fake tasks won't. So, if someone walks up to perform a task, stands there for a while, and then walks away without the group's task meter going up. Well, that means that they're a big phony who's trying to pull one over on you, and you should consider calling an emergency meeting to let everyone know about it. You were just making it look like you were playing. You're a phony. Hey, this guy is a GREAT BIG PHONY. THIS is also something to be wary of as an impostor. When playing with experienced players who know about this tactic, avoid faking tasks or when you do fake a task, try to time it so you walk away right after the task meter goes up due to someone

somewhere else on the station completing a different task. And obviously that wait until the progress bar goes up before walking away so you can pretend it was you only is going to work if you're performing a long task. If you sit in front of a simple task like wires for 20 seconds waiting for the right moment to fake complete it, you're going to have some explaining to do at the next team meeting. This is one of the areas where the game most rewards you for having specific knowledge and experience. So, be aware of which tasks are long and which are short and which ones have a visual indicator and which ones don't. So, we've just covered one big reason to avoid trying to fake tasks

as an impostor. Another reason not to fake tasks is that it's a waste of time. time that you can use much more productively. While your tasks are fake, your ability to make use of the security cameras and admin panel are very much real. Of the two, admin is by far the most useful. It's great for giving you a quick bird's eye view of who is in what section of the map, which can allow you to quickly identify who's traveling in a large group and who might be all off on their lonesome waiting to get a knife right between the shoulder blades. It can be useful for identifying where your teammate is so you can team up with them for a double kill. And maybe most importantly, it lets you know which

areas of the station might have no people, which can be helpful if you're trying to come up with a fake alibi. Coming up with a fake alibi, like saying, "I was in laboratory," when in fact you were nowhere near laboratory, is usually pretty risky because anyone who was in that area, will be able to call your bluff. But if you use admin to confirm that a certain area of the station is empty, you can then claim to have been there without having to worry that someone else is going to contradict your story. Of course, in a game that's all about deception, the most valuable skill a crew member could have is the ability to spot a liar. And honestly, this is one of the things that humans

are just really bad at. In fact, a 2006 study by psychology researchers at UC Santa Barbara found that when asked to judge lies or truths, the test subjects guessed correctly 54% of the time, only slightly better than the 50% success rate you'd expect if they were guessing completely at random. You might think, "No, that's not me. I'm really good at spotting someone when they're lying." But that just might be you engaging in selfdeception. Because research in another study by psychologists at the University of Missouri and Colombia have shown that people who think they're good at spotting liars are on average no better than the rest of us. That applies even for people whose entire job

revolves around trying to catch people who are lying, like judges, police officers, and customs agents. which is a good reason for court decisions to be based on hard evidence rather than the court's intuitions about who seems to fidget too much when they talk. You might be wondering, what advice could I have to help you spot a liar when I just argue that it's scientifically impossible to identify liars just by listening to them? Well, the answer here is simple. You don't just listen to them. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. And in Among Us, no action is more important than the almighty vote. At the end of each meeting, everyone's votes are made public. And if someone's statements seem

to contradict their voting record, maybe their statements are lies. Of course, this is something that you have to be aware of as an impostor. It means that sometimes you're going to have to vote to throw your partner under the bus or out of the airlock, I suppose. Hey, let's face it, your job as an imposttor is to be a literal backstabber. And sometimes the innocent crew members aren't the only ones that you have to betray in order to ensure your own survival. If everyone is onto your partner and you're the only one who doesn't vote for him, that's going to look pretty sus. But that's all pretty common knowledge by this point. So, here's the next level play that you can take from the crew member side. Look out

for bandwagon jumpers. That person who's always waiting till the last minute to vote, and they might very well be an imposttor who wants to see the way that the wind's blowing before casting their own vote. Imposters will often join the mob when it's obvious that their teammates's been caught by the group, but they'll seldom be the first one to vote to throw their partner into the lava pit. The earlier someone casts their vote to get rid of the impostor, the more likely it is that they're an innocent crew member. And the longer that they wait to vote, the more suspicious they seem to look. It's common knowledge at this point that everyone's votes are public. But people often simply focus on who other players vote for without considering the

