Why smart people are better off with fewer friends

来源: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/18/why-smart-people-are-better-off-with-fewer-friends

Hell might actually be other people — at least if you're really smart.

That's the implication of fascinating new research published last month in the British Journal of Psychology. Evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Norman Li of Singapore Management University dig into the question of what makes a life well-lived. While traditionally the domain of priests, philosophers and novelists, in recent years survey researchers, economists, biologists and scientists have been tackling that question.

单词

• dig into：仔细研究，刻苦钻研
  例：These people will dig into the code base and improve the documentation.
  这些人将会深入研究基础代码并相应改进文档。

• tackle：处理
  例：That depends on how you tackle the problem.
  那取决于你如何处理这个问题。

Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors form the foundation for what make us happy now. "Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ life satisfaction in the ancestral environment may still increase our life satisfaction today," they write.

They use what they call "the savanna theory of happiness" to explain two main findings from an analysis of a large national survey (15,000 respondents) of adults aged 18 to 28.

First, they find that people who live in more densely populated areas tend to report less satisfaction with their life overall. "The higher the population density of the immediate environment, the less happy" the survey respondents said they were. Second, they find that the more social interactions with close friends a person has, the greater their self-reported happiness.

But there was one big exception. For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.

单词

• savanna：热带草原

• densely：稠密地，浓密地
  例：Java is a densely populated island.
  爪哇是一个人口稠密的岛屿。

• diminish：减少，减小
  例：The threat of nuclear war has diminished.
  核战的威胁变小了。

• reverse：逆转，颠倒
  例：They have made it clear they will not reverse the decision to increase prices.
  他们已经明确表示不会为了提高价格而转变这一决定。

"The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals," they found. And "more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently."

Let me repeat that last one: When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy.

Now, the broad contours of both findings are largely uncontroversial. A large body of previous research, for instance, has outlined what some have called an "urban-rural happiness gradient." Kanazawa and Li explain: "Residents of rural areas and small towns are happier than those in suburbs, who in turn are happier than those in small central cities, who in turn are happier than those in large central cities."

Why would high population density cause a person to be less happy? There's a whole body of sociological research addressing this question. But for the most visceral demonstration of the effect, simply take a 45-minute ride on a crowded rush-hour Red Line train and tell me how you feel afterward.

Kanazawa and Li's second finding is a little more interesting. It's no surprise that friend and family connections are generally seen as a foundational component of happiness and well-being. But why would this relationship get turned on its head for really smart people?

单词

• contour：轮廓
  例：the contours of the body.
  身体的曲线。

• gradient：梯度，倾斜度

• visceral：发自肺腑的; 出自内心的
  例：the visceral joy of being alive.
  对能够活着的完全发自肺腑的喜悦。

• turned on its head：彻底改变，完全颠覆
  例：I really hope that doctors can turn the system on its head.
  我真的希望医生们能彻底改变现在的系统。

Report: Denmark world's happiest country Embed Share Play Video1:07
A United Nation's report ranking the world's happiest countries puts Denmark at the top, and Burundi at the bottom of the 157 country list. (Reuters)
I posed this question to Carol Graham, a Brookings Institution researcher who studies the economics of happiness. "The findings in here suggest (and it is no surprise) that those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it ... are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer term objective," she said.

Think of the really smart people you know. They may include a doctor trying to cure cancer or a writer working on the great American novel or a human rights lawyer working to protect the most vulnerable people in society. To the extent that frequent social interaction detracts from the pursuit of these goals, it may negatively affect their overall satisfaction with life.

But Kanazawa and Li's savanna theory of happiness offers a different explanation. The idea starts with the premise that the human brain evolved to meet the demands of our ancestral environment on the African savanna, where the population density was akin to what you'd find today in, say, rural Alaska (less than one person per square kilometer). Take a brain evolved for that environment, plop it into today's Manhattan (population density: 27,685 people per square kilometer), and you can see how you'd get some evolutionary friction.

单词

• premise：前提
  例：The premise is that schools will work harder to improve if they must compete.
  前提是各学校如必须竞争就会更加努力改进

• akin to：相似的，类似的
  例：Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.
  听他的生活故事就像读一部好的探险小说

Similarly with friendship: "Our ancestors lived as hunter–gatherers in small bands of about 150 individuals," Kanazawa and Li explain. "In such settings, having frequent contact with lifelong friends and allies was likely necessary for survival and reproduction for both sexes." We remain social creatures today, a reflection of that early reliance on tight-knit social groups.

The typical human life has changed rapidly since then — back on the savanna we didn't have cars or iPhones or processed food or "Celebrity Apprentice" — and it's quite possible that our biology hasn't been able to evolve fast enough to keep up. As such, there may be a "mismatch" between what our brains and bodies are designed for, and the world most of us live in now.

To sum it all up: You've heard of the paleo-diet. But are you ready for paleo-happiness?

There's a twist, though, at least as Kanazawa and Li see it. Smarter people may be better equipped to deal with the new (at least from an evolutionary perspective) challenges present-day life throws at us. "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," they write.

