Why do some intelligent people like to be alone?

Quora great question of the week

There is some evidence that intelligent people are more likely to want to be alone. For instance: People With Fewer Friends Tend To Be Intelligent: Study I think this is quite understandable in a number of different ways. For one thing, if you’re someone who likes to think things out a lot, it’s generally going to be easier to do that alone than around people. So arguably the question is a bit like asking “Why do mountain climbers tend to hang around mountains?”. Perhaps intelligent people are hanging around the solitude they need to think. Then there’s the fact that anyone who thinks a lot in a detailed way (which presumably goes hand in hand with intelligence) is liable to find it frustrating to be around the majority of the rest of the world, who are less into abstract analysis. Studies find that intelligence is correlated with openness to experience and to ideas. So someone who would like to discuss and analyse various ideas from various points of view might find it frustrating to hang around with people who are less into that and adhere more to the “spade is a spade” school of thought, or who are more likely to have fixed opinions even in the absence of evidence. I’d like to think of myself that I could be quite OK company for some hyper-intelligent professor character. I like to listen to different points of view and look at things in various different ways. But if this hypothetical professor were to head out to the local bar, he or she would likely encounter a relative surplus of strongly-held simplistic opinions and a deficit of careful reasoning. A return to the comfort of books and solitude might seem quite appealing. 5.4k Views