51 intellectuals discuss if there is a link between intelligence and unhappiness.

There is no consensus.

In a previous essay, I argue intelligent people are more likely to become unfulfilled than non-gifted ones. Fifty people from an intellectual community on Reddit shared their opinion. Eight of them shared interesting points of view; some partially backed my thesis, and others completely rejected it. Read their thesis to decide if intelligent people are more likely to be unhappy.

1. Psychologist Steven Handel says unhappy intelligent people might be unhappy because they believe they must be.

"I've written before about the "I'm too smart to be happy" mentality.

There may be some overlapping factors behind intelligence and over-analysis/rumination/depression, but it can also be a limiting and self-fulfilling belief. For me, it became a way to justify my misery, or even take pride in it. Ego-driven.

For every depressed genius you find, I can find a happy genius. Source.

Thinking we are too smart to be happy can be a self-fulfilling belief. If you think smart people are unhappy, being happy is a sign of low intelligence. Smart people are often proud of their mental prowess. Even doubting it can lead to existential consequences, so it's better to just be unhappy. 

Personality traits might influence whether this mentality can be a self-fulfilling belief. According to the Big Five Personality model, I'm high in openness and conscientiousness. Thus, I don't fall into a victim mentality and instead, try to solve a solvable problem. If I had low levels in both of these traits, the "I'm too happy to be smart" mentality might affect me.

You also say, "for every depressed genius you find, I can find a happy genius." That's true. I mentioned Tolstoy, Hemingway, and Newton to establish common ground on smart figures. But, as with any human-related scientific finding, one can always find an outlier at some point in the distribution.

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2. An MSc in Electrical Engineering points out that personality traits are more likely to cause unhappiness than intelligence. 

"Personality generally contributes more to overall happiness than just intelligence.

People with low agreeability, high neuroticism, low extraversion, or low conscientiousness tend to be much less happy. Neuroticism and extraversion tend to contribute to the biological basis for happiness, as in two people living similar lives with differences in those two traits, the one with low neuroticism and high extraversion tends to be significantly happier. While agreeability and conscientiousness generally make people more successful, and through that contribute to happiness." Source.

You are right: personality traits influence someone's capacity to be happy. I'm unfamiliar with Eysenck's "super three" personality model—the one used in the study you cite. But the conclusions and results are aligned with Big Five studies on the effect of traits of happiness. Thus, I can't see why these results are not plausible.

The problem with these studies is that they don't discuss intelligence's role in increasing people's propensity to be unhappy.

This is partly because Eysenck's model does not measure openness, the personality trait most linked to high IQ. So, will a smart person who is low on agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (reversed) be more likely to be unhappy than one who is highly ranked in these traits? Maybe. Will high levels of openness outweigh the effects of these traits? Likely not, but they might mitigate it because of the person's openness to exploring solutions to what they are experiencing.

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3. ChurroCupcake proposes that human malevolence only affects intelligent people who are not accepting reality.

“Counter argument: "Being smart" leads you to focus on growth areas that validate your identity leading to neglect of "less smart" baser needs (like good sleep and exercise) that more directly contribute to happiness than any manner of cleverness.

True intelligence recognizes the impact of excelling at the fundamentals of human needs, like community.

EDIT: I do agree that intelligence lends to superior awareness of the evils of humanity (ie duplicity, manipulation), and that can have a negative impact if one doesn't refocus on what they have control over and what will most impact their happiness.

EDIT 2: I also agree with your loneliness argument, except that it doesn't have to remain so. Prioritize finding and fostering community so you have an outlet, but society is hostile towards individual empowerment and non-captured communities. Just look at the vitriol towards Gab.

EDIT 3: Consider whether human malevolence is offensive to you because of the cognitive dissonance from some aspect of reality or humanity you either have not yet accepted or do not fully understand. I.e., There is much I find horrifying, yet I do not give it additional power by letting it impact my happiness, otherwise I would be sacrificing myself to it (via loss of joy).

Source.”

As seen in the article, I also agree that intelligent people tend to neglect non-intellectual activities.

I can think of an actual counter-argument: "If these people are so smart, why aren't they more aware of the consequences of neglecting non-intellectual activities?" A smart person should sleep well and exercise because they know that not doing so can affect intellectual activities. In my case, I can't sit to read, write, or work for more than two hours without feeling back pain unless I exercise often.

But, this counterargument still does not counter my argument. I don't doubt an intelligent person can foresee consequences and develop solutions. I argue that many people do not focus on non-intellectual priorities until it is too late.

In my article, I claim smart people can dwell on negative events longer because they can understand more of their potential causes. I also share how some of these events have affected me. You are against my thesis, mentioning how perhaps I can't cope with human malevolence. That might be true. Maybe studying human malice upsets me because I don't understand its source. But I want to add that I'm not expressive or emotive most of the time. So the fact that these events can affect me interests me. It's an outlier event and does not represent how I always feel about problematic occurrences.