important part of when they choose to vote. Paying attention to that will often give you a far better indication of their guilt than just trying to guess based on who sounds suspicious. Of course, as we all know, the best part of the game is being an impostor. And the best part of being an impostor is the killing, where a lot of the strategy comes down to when, where, and who to kill. The biggest thing that you always want to aim for as an imposttor is to kill in places and at times that are hard to catch. That much is obvious, right? And so are all the other tips that follow from that, like the fact that you shouldn't kill anytime you see the cameras flashing red, because that

means that there's someone watching the security feed who will be able to catch you red-handed. Of course, that's basic stuff, right? I'm sure you already knew that you shouldn't ever kill someone while the cameras are blinking red and you've never ever lost a game by making that simple rookie mistake, right? Of course, if you're playing in a game where everyone is properly aware of how the cameras work, you can use the blinking red indicator to your advantage. Let's say you're a crew member and on cameras you spot someone who looks like they're about to kill someone. Obviously, they'd never do it while you're watching. They're probably waiting until the red light goes out to do the deed. That means that you can

sometimes bait people by getting off the cameras for just a second so that the red blinker goes off and then immediately hopping back on, possibly in time to actually witness the kill or at the very least see a dead body with knowledge of the obvious culprit. And conversely, if you're the imposttor, don't get baited by someone trying to do this to you. If you're about to make a kill and the cameras start blinking, it's probably time to move on and find a new target rather than just sitting there waiting for the person in security to stop watching cameras. So, that's the win of the kill. As for the wear, well, avoiding being seen doesn't just mean staying off the security feed. It also

means that you should avoid killing in hightra areas of the map. For instance, when playing on Skele, it's extra risky to try and kill in the cafeteria storage, which are the two rooms on the map that have three entrances. Even if someone isn't there to witness you doing the deed, it's highly likely that someone will pass through the area to find the body sooner, which means less time for you to separate yourself from the body and give yourself a potential alibi, and less time for your teammate or you to get a second kill in before the next team meeting is called. Other hightra areas where you generally want to avoid killing also include obvious places like hallways, especially the Y

connector on Meera HQ. Also, be aware of rooms that have multiple entrances. Those rooms often get used as thorough affairs that people pass through on their way to other parts of the station. If you're playing on polace, killing in a place like specimen room, laboratory, or admin is almost no different than killing someone in a hallway. Avoid it if at all possible. And of course, there's the final question of who to kill. This is honestly something that I think a lot of players overemphasize. Often times, the best kill is just the one that you can get away with regardless of who it is. And if it becomes clear that you're stalking a specific player, that can often be a dead giveaway. That being said, when

prioritizing who to kill, it's often best to avoid people who the group views as suspicious. Partly, this is because sometimes the crew will do the job for you by voting to throw their teammate into the lava pit. But mostly, it's because as long as that suspicious crew member is alive, it deflects suspicion off of you and your partner. If that player gets voted out of the airlock, great. But if they split the vote in a way that results in no one getting voted out, that's fine for you, too. That just means more time for you to spend killing, obviously. Then it follows from this that if you're avoiding killing players who are suspicious, you should try to be targeting players who are

cleared and known to be innocent. If someone was seen doing a visual task early in the round, they're never going to be killed by getting thrown out of the airlock. So that leaves the task of killing them to you. Remember, confirmed innocents are one of the few sources of reliable information that the crew has. The fewer confirmed innocents there are, the less crew members will be able to trust each other in the team meetings. Your job isn't just to rack up a body count. Your job is to seow uncertainty and doubt. So, when the crew has certainty about someone's innocence, consider making that person your primary target. Of course, Among Us isn't a game whose strategy can be reduced to a simple

flowchart, which is the inherent limitation of any strategy guide or advice video like this one. Winning in Among Us requires you to adjust on the fly based on who you're playing with. Which means that maybe the best advice of all comes from my dear friend Bear Grills. Improvise. Adapt, overcome. Coming across YouTube, the IQ escalation for Among Us has been unreal. And of course, no one can compare to Disguise Toes who back in August was pulling off 200 IQ strats, but has gradually leveled up his skills to the 5,000 plus range. That, my friends, is what we call power creep. Something that Toast, as a Hearthstone player, should know a thing or two about. Also, fun fact, did you

