Intelligence associated with Negativity?

Enso

Enso

Community Member
MBTI
INFJ
The best stuff of growth, creativity and intelligence seems to come from negativity, so are smarter people inherently more negative.

Introspection (hard, slow and not always fun)
abstraction (hard)
philosophizing (hard)

As a general characteristic of interacting with intelligent people do they come across as slightly more negative, whilst people who don't really care for deeper topics come across as more happy? The very nature of deeper thinking/critical thinking is negative; it's much easier to find faults in the world when thinking about it on a deep level.
 
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Actually intelligence is heavily tied to open mindedness and playfulness which aren't negative at all imo.
Things like introspection and abstraction are going to be easier for some (ie myself) than others and aren't inherently "negative."
It is generally agreed upon that intelligence increases when negative emotion decreases.
 
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Enso said:
The best stuff of growth, creativity and intelligence seems to come from negativity, so are smarter people inherently more negative.

Introspection (hard, slow and not always fun)
abstraction (hard)
philosophizing (hard)

As a general characteristic of interacting with intelligent people do they come across as slightly more negative, whilst people who don't really care for deeper topics come across as more happy? The very nature of deeper thinking/critical thinking is negative; it's much easier to find faults in the world when thinking about it on a deep level.
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Several studies have shown a higher percentage of highly intelligent people suffer from depression, anxiety, and (other) mood disorders. Yet, cynical people earn lower scores on cognitive ability tests, essentially because it is easier to judge than to understand. Smarter people keep seeking knowledge, learning, exploring, and changing their point of view when they learn new information and negative people tend to just decide on the negative outcome and walk away.

Of course, we can add esoteric knowledge to the stew and discuss transcendence and enlightenment (in this case I mean personal fulfillment and purpose) and how when you learn to let go of expectations (which often drive unhappiness), you will be content and free to let your mind explore possibilities.
 
It's not constructive to be negative. It's easier to find flaws than it is to improve the situation or remain brave/optimistic despite everything.

I believe introspection and thinking should empower you, not make you more negative. That doesn't sound like a good strategy.

Thinking/introspection -> understanding -> bigger competence and confidence -> more cheerful attitude.
 
@Enso In what sense do you mean negative? On the one hand there is cynical, depressed, pessimistic. On the other hand there is analytical, an attitude of critique, diagnostic.
I think that smart folks can certainly readily see the flaws in the world and some can even articulate them well :) but that doesn't necessarily mean thay are cynical or depressed, though the language of the second of these can sometimes sound negative.

However, I think there are many smart people who do not have the complementary attributes they would need to do anything about what they see, and I think some of them can become very negative and pessimitic. I'm thinking of inter-personal skills, stamina, emotional control, common sense - these sort of things are often lacking in smart folks, just as they are in many other people too.

I remember once talking to my dad about the composer Beethoven. I'd just read a potted biography on a vinyl record sleeve, and he obviously led a pretty unhappy life in many ways. Dad said something that has always stuck with me - it went along the lines of how much worse for those born with the heart and soul of a Beethoven, but without any gift of expressing it. Maybe, though not on such a cosmic scale and in many different contexts, many smart folks are stuck with this sort of problem.
 
Intelligent people are negative about different things from which less intelligent people are negative about.

Simple minded people will have a blanket negative view of entire concepts, preferences, traits, etc. For example, the less intelligent may have negative feelings towards: forming judgements or conversely, indecisiveness; or towards omnivores or vegans; or towards ethnicities, etc.

Intelligent people most often have negative views about more subtle or profound things: other people's ability to transcend their own personal concerns and feelings, and see the big picture; or acceptance of the status quo over innovation; or arbitrary change without real improvement; or the preference for the cheap/crass/satisfying over quality/tasteful/meaningful, et.

Perhaps the highly intelligent may seem more negative because they notice a lot more, make more distinctions, and innovate more, leading to more critical insights. But the highly intelligent also see more positives, have more realistic/attainable goals for themselves and others, and appreciate real achievements and future achievements more profoundly.
 