The reason why some smart people can dwell on adverse events might be their emotional state while learning about them. In an essay where I looked at the importance of fiction in the field of human behavior education, I mentioned how aligned with Master of Education Patricia Keer's claims, I found myself depressed after watching the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once because I connected with the main character's negative emotions.

This would suggest that feeling sad before engaging in human malice reading accounts for 1% of the time when I feel unhappy. But since studying malevolence makes me feel "upset" even when I felt "good" before doing it, I'm still unable to figure out the source. Perhaps, as you suggest, I'm too young.

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4. ArolEnos, a software engineer, countered my arguments twice

In the original essay, I said people can use a proxy to determine if someone is likely intelligent or not:

"Count the number of people who think you are intelligent. These people should have different nationalities, fields, and backgrounds. If your clubbing friend says you are smart, you might or might not be. But if he, a Ph.D. professor, and people you meet at international conferences say you are smart, you might be.

They say my proxy for intelligence is wrong.

"This metric will disproportionally select generalists, physically attractive people, and good communicators. A layperson's assessment of the intelligence of someone who specialized and is without worldly knowledge will be inaccurate.

There are plenty that struggle with communication but excel at problem-solving. Evaluators would give lower scores to the poor communicators. Naturally, the contrapositives will also hold." Source

I agree. The proxy is inaccurate, and that's why it's a proxy. I can't take someone through an IQ test, so this is what I do. By encouraging people to judge their intelligence by multiple people's assessments, I aspire for the "layperson" or "low IQ" person's assessment to even out with those from high IQ ones. 

But even averaging results, this proxy will fail at times. For example, people associate foreigners who can't speak X language well with a low IQ. So, my proxy might make people underestimate foreigners speaking a second language. There is also the fact that opinions from people of one status are unreliable. My point of listening to people from various classes, fields, and nationalities reduces this bias.

They also imply that happiness is multi-factored:

"You call Tolstoy and Hemingway brilliant. But, what type of person becomes a writer? Lonely? Vain? Introverted? Sounds like a recipe for depression. Fame also causes unhappiness; all three of your examples shared this factor." Source

Every writer is not lonely, vain, or introverted. Also, based on research, one doesn't "turn" vain or introverted but is most of the time born that way. Or maybe the person wasn't born that way, but socialization and upbringing made them this way. Vanity, loneliness, and introversion contribute to depression, but they are not the byproduct of becoming a writer. 

Fame can cause unhappiness; the three examples I shared were of famous people. But I am not sure if we can use current research on fame to explain past cases of unhappy, famous people. It's not the same as being well-known in a globalized world as in the pre-smartphone era. None of these three figures were constantly followed, questioned, and criticized. People did approach them at times when they ventured to public places. But the crowds were not as big as today. And because of the difficulty of accessing knowledge back then, masses were made of a few fans and foes. 

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5. Magsays recommends Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to avoid seeing reality as negative

"I'm not sure what the research says about the relationship between intelligence and happiness, and frankly I don't care. It is not helpful for me to know how people like me tend to act or what outcomes tend to occur. I am an individual. I need to focus on what can make me happy regardless of how many limitations or advantages I have.

I cannot see it as, "oh, a few rotten apples." Instead, I unconsciously process it as "human malevolence exists and might always exist."

I recommend learning CBT and considering dialectics in situations. You have the choice about which perspective you take. A glass half full and a glass half empty are objectively the same glass. Steven Pinker talks about how the world is actually getting less awful throughout time even though our perspective may be fatalistic. The Dahlia Llama is incredibly smart but is also incredibly happy. A smart person can see this and study what he has.

I used to be severely depressed, had a heroin addiction, the whole 9. Now I'm one of the happiest people I know. I made a decision as a young person to make it my life's work to figure out how to be happy, and now I'm here. If you really put effort and practice into whatever you do, you will get better at it." Source.

The way we look at the world influences the world we see. Through CBT, I have reframed events that I cataloged as "wrong," reducing the anxiety and negative behaviors that the thought was causing. But I don't think CBT is the answer. 

Personality traits play a role in how well CBT works. A 2021 study exposed 40 students with rat phobia to rats. It found that those with a high level of conscientiousness experienced less anxiety after the intervention. The result aligns with previous studies on conscientiousness as a predictor of positive outcomes for psychotherapy. A disciplined and determined person is more likely to take psychotherapy seriously. 

The rat phobia research also found a positive relationship between a person's agreeableness and CBT's benefits. Other studies have found this link here and here. Agreeable people are cooperative, making them the most ideal specimen for psychotherapy work. 

