Do you ever feel so emotionally and mentally exhausted of living this busy life that you want to immediately pack your things and go live in the mountains?
Would you rather spend your Friday night in the comfort of your room than get drunk in the local bar?
Do you usually avoid interacting with people on the street?
If the answer is yes, don’t worry. You are not alone. You are not a people hater. You are not a weirdo and you’re not anti-social. In fact, you might be a genius without knowing.
Because according to an NCBI study, people with higher IQ tend to be less social and are likely to associate with fewer people on a daily basis.
Evolutionary psychologists Normal Li and Satoshi Kanazawa made a thorough research on this subject and found that people who are living in less densely populated areas are happier than the ones who are living in much more crowded and dynamic districts.
They also found that happiness increases when most of our daily interactions are with the ones we love, as opposed to the random people we meet on a daily basis.
The participants in the study reported a great level of happiness as a result of their more frequent social interactions. All of them except one group. That group involved the most intelligent people and the effect frequent social interaction had on them was completely opposite.
According to the lead researchers “More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends.”
It seems that after all, that the nerdy, computer geek, who is always up to something and avoids people is not weird at all. He just has more important things on his mind.
Moreover, in the process of interpreting the results of the study, the psychologists found a very interesting link to one theory. That’s how The Savanna happiness theory emerged.
This theory suggests that we find happiness in things that would have made our ancestors happy. On the savannah, population density would have been low, so the interpersonal interaction would have been crucial for our survival.
Now, although the study’s results support this theory, they also suggest that the most intelligent human beings are actually evolving past the need for constant social interaction.
As a result, these people are more focused on activities which will lead to certain advancements in our modern society. Activities that will make a certain intellectual or economic change in this world.
Considering that we live in high densely populated areas and we are trying hard to cope with all of the stress from the urban, stressful life, it is normal that we need less interaction with people than our ancestors need.
That is why the most highly evolved people today stopped prioritizing that.
So, if you still feel bad about ditching your friends on a Friday night to stay home and finish that book, remember. You are not anti-social. You are not cranky.
You are a genius. Act like it.