More than anything I find the positive happy types to be pretty disconnected from reality and generally don't have to live with much unlike most people at least in the west especially those new cage types that clutch crystals all day while singing praises how great this world is lol /eye roll.
 
Sometimes Yeah said:
Intelligent people are negative about different things from which less intelligent people are negative about.

Simple minded people will have a blanket negative view of entire concepts, preferences, traits, etc. For example, the less intelligent may have negative feelings towards: forming judgements or conversely, indecisiveness; or towards omnivores or vegans; or towards ethnicities, etc.

Intelligent people most often have negative views about more subtle or profound things: other people's ability to transcend their own personal concerns and feelings, and see the big picture; or acceptance of the status quo over innovation; or arbitrary change without real improvement; or the preference for the cheap/crass/satisfying over quality/tasteful/meaningful, et.

Perhaps the highly intelligent may seem more negative because they notice a lot more, make more distinctions, and innovate more, leading to more critical insights. But the highly intelligent also see more positives, have more realistic/attainable goals for themselves and others, and appreciate real achievements and future achievements more profoundly.
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Sure innovations like salted nukes and vx nerve gas what great achievements like Elon's brain chip and Zuckerberg's metaverse. To think these are the sorts of "brilliant" minds that invented Eugenics along with so many ills over the past century but hey all that raw intellect sure dig go to waste in the end while society degraded.
 
Enso said:
The best stuff of growth, creativity and intelligence seems to come from negativity, so are smarter people inherently more negative.

Introspection (hard, slow and not always fun)
abstraction (hard)
philosophizing (hard)

As a general characteristic of interacting with intelligent people do they come across as slightly more negative, whilst people who don't really care for deeper topics come across as more happy? The very nature of deeper thinking/critical thinking is negative; it's much easier to find faults in the world when thinking about it on a deep level.
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Inconclusive. I think there are too many factors involved in being able to categorize a trait as negative and equally, intelligence comes in different forms. Rhetorical: is being cautious and pedantic a negative trait or is it being meticulous and factual?

As to intelligent people being prone to depression, I'm with @John K that it may indeed be a communication gap but I think loneliness has multiple reasons and that it need not be the sole cause of depression.
 
Roses In The Vineyard said:
Sure innovations like salted nukes and vx nerve gas what great achievements like Elon's brain chip and Zuckerberg's metaverse. To think these are the sorts of "brilliant" minds that invented Eugenics along with so many ills over the past century but hey all that raw intellect sure dig go to waste in the end while society degraded.
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You have a blanket negativity towards intelligent people. Zero nuance, or in other words, bigoted.
 
Enso said:
Well I guess put in another way

does negativity seem more intelligent than positively?
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Not in such dichotomous terms. @Roses In The Vineyard has pointed out quite rightly how positivity can be a whitewash over things that are bad, but then an indiscriminate attitude of negativity can cast a cloud of gloom and unfair rejection over something good just as easily. Personally, I find it's not these traits as such that indicate whether a person is smart or not, but whether they are applied with justified discrimination.

Some of the cleverest people I've come across are very positive, and show a great love for their area of expertise. The great physicist Richard Feynman had an infectious love of physics and the physical world, and was a tremendous communicator - he is considered one of the cleverest physicists of all time, alongside Newton and Einstein. CS Lewis is another really clever guy who comes across as very positive in disposition. I always remember Ray Parkinson who taught me maths in my senior school and he was a very clever and inspiring teacher whose positivism and love of his subject was incredibly contagious - we all loved him. But none of these people were rose-tinted glasses positive and could all be very critical when it was an appropriate response.

I wouldn't hold this up and say it refutes what you conjecture though. There are many smart people who are habitually negative in disposition - you probably couldn't be an ace police detective without being instinctively cynical for example.

Perhaps there is something deeper though, but maybe it has less to do with smartness and more to do with depth of insight. It's one of those clichés that riches don't of necessity bring happiness and fulfilment, and the same is true of smartness. Anyone who has depth of insight will sooner or later come across the void that lies within every human being, though they will not necessarily express it in such words. That void cannot be filled with either intellect or riches, and trying to do so certainly leads to frustration and negativity.
 
