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posted by janrinok on Monday December 19 2016, @05:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the appealing-to-a-community-of-loners dept.

A story at Inverse, covers research that concludes that Evolution Made Really Smart People Long to Be Loners:

Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us. Being in nature brings us joy. And, for most people, frequent contact with good friends makes us feel content.

That is, unless you're really, really smart.

In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology , researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.

[...] To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the survey responses of 15,197 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28. Their data was a part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — a survey that measures life satisfaction, intelligence, and health...

Intelligence is believed to have evolved as a psychological mechanism to solve novel problems — the sort of challenges that weren't a regular part of life. For our ancestors, frequent contact with friends and allies was a necessity that allowed them to survive. Being highly intelligent, however, meant an individual was more likely to be able to solve problems without another person's help, which in turn diminished the importance of their friendships.

[...] That certainly doesn't mean that if you enjoy being around your friends that you're unintelligent. But it does mean that the really smart person you know who spends much of their time alone isn't a sad loner — they probably just like it that way.

In my estimation, the community here is above-average in intelligence so I am curious: How many of you are loners? Do you prefer the company of yourself to the company of others?


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:18PM (#443240)

    Sounds about right. Cannabis makes my thought process go all haywire so even though it's therapeutic, I prefer to be alone while high. My social drug of choice is a few strong shots. Same effect, brings the IQ down to where I can socialize. I think there was even a study with better data that supported that smart people like to drink a lot.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:50PM (#443256)

    You two are full of yourselves. You aren't any different from "dumb" people.

    It isn't about "lowering your IQ" its about dis-inhibition.
    Intoxication has always been used to facilitate socialization. Liquor isn't called a social lubricant for nothing.

  • (Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Monday December 19 2016, @07:45PM

    by Hawkwind (3531) on Monday December 19 2016, @07:45PM (#443283)

    Fanciful thought, what if Einstein avoided the Neils Bohr summer get togethers because even all those wildly smart physicists were too far beneath him. Even with all the free beer [ixquick-proxy.com]?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @10:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @10:14PM (#443390)

      proper image link, [nww2m.com] without the hella funky non-functional proxy redirect.