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Scientists Say Smart People Are Better Off With Fewer Friends
HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study finds that when smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy. "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," says Carol Graham, a Brookings Institution researcher who studies the economics of happiness. According to Graham you should think of the really smart people you know. They may include a doctor trying to cure cancer or a writer working on the great American novel or a human rights lawyer working to protect the most vulnerable people in society. To the extent that frequent social interaction detracts from the pursuit of these goals, it may negatively affect their overall satisfaction with life. (More, below.)
Hugh Pickens continues: Kanazawa and Li's theory of happiness starts with the premise that the human brain evolved to meet the demands of our ancestral environment on the African savanna, where the population density was akin to what you'd find today in, say, rural Alaska (less than one person per square kilometer). Take a brain evolved for that environment, plop it into today's Manhattan (population density: 27,685 people per square kilometer), and you can see how you'd get some evolutionary friction. "Our ancestors lived as hunter–gatherers in small bands of about 150 individuals," Kanazawa and Li explain. "In such settings, having frequent contact with lifelong friends and allies was likely necessary for survival and reproduction for both sexes." If you're smarter and more able to adapt to things, you may have an easier time reconciling your evolutionary predispositions with the modern world. Accordingly smarter people may be better-equipped to jettison that whole hunter-gatherer social network — especially if they're pursuing some loftier ambition. "Whatever the explanation might prove to be, this obviously doesn't mean smart people don't like having friends," says Emma Cueto. "But it does probably mean that they don't enjoy having too many — after all, keeping track of lots of people does usually involve, you know, talking to them. So if you're naturally more of a loner, congratulations! It might be a sign of intelligence."
It sounds like this article is mixing up “smart people” with “introverts.” What about the really smart extraverts? Richard Feynman was very extraverted, he had lots of friends, hung around with them a lot, and was very successful.
Much of the summary assumes that happiness is important. And that it's important to smart people.
I propose that the desire for happiness is inversely proportional to intelligence. I have no statistical proof, only personal and historical experience. As one learns about the discerning and creative people around them and the ones that they read about in biographies and historical documents, one must consider how often did these people sit around to chat with neighbors and chums. If they interacted with other people, it was probably in pursuit of some greater purpose.
On the other hand, I will be meeting with 5 'developmentally disabled' people this morning who are very happy and who value that state of being very much. What's your experience in this regard?
...omphaloskepsis often...
I hate to use the old phrase "quality time" but it comes to mind here. I have a handful of very good friends with whom I interact regularly but not constantly. I don't need or want more than that, and they don't either. So when we do get together, it's terrific. I think there would be rapidly diminishing returns if we got together more and more often.
Email is fine to stay in touch day to day (which doesn't necessarily translate as 'daily' in all cases). We are all really busy, like-minded people, which is probably why we're friends.
I don't understand the idea of calling and talking on the phone for hours daily, or the modern equivalent of texting every other minute. Now, many people do that. I'm not being critical. To each his or her own. Whatever makes you happy.
Drinking beer and watching football at the bar with buddies doesn't do it for me. And, lest you accuse me of being judgmental (when I just said above that I'm not!) --- this puts me outside the mainstream, and many if not most of those football/bar people do judge me for not being "social" enough.
It took me way too long to learn this: When you're outside the mainstream, don't expect acceptance and understanding to be reciprocal.
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863)
http://www.utilitarianism.com/...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Yours is an excellent post and contains much food for thought. I do however view things much differently, but I don't want to seem to "attack" what you've said, as it provides valuable insight.
Perhaps I have a different idea of what it means to be an introvert or extrovert. In my case, introversion displays as difficulty in starting relationships. However, the ones that do "make" it (that sounds terrible, I know) become very deep and indeed extremely "fault tolerant." I accept and navigate friends' "flaws" because I realize that they are simply part of who they are. They extend the same tolerance to my flaws and faults. It's not at all a matter of limiting time together because of fault intolerance, so to speak.
So I go back to the OP's idea that my group of introverts is simply very busy and wants to get lots of things done, and so we treasure our time together but none of us want it to be so extended that our goals are diverted. In that manner we're supportive of each other. (It might help to know that in my case, my friends are mostly other writers.)
I want to go back, though, and briefly elaborate my unrelated side point: that the bar/football "mainstream" crowd is non-reciprocal. That is, while I can see that those folks enjoy the bar/football experience, and I'm not at all critical of their choice, they will not extend the same tolerance to me and my own choices and interests, which they criticize openly. Example: I once told one of the bar/football people I was going to compete in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. He gave me a disdaining look and said, "Is there something wrong with you?"