Study: If You Are Intelligent, You Might Have Fewer Friends

Last Updated on 2023-03-12 , 9:46 am

Do you think that you’re an intelligent fellow? Do you have less friends than others? Well, it seems like that’s normal.

At least according to a study by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science and Norman Li of Singapore Management University (yeah, our SMU!).

In their research that involved 15,000 people from the age of 18 to 28, they came out with a conclusion: the more intelligent you are, the more alone time you need.

To determine whether one is intelligent, they measured their IQ, and the results were that people with higher IQ would feel less satisfied with their life if they socialized more frequently—that means that in order to feel satisfied with their life (i.e. happy), they tend to socialize less frequently, meaning less friends.

The study, which is published in the British Journal Of Psychology, has a theory for this: it has something to do with our ancestors.

Long, long ago, before mankind became fully intelligent, humans lived in small groups, which provided the essentials. They said, “In such settings, having frequent contact with lifelong friends and allies was likely necessary for survival and reproduction for both sexes.”

Despite that, they’re not so rigid as to keep their prehistorical traits intact. The researchers suggest that intelligent people can adapt fast and seamless as well.

They wrote in their study, “More intelligent individuals, who possess higher levels of general intelligence and thus greater ability to solve evolutionarily novel problems, may face less difficulty in comprehending and dealing with evolutionarily novel entities and situations.”

Another Theory

A researcher who studies the economics of happiness, Carol Graham, has another theory. She told The Washington Post that intelligent people are “are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer term objective.”

In other words, intelligent people are busy working on important things than spending that time having drinks with different friends. They might not, you know, YOLO.

But of course, this is merely a theory and shouldn’t be cast in stone: don’t go around telling others that the reason why you’ve fewer friends is that you’re intelligent!

Trust me, it won’t work.