At least, that’s what a recent study in the British Journal of Psychology claims. The question that evolutionary psychologists Kanazawa and Li were looking to answer is what makes a life well-lived and how intelligence, population density and friendship can affect our happiness.
The psychologists theorized that the lifestyle of our ancient ancestors form the basis of what makes us happy in modern times,
“Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ life satisfaction in the ancestral environment may still increase our life satisfaction today.”
Their study was carried out on 15,000 adults aged between 18 – 28 and their results weren’t actually all that surprising.
Firstly, their findings showed that people who lived in more densely populated areas were less satisfied with their life in general, compared to those who live in less populated areas.
The second finding that the psychologists discovered was that the more social a person is with their close friends, the greater they said their happiness was.
These correlations were diminished or even reversed when the results of intelligent people were analyzed. In other words – when smart people spend time with their friends, it makes them less happy.
Why would intelligent people not gain happiness when they’re around close family and friends? There may be many explanations, including the one given by Carol Graham, a researcher who studies the economics of happiness,
“The findings in here suggest (and it is no surprise) that those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it … are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer-term objective.“
This generally makes sense since those intelligent people are so focused on achieving their intellectual goals, anything that takes away from those ambitions makes them unhappy.
The modern day human life has changed rapidly since our ancestors’ time and with technological advances rapidly improving, there may be a kind of mismatch between our brains and the way our bodies are designed to handle situations, according to Kanazawa and Li.
So there we have it. We thought that human interaction would make people happier, but it turns out intelligent people are better off alone.
What do you think of these recent findings? Do you agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments.
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I agree
I'm as dumb as a bag of rocks. My IQ is probably in the low 70s. It takes me much longer to learn new things. I'm Ok with this, because people have very few expectations from me. I like being alone, and I think that being average/below average is a gift that not many others appreciate. I like surprising myself and others with what I can do, and if I can't do something or if it takes me longer to do something I don't beat myself up over it. I just keep plugging along at my own pace. I think highly intelligent people are usually pretty lazy, because everything comes too easily to them. When something is hard or if they have to overcome an obstacle, they roll over and quit or they half ass it. It is a rare exception for people to be both ambitious and highly intelligent.
I agree with you in part. My IQ is a 141 and I work a blue collar job. There are things that attributed to my underachievement in my younger years, some of them out of my control,some of them just laziness. It took me until after I had 2 children to really want to go somewhere in life but by then I just didn’t have the time to be able to accomplish it. I do like to be alone, I do feel let down by most people in terms of meaningful conversation, but more than anything I feel let down by myself because because I know I could’ve been more. What I know is that your desire to achieve, to learn from your mistakes, and overcome adversity, is more important than raw intelligence any day- and I commend you for realizing your own strengths and weaknesses and loving yourself for both!
I am always amused when reading how people without a particular quality (eg intelligence, wealth, etc.) try to (characteristically) describe, explain, moralize or otherwise pretend to understand something they know nothing about. Like most things in life, having the actual experience of something, especially for years and years, is usually far different than the imagination of one without any true direct experience. Anyway, I am blown away by the theory. I believe it’s dead on - especially the part about population density preferences. An uncommonly insightful contribution to the field...but I would love to read how “self-important, tradition-focused” academicians tear this apart;-)
A bunch of know it alls comment on the same article??? You're not that smart, cookie.
I have had varying degrees of trouble being around people for about 30 years even though I like them and am optimistic about social events whilst participating in them. I don't have social anxiety. I seem to have super sensors for lies, narcissism, social climbing, self promotion, lack of self awareness, poor rationalisation and logic, too much faith in thoughts, addiction, anxiety, selfishness, denial of the authentic self, social acceptance seeking, controlling behaviours ...the list is fairly long. I find reading posted discussions on the internet and coercion on social media distressing because I am not with the person posting and not able to integrate with them as a whole complex loving beings.
So I have had to seek inside myself the grace and compassion to get past what I see and commit myself to people as possible friends. I don't always have these gifts inside me and that's when I come up feeling empty after a social event. Perhaps what I have described is a type of "intelligence" but I think of it as intuitively receiving energetic messages and less about a type of brain oriented intellect. I think of it more like an emotional physics. I'm also a mathematician and would prioritise achieve my goals when I plan my day over most things. I don't care about being smart, compared to the Universe or God, we are all totally stupid every minute of everyday all our lives. If I have a higher intellect, it's marginal compared to the depth of Creation.