
Why smart people are better off with fewer friends - frostmatthew
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/18/why-smart-people-are-better-off-with-fewer-friends/
======
bjornsing
> _When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less
> happy._

This is obviously a correlational study (and not a randomized controlled
trial) so inferring causality is just wrong.

Let me instead suggest an alternative explanation for the same correlation:
smart people have more time to spend with friends when things are going badly
for them (crashed startup, lack of grants for research, out of work, etc) than
when things are going well (startup just got funded, just received a major
grant, etc).

~~~
fossuser
Also ignores other things that seem likely to me:

\- People in cities have more people to compare themselves to when calculating
'how well they're doing' relative to people around them. In a big city you're
less likely to be at the top.

\- Smart people are more likely to need opportunities provided by big cities
and big city networks, and are probably more unhappy in smaller rural areas.

The 'evolution' argument sets off bad science alarms, no ability to test and
not even very good speculation. Then going on to suggest that smart people are
more able to ignore evolutionary pressure also strikes me as a stretch.

The idea that smart people have a bigger project in mind and time spent
socializing makes them sad because it's 'wasted' does seem reasonable to me
though.

~~~
gbersac
My mind also fired me a lot of "bullshit science warning" while reading this
article.

And, event though the argument "smart people have a bigger project and they
spend time realizing it rather than socializing" makes also sense for me, I
don't really believe in it. Smart people may also spend time with friend to
elaborate their plan and socializing in order to gather a group to execute
that plan.

Another explanation would be that they have more problem finding like minded
people so they'd rather spend time alone than being with uninteresting people.

Conclusion : if it is true that smart people need less time socializing to be
happy than other people (psychology studies tend to always contradict each
other, I don't rely on them too much), I don't have a serious explanation why.

~~~
troydavis
tl;dr: Based on the information that's publicly available, which does not
include the full text of the article, it passes the sniff test.

Long: To take a stab at the study's scientific integrity without access to
it[1], other aspects may be better indicators than a Washington Post article
written for a mainstream audience -- namely, the journal's reputation and
review policy, the author's CV, and the abstract. That's not anyone's fault,
but the Post author's goal - an understandable explanation - doesn't emphasize
what you're evaluating.

So, let's check these things out. Here's the CV of the first named author (I
can't easily tell whether he was PI):
[http://www.smu.edu.sg/sites/default/files/socsc/pdf/psychvit...](http://www.smu.edu.sg/sites/default/files/socsc/pdf/psychvita2015%20Li.pdf)

The abstract:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844)

A preview:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12181/pdf](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12181/pdf)

The entity behind the journal (which also grants licenses to psychologists in
Britain):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Psychological_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Psychological_Society)

ToC from the February issue:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.2016.107.iss...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.2016.107.issue-1/issuetoc)

Peer reviewers:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12174/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12174/full)

He's a trained scientist with a lot of experience and many prior studies, and
that this was published in a well-known peer-reviewed journal. Short of
reading the actual article and having experience in the field, I think that's
a more likely indicator of scientific integrity than the OP's URL.

[1]: The full text of the article isn't publicly available. While drawing
conclusions without reading it would be crazy, checking the author and the
journal are reasonable.

------
tsunamifury
I find in my line of work, which I think the average person would rate as very
intellectually demanding, I find my lack of social connections to be my
greatest weakness!

Hard problems might need solitude, but really hard problems seem to need
multiple minds and perpectives to solve.

I of course need alone time, but only on focused portions of what adds up to a
far broader and more cooperative strategy.

I've also found the smarter you are, the more likely you are to look down on
larger portions of humanity, and it multiplies in higher density regions. This
is a pathway to unhappiness that seems to be rooted in my own ego though more
than an objective reality.

~~~
swe
Depends on the problem. If the general human consensus believes the sun
revolves around the earth, you're going to have a hard time working with
multiple minds. Problems which require radical shifts in ideology are more
than likely going to be tackled alone. It would come down to the maximum power
principle. You would waste a significant amount of energy pulling someone
psychologically one step in your direction, whereas independently, you could
be three steps closer to proving your thesis. Not to mention, social cohesion,
or whatever you want to call it, encourages group think and naturally
ostracises outsiders as a primitive form of bonding or fitting in with one
another.

Really hard problems fight monocultures of 'obvious truth' in the bonds of
multiple minds.

------
ams6110
I'm reasonably intelligent, would not call myself smart compared to some other
people I know. My entire life I've always had just one or two close, low-drama
friendships at any one time, and hardly any wider circle of friends. Not sure
I can explain why, but it's always been that way and feels natural. I can't
really relate to groups of 5-10 or more that get together and all seem to know
each other and have fun.