Studies like the above imply and often find the opposite—people with low conscientiousness and agreeableness experience less or no results from psychotherapy. They are less likely to participate in CBT practices. 

Fortunately, CBT was effective for you. It turned you into the happiest person you know, a title I wish to carry one day. But it might have worked for you because of your personality traits, which are, sadly, biologically given. This does not mean a person who doesn't have your personality trait combination is doomed to despair. Instead, it simply means (1) they might have to work harder than you to see results from psychotherapy because they must challenge how they are biologically inclined to look at the word, and (2) there are psychotherapy methods that would work better for them.

6. A Ph.D. in physics says high intelligence is an abnormal condition, which is why it is often accompanied by mental disorders.

"I think high to extremely high intelligence is in itself an abnormal condition of a human being, a mutation of sorts, and that is why it could be frequently accompanied by other disorders, such as ADHD, chronic depression, etc. So, from that perspective, very intelligent people are more frequently unhappy just because of that reason. I agree in that with OP [me, Nicolás Forero] and Karpinski.

That aside, even though highly intelligent people are statistically more prone to some psychological disorders that can make them less happy, they also have needed tools to find deeper satisfaction and understanding of life that bring about more life enjoyment opportunities than people with average intelligence have. So, there is that.

The situation is particularly tough for those, who are very intelligent, but either not intelligent enough or have a serious enough condition that they cannot bring themselves into the harmony with the world and thus find happiness. That is a curse on those who are smart. I do not think there can be much done about that, short of medication in some cases." Source. 

I've never thought of intelligence as an abnormal condition, but given that the average IQ is around 100, I can see why. Now, whether "anomaly" status justifies the existence of other anomalies is to be seen. My article argues that intelligent people are more likely to be unhappy, a thesis backing Errors' point. But we can't generalize your claim to every disorder. 

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7. Greyenlightenment says my proxy is a function of fame and not intelligence

"This may be more of a function of fame than intelligence. By this standard, Richard Dawkins would be smarter than a more obscure theoretical physicist." Source.

I already addressed the fame vs. intelligence debate when I answered ArelEnos' concern. As for Richard Dawkins being more intelligent than a theoretical physicist, the answer is: why not? He could be brighter than one. Not every theoretical physicist has the same IQ, and the condition of being a theoretical physicist doesn't entail having a MENSA-level IQ or being smarter than a biologist or evolutionary psychologist. 

Even if every theoretical physicist were more intelligent than Dawkins, the argument still doesn't address my thesis. The proxy's goal is to determine if someone is smart, not if person A is smarter than person B. Assuming the proxy works under the description and conditions I told ArelEnos, it could determine if Richard Dawkins and the theoretical physicist were smart. Not if one of them was smarter than the other. Perhaps it could be if you asked the same people and controlled for biases. But that's outside of my proxy's goal.

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8. Calamity__Bane shares why people with low IQ might be likelier to be unhappy than those with high IQ

"We also need to look at the enormous problems that can result from a lack of intelligence or at least a lack of sound judgment. People with lower IQs are more likely to be incarcerated or have criminal records, more likely to have early pregnancies, and earn less money on average over the course of their lifespans. It is reasonable to assume, also, that people with less intelligence are more likely to fall victim to scams, more likely to suffer avoidable injuries or die in accidents, and more likely to follow harmful trends. Intelligence, in this case, gives a person a better chance of avoiding more acute and pernicious forms of misery than the ones you've listed, even if it isn't a silver bullet." Source.

I have read studies backing most of these statements, which makes me assume you have read studies supporting the rest. Assuming they are true, I agree low IQ levels are correlated to situations that make us unhappy, just as high IQ individuals are. 

But we have to remember that some results are skewed by population. For example, if person A is poor and has a low IQ and lives in a first-world country, they have more chances of earning as much as a high IQ than person B, who is poor, has a low IQ, and lives in a third-world country amidst civil wars.

The point about levels of misery makes more sense. But it is also mediated by culture and a person's assessment. 

Swiss, American, and Brazilian poor people do not suffer from the same levels of misery. One cannot fund more than basic needs and a few guilty pleasures, the other can be exposed to various degrees of violence, and the last one questions if they will "eat" something different than water for dinner. 

For most people, not being to eat more than one meal per day is a more miserable state than feeling intellectual loneliness. 

It's nearly impossible to tell, on a misery scale, whether the poor Swiss will hate life more than the cliché yet existing misunderstood genius who stays at home. And here's where subjectivity comes into play.

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Share your stance

Even after reading fifty comments, I don't feel ready to expand on my first essay's arguments. There are comprehensive arguments supporting and opposing my thesis.

So, why not tell us what you think: are intelligent people more likely to be unhappy? A 2-line comment can help me and others solve this dilemma.