know that the name Disguise Toast is actually a reference to a line from a Hearthstone card? Disguise Toast. more, you know. But for as much of a meme as high IQ plays in Among Us have become, does high IQ actually matter in the game. Is IQ really the thing that's going to help you win something that's all about social deduction and deception? And if it's not, then what do we need to win? That, my friends, is our bigrained question of the day. And to untangle the knot, we first need to understand what exactly IQ is measuring in the first place. IQ is short for intelligence quotient and is designed to measure human intelligence. No duh, right? Everyone knows that. But do they

understand that? Because IQ isn't actually what a lot of people assume it is. Examples of questions that you might encounter on an IQ test are things like this. Which number should come next in the following pattern? 4 10 22 46. If you recognize that each number in the sequence is multiplied by two and then added to two, congratulations. A winner is you. The answer is 94. Here's another one. Book is to reading as fork is to the answer here is eating. It's a basic analogy like the type you'd see on a standardized test like the SATs. You use a book to read. You use a fork to eat. Now, if questions like these strike you as incredibly basic, almost the kind of thing that a grade schooler could do,

well, it's kind of the point. For example, questions like, "What year was the Declaration of Independence signed?" or "What city is the capital of Poland?" don't really test how good you are at thinking. They're mostly measures of whether you memorized a fact well enough to regurgitate it. It's pure trivia. Likewise, during an IQ test, you're probably not going to get quizzed on the quadratic formula or the chemical composition of table salt. IQ's aim is to be a measure of human intelligence, not necessarily human knowledge or experience. The idea is that while people accumulate knowledge throughout their lifetime, intelligence is innate problem solving. It's believed to be something that you just have and

something that remains relatively consistent throughout your life. And research actually supports this. IQ researchers have found that people who are tested for IQ when they're young tend to maintain similar scores as they get older. And studying also doesn't seem to help all that much. A 1995 study found that subjects who underwent rigorous test prep did score higher on IQ tests, but the improvement was relatively small, between two and six points. That's not a whole heck of a lot when you consider that IQ is measured on a scale that goes up to around 200. And if you're wondering why I said it goes up to around 200 points, it's because the scale is constantly getting recalibrated. 100 is meant to be the

baseline, representing the average IQ, and 68.26% of people fall between 85 and 115. But what that score of 100 means has actually shifted over the years. A study comparing children's test scores in 2008 to test scores in 1942 found that modern kids were scoring an average of 14 points higher than their old school counterparts. If you're looking for an explanation as to why, one explanation that researchers came up with was that during the 20th century, people were powering their cars with leaded gasoline. And it turns out that lead is, go figure, really toxic and causes permanent brain damage. The US didn't ban the sale of leaded fuel until 1996. 1996, man. Wow. It got banned in

the EU even later in 2000. We've also gotten better about banning things like leaded paint. So, it turns out that when people aren't breathing in neurotoxins, they happen to score better on tests designed to measure brain function. Who would have guessed? Anyway, to give a few reference points for what high IQ actually means, a score of 120 indicates that someone scored higher than 90% of people, while an IQ of 125 indicates that he scored higher than 95% of people. 135 IQ puts you in the top 1%. 146 IQ puts you at the top.1%. And someone with 200 IQ would be smarter than 99.9999999987% of humanity. In fact, as of right now, it is literally impossible to score 250 IQ on the test cuz it's a measure of how

much smarter you are compared to other people. To be precise, for all the stat nerds out there, it's based on how many standard deviations separate you are from the mean, which means that there literally aren't enough people on planet Earth to get you to a score that high. So, Disguise Toast actually had it right the first time. 200 IQ, smart play, but still within the realm of possibility. And every video title after that has just been clickbait. We're included in that category, too, to be honest. True story. We actually debated whether or not we wanted to keep it accurate to true IQ scores, but we decided not to and just play along with the memes.