------
dumbguy
I moved out to a small town a couple years ago, and a large part of that was I
had a large group of friends. I wasn't able to really engage in many of my
side projects, and just needed more space. I'm close enough that I can hit the
big events of the group, but people don't swing much when you're an hour and a
half away from the city core. But I'm not very smart, so I wonder if we have a
correlation here between location and people that take on self initiated
projects? And smart people tend to be in a position of initiating projects on
their own without direction. I can honestly say, I love living where I am, and
couldn't be much happier.

~~~
sshykes
... Did you mention where you live?

------
platz
Theres something odd about the reasoning in the article thay I cant quite put
my finger on

~~~
RodericDay
Satoshi Kanazawa is not an intellectual I respect very much

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa)

> views such as that African countries suffer chronic poverty and illness
> because their people have lower IQs and that black women are objectively
> less attractive than other races

> a group of 68 evolutionary psychologists issued an open letter titled
> "Kanazawa's bad science does not represent evolutionary psychology",[6] and
> an article was published by 35 on the same theme.[7]

~~~
ryw90
I find it hard to take his work seriously. Here are detailed criticisms of
some of his other papers:
[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/kana...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/kanazawa.pdf)

------
wonderlust
This article started badly and went worse. Needs a LOT of intellectual rigor.

Evolution hypothesis wasn't tested, study wasn't very useful at disproving
anything or solidly claiming anything. A life well lived I believe has been
solidly shown vt philosophers to have little to do with happiness, and
"priests and novelists" is just silly IMO. They have no say whatsoever.

So its safe to ignore literally every claim of evidence in this post. That
said, it is an interesting hypothesis. I can imagine being a loner and being
intelligent could have many bits of positive feedback between them.

------
BreesusChrist
"When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less
happy." Maybe it's time for new friends.

~~~
zhemao
Since it's a correlational study, I'm pretty sure all you can say is that
"smart people who spend more time with their friends tend to be less happy".
This could be due to any number of reasons. Either spending more time with
their friends makes them less happy, or, more likely, they spend more time
with their friends because they are unhappy and are trying to make up for it.

------
mchahn
I don't know if this makes sense, but I read recently that contrary to many
people's images, hunter-gatherers actually had much better lives than we do
now. Less work-stress, more family-time, etc.

~~~
r00fus
Sure, in a nasty, brutish and short way, I can totally envision quality of
life to be better "in the good old days".

Or was your comment meant to be snark that I didn't get?

~~~
baddox
It's not snarky. People who seem to me to be qualified and serious have
suggested both that the initial converts to agriculture were less healthy and
happy than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries, and that modern humans are
less happy than hunter-gatherers. The first claim seems very plausible to me,
but the second claim seems less so.

~~~
mchahn
> the initial converts to agriculture were less healthy and happy

Land ownership and class separation didn't start until agriculture.

------
randyrand
I have very few friends. I must be smart!!

~~~
JayHost
I don't mean to toot my own cranium horn but my social life is pretty terrible
if I say so myself... which I just did.

------
nickysielicki
_> adults aged 18 to 28_

I wish I stopped reading there.

~~~
annaFin
I was thinking at first that it was ridiculous to examine questions about a
life "well lived" through people who haven't lived too much of one (ages
18-28), but then I wondered if people actually maintain the same relative
level of "social-ness" throughout their lives. For example, let's say in your
twenties, people who are "very social" have 10-20 friends whom they see often,
but in your sixties, people who are in the "very social" category typically
have 5-10 friends that they see often. My thought is actually that once you
are in a particular "category" of socialness, you probably continue having
that same level of socialness throughout your life. Probably very social
people in this study were also very social at age 5-10 - so maybe age doesn't
matter. I am assuming that all people are less social as they grow older - but
I actually don't know if this is true.

~~~
nickysielicki
I agree that people probably stay within the same class of sociability
throughout their entire life-- but I think that as one gets older the
disparity between the loners and socialites gets much closer.

With that being said, I still don't think you can take any kind of result from
this age-group seriously. Even if we assume that these people will stay within
the same sociability class, your twenties might just be a busy time in your
life where hard work at your career and education make you happier. That might
not hold true when you're 60.

------
noobie
First of all, the methodology is indeed wonky,I am not really a happy person
but if I were asked whether I am satisfied with my life I would say Yes.

Second, the logic seems to be, smart people have bigger goals so they don't
bother wasting time socializing. Which is true but not all smart people are
well-accomplished. So although this might apply to researchers it might not to
the "average" smart person.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the fact smart people feel less happy
interacting with many friends can be simply due to introversion and not
necessarily their IQ.

------
gohrt
As is too common in WaPo articles, a headline that starts with "why", but is
actually making a novel claim, is usually a crap article.

"Why" articles go for things that we already know to to be true. When you make
a novel or controversial claim, and slap a "why" on the front, you are
intellectually dishonestly trying to trick the reader into believing the claim
is already a known truth.

------
hanniabu
I believe that the reasoning for this is probably that they'd rather spend
time on their work or creating something than hang out with their friends
because it gives them a nice creative outlet which they need to keep their
mind at peace from all the inspiration and ideas racing through constantly.

------
eruditely
Stuff like this really hurts me. Hopefully we will be able to operationalize
this into units of happiness one time, exactly what is it about socializing
with more of their friends and whether we can cut that out.

Let's hope there's something like this.

------
nether
Validation at last.

------
jorgecurio
this has been true for my case. however, I don't consider myself to be
particularly smart, rather its super tiring to navigate socio-emotional
dynamics.

I do enjoy a few close friends but when I was living in and working in
downtown vancouver, it was some of the most miserable chapters. In particular,
the large density of people adds to my stress for some reason. I don't know
why but I tense up and my senses are heightened when I'm in a crowd.

