Speaking as a psychometrician and someone who used, studied, and now teaches people about IQ test, I can assure you we are not right.
Can you elaborate? (Not challenging; truly trying to learn.) Are you saying that those with lower IQs have roughly the same impulse control and ability to consider longer time frames as everyone else? Just making sure I understand correctly.
Given how many smart people I know who have burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars, had homes foreclosed on after getting negative amortization loans, drive Mercedes but have almost no retirement savings, etc., I tend to agree that smart people suck at those things about as much as less smart people. They just have a lot more cushion so that when their water heater breaks, they can probably find places to cut so they can still buy food.
I really hope psychestache weighs in because I'm very interested in what they have to say, and this is potentially unrelated but my understanding is that you reach a point on the upper levels of IQ where you can have just as much problem getting along in society as you do at the lower levels.
I have really come to like the idea of neuro typical vs. atypical. I feel like I've read some research that indicates brains at either end of the spectrum work differently than brains in the middle. Additionally I've read that optimal IQ for "success" is around 120.
Well, I guess I shouldn't try to sneak in short comments and then ghost the board for a few days. :)
So, I'm gonna try to dig deeper into some of what I was talking about, but I guess I can start by trying to answer the question.
(as a quick sidenote, if you see me say IQ test, please assume that is short-hand for standardized norm-reference IQ assessment)
In a short answer: No, I believe the data we have shows that there is no predictive validity to IQ as it relates to self-regulation and attention skills. They have some correlation, but not to any significant degree where we can confidently identify a link. For one small example, we know that individuals with ADHD, who universally have deficits with impulse control and attention, have a full range of outcomes on IQ tests.
In a longer answer: I say that 'we are not right' because to we have too many significant issues with our ideas of IQ to say with real certainty what we are doing.
First off, we do not have a single unitary concept of IQ. My joke in training is 'There are as many different ideas about what IQ is as there are available grants." Some would include the constructs of attention, self-management, and impulse control as part of what makes up IQ and is inseparable. Some identify it as a separate, but related, construct (most commonly as a group of skills referred to as 'executive functioning'), and others say it is a separate and unrelated construct.
There is a lot of research ongoing, but it is best thought of as work going on in parallel trenches. All of these people are digging around in the IQ fields, but none of them are popping up and peeking at what others are doing (unless it is to slam one another work in an industry journal). So we have a lot of noise about what we know about attention and IQ.
Also, in most cases, we have some issues with validity of IQ test results themselves. It is clear that what we are measuring is important, because one of the best correlates for IQ test results is academic achievement, but its hard to say if what we measure is truly IQ (that's assuming that there is even a valid way to measure an 'overall' IQ).
I fear this has turned into a rambling mess, but hopefully that answers some questions (or prompts some new ones).
P.S. For those of you who keep mentioning and referencing the 'marshmallow test', you should know that the study that comes from is part of the ongoing 'replication crisis' in psychological research in our field and has issues. Here's a decent article that goes over some of the major points:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/