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The journal article cited for this indicates not that smart people are happier with smart friends, but that "More intelligent individuals actually experienced h
by trevyn 11y ago
The journal article cited for this indicates not that smart people are happier with smart friends, but that "More intelligent individuals actually experienced higher life satisfaction with lower frequency of contact with friends." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844
A lot of the meta-articles seem to be hypothesizing that intelligence could be an evolutionary adaptation for dealing with novel circumstances, and intelligent people are therefore driven to attack these challenges -- thus making them unhappy when they are distracted.
This meshes with my experience -- while I certainly enjoy my highly intelligent friends, I have not developed time-consuming relationships with them, because we are often focused on our own particular highly specific challenges.
- hammock 11y agoThe two ideas are not mutually exclusive. If stimulating friends make you happy, and the average friend is less than stimulating, then spending more time with your friends may make you unhappier.
- ajcarpy2005 11y agoI would love to hang out with people who are directly mentally stimulating but even people who are less stimulating could be good friends if the activities are productive. (Contributing to physical and mental health, confidence, sustainable self-induced highs, etc.)
- tomp 11y ago> More intelligent individuals actually experienced higher life satisfaction with lower frequency of contact with friends Does the article imply causation or just correlation? If the latter, I would assume the causation is the opposite - happier people need other people less, because they're happier even by themselves.
- saiya-jin 11y agothis. if a person cannot be happy on their own, with only their body and mind present, then I believe they are not really truly happy. quite a few people I know claim happiness, very few actually are. I don't mean flashes of happiness caused which happen in everyone's life, but stable, balanced feel that gets cannot be easily disrupted and rather quickly returns back.