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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?
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday December 19 2016, @08:47PM
Yeah, I think my experiences run parallel to yours. I have a handful of friends who I truly enjoy spending time with. I've known most of them for about 15 years. We all enjoy a similar train of thought most of the time with enough variations that it's quite insightful to run things past them. We usually meet, also, to play RPGs around a table in someone's basement.
Meanwhile, 'others' are kind of painful to have to interact with, because of all the going back and explaining what I'm trying to talk to them about. I don't know if that's intelligence or if it's just having such common interests, though we come from pretty different backgrounds. There are a handful of people I work with who are the same way, but they're few and far between. The guy I sit next to basically nods and smiles at most of the projects I talk about, while I nod and smile when he tells me about the TV show he's been watching lately. On the other hand, my team lead talks to me about her projects (which are usually things out of my areas of expertise) but we can have those conversations in an intelligent manner that, far as I can tell, doesn't leave either of us groaning afterward.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!