Meanwhile, we all just need to tremble in fear considering that Alakazam, the Pokémon, apparently, according to the Pokédex, has an IQ of 5,000. So, that's a little bit about IQ, but can having a higher IQ actually make you better at video games? Yes. Or to be more precise, better at certain kinds of video games? In a series of studies, researchers at University of York found that among both League of Legends and Dota 2 players, the higher you go in matchmaking rank, the higher the average IQ of the player becomes. The thought is that because League of Legends and Dota are at their core real-time strategy games involving lots of complex decisions in short time frames, having a turboowered brain

really helps out. On the other hand, the same researchers looked at data from firstperson shooter players and found different results there. Apparently, when it comes to FPS games, the biggest predictor of good performance isn't IQ. It's actually age. People who did best were younger players whose more nimble fingers and quicker reflexes put them at an advantage. So, how does Among Us fit into all this? Well, the most important part of Among Us is the team meeting, where the main skill being tested is social deduction. How good you are at deceiving people as an imposttor and how good you are at spotting lies as a crew member. So, do the high IQ players really have the advantage when it comes

to that part of the game? As it turns out, yeah, research shows that a higher IQ tends to come bundled with better theory of mind. Basically, theory of mind is your ability to understand what other people are thinking. You're able to predict or intuitit the thoughts and reactions of other people, which in turn lets you model your behavior based on how they're going to respond. It's basically in a strategy game when you're thinking three moves ahead, or those moments when you say, "Ha, I knew you would do that. That's why I laid my trap there." It's pretty critical to any game that involves trying to outsmart another player. It's sort of putting yourself in the other player's shoes. A sort of if I

do X, then knowing what I know about that person, I can predict that they would most likely respond by doing why. In a game of Among Us, this could be as simple as realizing that Pokemon was suspicious of Toast the entire game. Which means that if I kill and report a body in a place near where Toast is hanging out, Pokémon will most likely try to vote Toast into the lava. And in turn, Pokei could apply theory of mind in response to that, realizing, "Wait a minute. If the imposttor knows that I've been suspicious of Toast the entire game, they might try to frame him in the next kill. So, I should probably be a bit skeptical of anyone who reports a body near Toast." That kind of game of cat-and- mouse is all about

understanding how other people think and using that to predict their behavior, aka theory of mind. So, what does this all tell us? Well, it seems that the high IQ players might truly be the elite Among Us in Among Us. Except there's one other group that may be able to beat them. The only thing stronger than being smart is being a wizard. You're a wizard, Harry. Seriously, let me introduce you to the strange science of truth wizards. Yes, this is a real scientific thing. And yes, the academic name is truth wizard. So, on a previous episode of Game Theory, all about the strategy of Among

Us, I mentioned that people on average are really bad at detecting lies. In a test where people were asked to judge a series of statements as truth or lies, they guessed correctly 54% of the time, barely better than the 50% you'd expect from random chance. So, humans are bad at detecting lies in general. Further research on the subject found that a few people are absolute wizards when it comes to spotting lies. Quote from the study, "Wizards of deception detection are rare individuals who achieve scores of 80% or higher." Most people's accuracy on these tests is about 50%, as would be expected by chance alone. Of more than 15,000 people tested, only 47 have been classified. Basically, these

people are natural-born lie detectors. Now, being a wizard comes with a few caveats. These rare individuals have a harder time evaluating strangers. They also tend to work better if they're able to use facial expressions because a lot of their abilities come with recognizing microlevel changes to vocal and physical cues. The better grasp these wizards have on a person's normal speech patterns, the easier it is for them to tell when that person's speech is different from normal. It might come in real handy if you find yourself sitting across the table from a possible liar. But in a typical game of Among Us, you're not going to have any chance to read a person's facial expressions. At

best, you have yourself the voice chat. So, am I saying that you either have to be super smart or a literal wizard to be good at Among Us? Of course not. For instance, if you want to do better at an IQ test, one of the most effective ways is to simply try harder. Yep. In a study done on IQ scores, it found that when people were offered incentives, like receiving money as a reward for higher scores, it resulted in an average score increase of as much as 10 points, better than when they heavily studied, like we talked about earlier. Which means that the single best way to get good in an IQ test is by, you know, playing with Mr.

