The more that intelligent people socialise with their friends, the less satisfied they are with life, new research finds.The finding challenges the accepted idea that socialising generally makes people happier. It may be that for some people โ especially those with high intelligence โ socialising does not increase life satisfaction.
The possible reason why is intriguing...
The long-term study followed adults aged between 18 and 28-years-old. It looked at the density of the population and people's satisfaction with life. The results showed that, in general, people who lived in less densely populated areas were more satisfied with life.
As the authors themselves explain:
"Residents of rural areas and small towns are happier than those in suburbs, who in turn are happier than those in small central cities, who in turn are happier than those in large central cities."It also showed that the more that most people socialised, the happier they were. The exception was for people with high intelligence.
The explanation is that with intelligence comes more of a focus on long-term projects and goals. Socialising may provide a distraction from these types of long-term satisfying projects. The authors also provide an evolutionary explanation for why smart people may find socialising doesn't make them as happy as other people.
The idea, they say, is that higher intelligence allows smarter people to better adapt to the modern world. The human race is no longer a hunter-gatherer species that needs close contact with its social group. Intelligent people, they say, are better able adapt to the new, less pack-oriented, way of living.
Whatever you may think of the evolutionary explanation, the ideas are certainly fascinating.
The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Li & Kanazawa, 2016).
Reader Comments
with stupid people makes more intelligent people less happy. Imagine that...
Howso?
Smart people have 'purchased' more shares in the futuristic Hell which the earth's dictatorial, strongarm and war and violence happy leaders have always made the long term goal, as well them making this 'future' Hell as much a part of the present day as possible, for the run-of-the-mill human, not to mention the animals and plants and geological and environmental structures. This smart people behavior factually is centuries and centuries of such acquiring of these 'shares' and being an integral part of the looming and growing psychopathy. One can look at Da Vinci's 'track record' (where he got his money from) as just one example. One can look at Einstein and Tesla (who supported and encouraged them?)....one can look at many smart people, the high end 'achievers' in the modern thought and production, science and technology, industry and economy realms. They are almost all psychos of one degree or another and form the psycho hierarchy, I often talk about.
Smart people are as gullible or actually, more gullible than the rest of the population. They are also more useful, for purposes of thinking up, designing and creating the all important instruments (and the 'logical' arguments) of oppressive fascism and government totalitarianism.
Why listen to your heart, your conscience or any other thing, when the high and mighty IQ is telling you to grab and receive great and wonderful rewards with the uhh 'loving' help and approval of the world's most powerful leaders? Why be like the lowend dogs and the inferiors?
The Devil is very sly and very intellectual and even 'logical', so he appeals to the logical intellectual.
And will continue to do so, even as the earth and its magnificent and mighty 'warrior population' and all living things therein dwindle into total darkness and absolute mayhem.
Have a nice day and, a smart one.
Perhaps some of you really smart asses who are unhappy are thinking of your death. Where have your leaders and your ambitions led you?
ned, out
But intelligence puts a barrier to this- the ability to analyze breaks the magic of "going with the flow".
However, not every intelligent person is wise. Some of them are still very much mechanical- just in a different way than the "go with the flow" folks.
Duh....duh....duh...duh-CHOO!
After some serious soul searching, I started to come to the conclusion that I don't want to be around people in general because they all seem to be asleep.
They focus all of their energy on things like making money, dating and who's going to be the next president.
I tried to get them to focus on things that really matter, such as the state of their own souls, and for the most part this has fallen on deaf ears. They don't want to accept the truth that history provides for us and they would rather blithely succumb to the inevitable end that ignorance will provide them.
This article helped me to understand that there is a very simple reason that I don't want to associate with regular people anymore. They are stupid.
They may have adequate intelligence to learn the truth of things, yet they would rather live in ignorance than face reality.
I've become totally fed up with that attitude and I guess that I finally hit the boiling point of where I just can't stand it anymore.
I have decided that I will leave myself available to anyone who has the desire to expand their knowledge about these things, but for the most part I will be keeping to myself.
God help me if my thoughts centered around who "won the big game", Prancing with the stars, or whatever the drivel of the day might be.
For me, it comes down to intellectual curiosity. I have a hard time relating to anyone who lacks it. That's it in a nutshell. .