There's an interesting hypothesis about depression called depressive realism, that says maybe a depressed person doesn't have a negative bias, but it's everyone else's views that are unrealistically positive. Add to that hypothesis an above average intelligence depressed person, who's more likely to have a more accurate, informed opinion on various affairs. Also what happens if you take clinical depression out of the equation? All these studies that point towards negativity associated to high intelligence, might themselves have a positivity bias, which is why they consider negativity in those terms as a negativity bias, and not as realism.
 
John K said:
Perhaps there is something deeper though, but maybe it has less to do with smartness and more to do with depth of insight. It's one of those clichés that riches don't of necessity bring happiness and fulfilment, and the same is true of smartness. Anyone who has depth of insight will sooner or later come across the void that lies within every human being, though they will not necessarily express it in such words. That void cannot be filled with either intellect or riches, and trying to do so certainly leads to frustration and negativity.
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While I agree that intelligent people suffer more often from existential dread, I have to point out that mental health issues and suicide are directly related to one's socioeconomic status, and that it's my impression at least that existential worry by itself, without neurological or other psychological problems, is passing and mild, unlike the negativity one feels at the face of real hostility from society and the world.
 
niar said:
While I agree that intelligent people suffer more often from existential dread, I have to point out that mental health issues and suicide are directly related to one's socioeconomic status, and that it's my impression at least that existential worry by itself, without neurological or other psychological problems, is passing and mild, unlike the negativity one feels at the face of real hostility from society and the world.
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I agree with you niar. I don’t think we were talking about significant mental health issues in this thread, but whether a negative disposition to life and the world is an attribute of smarter people. I’d enlarge on what you are saying because I think anyone who has a rough life experience can end up being very negative even if they don’t become mentally ill as a result.
 
John K said:
I agree with you niar. I don’t think we were talking about significant mental health issues in this thread, but whether a negative disposition to life and the world is an attribute of smarter people. I’d enlarge on what you are saying because I think anyone who has a rough life experience can end up being very negative even if they don’t become mentally ill as a result.
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As I said, I'm not necessarily talking about depression as a mental illness, but as you put it: a mode of negative attitude. You made a distinction there, which I indirectly contended with what I said about negativity being realism. If we assume that garden variety, ''intelligent'' depression/staring into the abyss is realism, that means that intelligence and negativity are not two separate aspects that happen to co manifest in intelligent people, and they're not emotional atiitides; they're just reason.
 
Roses In The Vineyard said:
Sure innovations like salted nukes and vx nerve gas what great achievements like Elon's brain chip and Zuckerberg's metaverse. To think these are the sorts of "brilliant" minds that invented Eugenics along with so many ills over the past century but hey all that raw intellect sure dig go to waste in the end while society degraded.
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These people are poor examples of even raw intelligence, in my opinion. Regardless, it's not a matter of raw intelligence or morality. The root of the degradation of society, including the disastrous demonstrations of scientific knowledge that you mentioned, is scientific illiteracy.
 
niar said:
As I said, I'm not necessarily talking about depression as a mental illness, but as you put it: a mode of negative attitude. You made a distinction there, which I indirectly contended with what I said about negativity being realism. If we assume that garden variety, ''intelligent'' depression/staring into the abyss is realism, that means that intelligence and negativity are not two separate aspects that happen to co manifest in intelligent people, and they're not emotional atiitides; they're just reason.
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What I reject is that this is a universal. I don't see intelligence as inevitably leading to a negative attitude, though of course it may do according to each person's life experiences and fate, and also perhaps to the choices that they make. Logically, it's just as reasonable to say that someone intelligent who looks at the world with intuition and sees it's deep glory as well as it's tragedy can have a very positive attitude and this is just as much a manifestation of intelligence. I don't see a positive or negative attitude as being an indicator of intelligence - it's more to do with the way we manifest either of them.
 
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