Beast. Winners get $10,000 if they beat me in a game of rock, paper, scissors. But in all seriousness, the biggest and most important factor is practice. You could take the biggestrained genius in the world and put them in front of a computer, and they're probably not going to do too hot at their first game of Among Us, especially compared to someone who's had like even a dozen games under their belt. Consider a game like chess, which seems like the ultimate thinking man's game. You'd think that high IQ players would have an advantage in chess, and you'd be right, but only to a certain point. As it turns out, raw intelligence is no match for experience.

Research found that practice accounted for 34% of the variance in skill levels between chess players, while difference in intelligence only accounted for 5%. Much like being born naturally tall doesn't automatically make you a good basketball player, being born with naturally high intelligence doesn't automatically make you good at games like chess or Among Us, you may start with an advantage with a higher IQ. But how you choose to apply it makes all the difference in the world. All that was enough to get me to pick up the game once again. And when I did, I was struck by one huge detail that we'd overlooked in our past theories on how to win the

game. A detail that is perhaps the highest IQ strategy of them all. The one crucial detail that makes a massive difference in any match that you're playing. Even before the impostor is selected, your color. You see, every single emergency meeting, you always hear a single phrase uttered. The iconic meme, red is sus. It has its own Urban Dictionary page. It's got its own t-shirt. Heck, it's even got its own 38 million view song from the channel Shiloh and Bros. threat us. In a game that's all about avoiding detection and not raising suspicion, hearing those words is practically a death sentence. So, of course, it got my theorist cogs a turn in. Is Red indeed sus? Well, obviously, the actions of the player in the game are going to have a

massive impact on whether they're suspected or not. There are also a lot of subconscious variables at play in every match, factors that affect the way that the game is going to go, even before the imposttor is chosen. Appearances do matter, and that's going to affect everything from job interviews in the real world to games of Among Us. And color is immediately one of the first traits that we see, which begs the question, is red actually the sussiest color in Among Us? What color is most likely to draw suspicion if you're the imposttor? And best of all, what color choice is going to be the best at throwing off suspicion so your name isn't tossed around during the next

emergency meeting? Strap in, theorists, cuz I'm about to blow this whole airlock wide open. Now, I'm sure we're all familiar with the phrase, never judge a book by its cover, right? There's just one problem with that. It is fundamentally opposed to our programming as human beings. We are designed to make snap judgments based on immediate appearances. It is essentially a leftover survival instinct. If something looks dangerous, it's best to avoid it for our own survival. And one of the first factors that we're going to process is color. Color psychology is the study of how colors affect human mood and behavior. For instance, studies have shown that white colored pills are

associated with greater pain relief and red pills are associated with stronger stimulant properties. Other studies have shown that the color red can prompt people to react with greater speed and force. Something as simple as color can even affect your performance on a test. When college students were given one of three colored numbers, red, green, or black, and then asked to take a simple test, those with the red numbers scored more than 20% lower than those presented with either the green or black numbers. That is a huge difference all from witnessing a different color prior to taking the test. On the complete other end of the spectrum, colors like blue have shown themselves to have a calming

effect on people. Some studies have even shown that looking at the color blue literally release endorphins that help you physically calm down. All of these very real effects happening simply by looking at different colors. So given that science has proven time and again that we have both physical and mental reactions to color, how can we use this knowledge to our advantage in a game like Among Us? Which color is most likely to trigger your crew members suspicions? Well, believe it or not, but one of the most sus colors isn't red. It's actually yellow. This is backed by both science and history. Let's just cover the science first, shall we? Our eyes use two different types of photo

receptors, rods and cones. The rods are for vision at low levels of light. Cones, meanwhile, are the ones that are dealing with color. In fact, there are actually three different types of cones, each one with sensitivity to a different color range. Because two of the three have reasonably high sensitivities in the green range, humans are able to process more shades of green than any other color. But not all greens are created equally. When you break down our biological sensitivity to light, our eyes work best at the light wavelength of 555 nanome. That means that under normal lighting conditions, our eyes are most sensitive to a yellowish green color. In other words, during an emergency meeting, if you're either

