Intelligent people are often highly aware of their mental health and wellbeing. They prioritize their mental and emotional health to maintain high functioning and productivity. This may mean limiting social interactions to preserve their mental energy, reducing the number of friendships they have.
Intelligent people love working alone because it allows them to be in tune with their inner creative selves. They can introspect different fields and even think out of the box. When there are so many people around, it is difficult to think quietly and creatively because there's chaos all around.
Loners are smart.
Loners spend less time with others and more time on their own learning and pursuing their own interests. The Washington Post spoke with Carol Graham, a Brookings Institute researcher who studies the economics of happiness, about the fact that smarter people spend more time alone.
According to Carol Graham, who studies the economics of happiness, people with more intelligence and the capacity to use it spend less time socializing because they are focused on some other longer-term objective. Intelligent people are less social because they are more focused on their life goals.
But a demanding job can limit time for socializing. Frequent get-togethers may become a thing of the past as you focus on climbing the corporate ladder or leave it behind altogether to blaze an entrepreneurial path. All of these factors make maintaining relationships–particularly friendships–challenging.
Go to art shows, museums, and cultural events.
Talk to some of the other people you meet there and you may make some new intelligent friends!
Some people have higher social needs than others, which means they may want to have a greater number of friends. Those who value their alone time may need fewer friends, and that's OK too. In general, based on 2021 survey data, the average person in America has between 3 and 5 close friends.
Interacting with other people can be more difficult for smart people because these interactions don't follow a specific set of rules; they just happen. This lack of control over social situations can easily trigger anxiety.
Intelligent people tend to appear quiet because they are natural observers. They are listening and watching what's going on around them.
High-IQ people often experience social isolation, which can lead to depression or make them act more introverted than is their nature.
Another common habit of smart people is that they let their minds wander. Research suggests that daydreaming may actually boost problem-solving skills and creativity. Daydreaming is like subconsciously thinking about the issues without directly focusing on the matter.
They often over-analyze their dates by wondering about the future, the best way to cultivate romance, and being too obsessed with finding the right person. Though it is not a bad thing at all, it makes their journey to find love extremely difficult.
Research suggests that highly intelligent people get bored easily and spend more time thinking, behaviour that comes across as 'laziness'. A study by the Florida Gulf Coast University looked at a group of 'thinkers' and 'non-thinkers', studying their activity levels over the course of a week.
The reason that most people are more satisfied and happier when with people is because of the needs that friends fulfil such as the need to be needed, reliability and the feeling of relatedness. People that are highly intelligent, however, are happier when on their own.
Intelligence can sometimes lead to people being intimidating. This can make people uncomfortable and make them think of you as an arrogant person, even if you are not. You may also experience that concern, leaving you a little uncomfortable.
People with high intelligence tend to share this quality. Intelligent people tend to be better behaved and less aggressive, research reveals. Both boys and girls with higher IQs are less likely to be antisocial than those with lower IQs.
Individuals with higher intelligence test scores are more likely to prefer predominantly instrumental music styles. There you have it. All those Bach-listening, Kraftwerk-loving, ambient-adoring strange people in your life are actually the brainy ones. Are you ready for the twist? (No, not the song.):
Furthermore, people with depressive symptoms tended to score lower in exercises of intelligence and cognitive thinking than people with normal, healthy mental conditions. In short, there's also research to suggest that with a low IQ and a lower intelligence comes a higher risk of depression.
You might not learn the value of hard work
One study found that conscientiousness — i.e. how hard you work — is in fact negatively correlated with certain types of intelligence. The researchers propose that highly intelligent people might feel like they don't need to work as hard to accomplish what they want.
Overthinking is a sign of intelligence insofar that you need to be intelligent enough to be able to think and re-think until you have overthought. It is, however, not necessarily a sign of high intelligence.
If you find yourself always focusing on the negative in your relationships with other people, you might find yourself feeling disconnected from those around you. This may stem from having excessively high expectations for how others should behave, but it may also be caused by a general lack of empathy.
In 2014, a survey conducted in the United Kingdom found that millions of people do not have even a single friend. Researchers found that one in 10 people they asked said they did not have a close friend, while one in five felt unloved.