If you're smarter and more able to adapt to things, you may have an easier time reconciling your evolutionary predispositions with the modern world. So living in a high-population area may have a smaller effect on your overall well-being — that's what Kanazawa and Li found in their survey analysis. Similarly, smarter people may be better-equipped to jettison that whole hunter-gatherer social network — especially if they're pursuing some loftier ambition.

单词

• novel：新奇的
  例：It’ll be a novel experience
  它将成为一段新奇的经历

• reconcile：调和，使和解
  例：It's difficult to reconcile the demands of my job and the desire to be a good father.
  协调我工作的要求与我当个好父亲的愿望很难。

• predisposition： 倾向

• jettison：拒绝接受
  例：The governor seems to have jettisoned the plan.
  州长似乎已经拒绝了这个计划。

• lofty：崇高的，高耸的
  例：Virtue is lofty, but it requires you to give.
  美德是高尚的，但美德需要付出和给予。

It's important to remember that this is an argument Kanazawa and Li are proposing and that it's not settled science. "Paleo-" theories — the idea that our bodies are best adapted to the environment of our earliest ancestors — have come under fire in recent years, especially as food companies and some researchers over-hyped the alleged benefits of the paleo-diet fad.

Kanazawa and Li's main findings about population density, social interaction and happiness are relatively uncontroversial. But Brookings's Carol Graham says one potential flaw in their research is that it defines happiness in terms of self-reported life satisfaction ("How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?"), and doesn't consider experienced well-being ("How many times did you laugh yesterday? How many times were you angry?" etc.). Survey researchers know that these two types of questions can lead to very different assessments of well-being.

For their part, Kanazawa and Li maintain that that distinction doesn't matter too much for their savanna theory. "Even though our empirical analyses ... used a measure of global life satisfaction, the savanna theory of happiness is not committed to any particular definition and is compatible with any reasonable conception of happiness, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction," they write.

单词

• alleged：所谓的，声称的
  例：the alleged conspirators
  所谓的共谋者

• fad：时尚，一时的狂热
  例：He does not believe environmental concern is a passing fad.
  他不相信对环境的关注是一时的狂热。

• compatible：相容的，兼容的
  例：how can you ensure that the file is compatible?
  你如何确保这个文件是可兼容的呢？

Kanazawa himself is no stranger to controversy. In 2011, he wrote a blog post for Psychology Today entitled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" The post ignited a firestorm of criticism and was swiftly taken down.

His current research on well-being is not likely to generate as much criticism as that blog post. But the evolutionary perspective on happiness and intelligence is likely to prompt some heated discussion in the field.

In an email, Kanazawa said that his approach to understanding happiness is fundamentally different than the arguments about, say, the benefits of a paleo-diet. "Blindly introducing our ancestors’ diet when we do not have other aspects of the ancestral life seems like a dangerous and nonsensical prescription to me," he said.

"I only explain nature; I do not tell people what to do or not to do," he added.

重点句子

• Hell might actually be other people — at least if you're really smart.
  他人即地狱，至少如果你足够聪明的话，确实是这样的。

• Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors form the foundation for what make us happy now.
  Kanazawa和Li建立了一套理论，他们认为我们祖先捕猎和采集的生活方式，组成了我们现在感受快乐的基础。

• For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.
  对于更聪明的人来说，这些关联性不仅会减弱，甚至会颠倒过来。

• The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals
  人口密度对于低智商群体生活满意度的影响，是对高智商人群影响的两倍以上。

• But why would this relationship get turned on its head for really smart people?
  但是，为什么这些关联会在聪明人身上彻底颠倒呢？

• those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it ... are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer term objective
  拥有高智商并且有能力支配它们的人们，可能会花更少的时间去社交，因为他们会集中注意力处理其他更长远的目标。

• To sum it all up: You've heard of the paleo-diet. But are you ready for paleo-happiness?
  总结起来：你听说过“原始人饮食法”。但是你准备好接受“原始人的幸福”了吗？

• It's important to remember that this is an argument Kanazawa and Li are proposing and that it's not settled science.
  值得注意的是，这只是Kanazawa和Li提出的一个论点，还不是一个确定的科学依据。

• I only explain nature; I do not tell people what to do or not to do
  我只解释自然现象，我并不会告诉人们去做什么或者不做什么。

重点单词

• dig into：仔细研究，刻苦钻研
• tackle：处理
• savanna：热带草原
• densely：稠密地，浓密地
• diminish：减少，减小
• reverse：逆转，颠倒
• contour：轮廓
• gradient：梯度，倾斜度
• visceral：发自肺腑的; 出自内心的
• turned on its head：彻底改变
• premise：前提
• akin to：相似的，类似的
• novel：新奇的
• reconcile：调和，使和解
• predisposition： 倾向
• jettison：拒绝接受
• lofty：崇高的，高耸的
• alleged：所谓的，声称的
• fad：时尚，一时的狂热
• compatible：相容的，兼容的