green or yellow, you're going to be the one that your crew mate's eyes are naturally drawn towards. Making matters worse is that throughout human history, the color yellow has been associated with feelings of deceit and betrayal. Why? Well, to find out, let's just take a trip back to 500 AD when post-class art was beginning to take shape. During this time period, artists were working hard to recreate scenes from the Bible. There was just one problem with that. The Bible isn't very descriptive about what people were wearing. That meant that the artists had to make some creative choices. And one trend that stuck, they dressed Judas Escariat, the disciple that betrayed Jesus and

ultimately caused his crucifixion, in yellow. This appeared in so many works of art at the time that people just eventually began to associate the color yellow with traitors and liars. In 16th century Spain, for instance, they literally dressed those accused of heresy in yellow capes to show their betrayal to the Spanish Inquisition. And the color has lived in infamy ever since. Banana. You see, don't you just want to yeet it out of an airlock? But then what about green? I just talked about how green is the color that pops the best for our eyes. Is that a sussy color, too? No. At first glance, it certainly feels like

green and guilt should go handin hand. After all, it's the go-to color used by animation companies to show evil magic. Maleficent and Sleeping Beauty, Rasputin and Anastasia, Ursula and Little Mermaid and Bruno's Fortuneelling and Encanto. It's a color that's constantly associated with treacherous villains, strange potions, toxicity. That said, any negative connotations of the color are far outweighed by its natural sense of calm. Green is not a creative color. Sure, it might not be, but it is a relaxing color. In a 2020 study, 39% of people said that green made them feel relaxed and content. Again, this is one of those primal instinct things. Our bodies want to be in nature. We are

programmed to eat nice green plants because green means health and vibrancy. It means safety. As such, we're naturally inclined to trust green things more than most other colors. So, green is good and yellow is sus. What other colors should we be on the lookout for? Well, in 2020, some researchers from University College London asked over 400 people to pick a color from a color generation website that they associated with feelings of guilt. Number two came in as black. And number one was our good old buddy red. Let's just start with black. You see, black is an interesting color. It's naturally paired with dark emotions like sadness, depression, and fear. It also feels dark and shadowy, as

if you're trying to purposely hide something. That said, it might be hiding too well. A study of what car colors tend to get into the most accidents showed that the riskiest car to drive is a black car because its darker colors make it blend in more with the surrounding area. So, in an emergency meeting, even though black is paired with more negative connotations, if you keep your mouth shut, you should be fine. That said, if someone does bring up your name, be careful and play humble. Black is actually considered to give impressions of high authority and dominance. Think about black belts in martial arts or the black diamonds on ski slopes. Both show a level of mastery and skill. You are one of the elite.

It's why villains wear black. Same thing for judges. It puts them into positions of power and authority, which is why lawyers actually recommend that their clients do not wear black to court because it doesn't give people the impression that you're innocent or willing to listen. Instead, it makes you look powerful, aggressive, and in those contexts, guilty. Something that you're also looking to avoid in an emergency meeting. Which now brings us back to where this whole question first started. Red. How sus is red? Well, in addition to being highly associated with guilt like black and being a bright, visible color like yellow, red has a few other things that are working against it.

First, red is obviously the color of danger and warnings. Like I mentioned at the top of the episode, seeing red makes you perform worse on tests. Red can also cause heart rates to rise and blood pressures to increase. All of these things are going to be working against your ability to convince others that you're innocent. But what deals red another killing blow is the psychological phenomenon called the recency effect. If it wasn't obvious, the recency effect is about how humans remember the most recent information they're presented with best. A Harvard University study showed that approximately four pieces of information can be held in short-term memory at a given time. This is because most information in short-term memory only

lasts between 15 and 30 seconds. Meaning that people are going to tend to rely more heavily on the last few things they've seen when making a decision. How's that at all related to Among Us? Well, both the emergency meeting button and the animation it creates use the color red, which immediately gets people thinking about that color in a negative and suspicious light. Red is the color on the top of everyone's mind going into the meeting because it's the one that they literally just saw flash across the screen. But the final nail in Red's coffin, the psychological effect of priming. Priming is when you expose the

brain to something which then influences how you react to something else. Probably best explained through an example. If I show you these three words, noodle, bowl, stew, and then I ask you to complete this word s blank p. What do you think you're going to say? Science shows that you're most likely to say the word soup over the other completely acceptable answer of soap because I've already activated a bunch of words in your brain around the idea of soup. noodle, bowl, stew. Your brain has been primed to think about soup. If I had done the exact opposite and said bath, bubble, shampoo, now I'm able to switch your brain's priming, and you would have been more likely to have thought soap first. It can also be

something as simple as saying the phrase, I've always subscribed to the belief that soup is better than stew. By saying the word subscribe, I've actually primed you for that idea so that later in the video when I ask you to subscribe, you're more likely to do it. Anyway, how does any of this apply to Among Us? Well, Red is front and center in the game's artwork. He's the icon for the game on Twitter. He is the first color that people think of when they think of characters from this game. And not only is he the most prominent, he's also the most likely to be visualized as the impostor in all the marketing. Take a look at their holiday merch page. The first thing you see is Red as the

impostor with fangs and a long tongue. There are two t-shirts with Red having an impostor shadow or holding a knife. Heck, the official Among Us VR page on Steam has Red standing over a dead crew mate telling us to keep our mouths shut. Everything is priming your brain to connect the idea of red and impostor. So that when the time comes to suggest who to yeet out of the airlock, red is always going to be the one that people pay attention to and throw under the bus. So if your goal when you become the imposttor is to win, the best thing to do is start steering clear of red, black, and yellow. All of this being said, what color should you be picking if you don't want to immediately be

called out? Well, there are two routes depending on your gaming style. If you're an experienced player who wants to be involved in the emergency meetings, choose blue. Not only does the color blue release relaxation endorphins into the brain, it's also the color that science repeatedly shows is the most closely associated with trustworthiness. There is, however, one more solution that can keep you out of trouble, and that's by staying out of the minds of your fellow players. In 2021, the game updated to add six more colors to the roster: maroon, rose, coral, gray, tan, and banana.

No, stop it. Now, based on everything we've talked about today, any of these could be a winning choice. Why? Because their strength is the exact opposite of red's weakness. While red is the poster child for all things Among Us, none of these new colors have really seen the light of day, and they're played significantly less than any of the primary colors. In 2021, Inner Sloth released their statistics around the most and least played colors. Red, black, white, and rose were the top four, while gray, maroon, brown, and tan were rounding out the bottom. Banana and coral, meanwhile, were mixed into the lower middle. In short, all that means is that these new colors aren't primed for anything. And because they're not

bright primary colors, they don't come with strong prepackaged emotional connotations. Pastels are just softer colors. And as such, they evoke softer emotions. They're light and delicate. They're the supports rather than the leads. In meetings, you want people to focus on the big loud orange guy in the corner, not the little old cream colored you standing quietly off to the side. Tan, for instance, being a lighter version of brown gives a sense of dependability and stability, and in design is used more as a background color. It's unassuming, which is perfect when you don't want people to start thinking about what you've been doing in

the game. Meanwhile, gray is your other best choice. It's also a pale color, but unlike banana and tan, it doesn't evoke feelings of anything really. Gray is just the most blank of blank canvases. Also, have you taken a look at the maps recently? They all lean heavily into the grays as a color choice, which makes a lot of sense. It's a lot of machinery, spaceships, space stations, all things made out of gray metals. Other characters will notice a green character running past them, but gray, not so much. And this holds true in real life, too. Gray cars are actually the second least likely to be noticed on the roads because they blend in with their

surroundings. So, there you have it. If you want to give yourself the best chance of not being called sus, your best choices are the newer, lighter colors like gray, tan, and banana. These are going to be doing the best job of keeping you out of the interrogation spotlight as long as you manage to keep your mouth shut. Blue, meanwhile, is a strong secondary choice, especially if you plan on being a more active player. But the biggest takeaway of all is that the memes are true. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Top dog of sussiness is in fact the king of the memes, Red. Not just because he's popular, but because people naturally associate Red with guilt, with warnings, and because Inner Sloth has been

sabotaging Red every single game from the start with their marketing. It's not just a meme. It's science and psychology. And as always, my friends, remember, it's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching. World premiere on Game Theory. Mario's heroes are hiding some dark secrets.