Confused about something—about smart people not being nicer. That fits with my theory of how the world works, but not with my observation of children and teenagers. The smart kids are (usually) way nicer to each other. My 12-y-o observed this as he went from (nasty) 2nd grade to (nice) gifted program to middle school, with the middle school being a mix of nicer smart kids and more poorly behaved, poorly performing students. This also matches my personal experience, my wife’s experience, and what we see in pop culture.
Now, you could say smart kids just find it more useful to be less randomly nasty, but whatever the reason, the proof of the pudding’s in the eating, right?
This is only one country (USA). Maybe there’s something about our culture that makes it so.
Do we grow out of that? I don’t know many adults who are needlessly nasty, even if they’re not good people. Maybe even the less smart kids eventually get that there’s no point.
I don’t know. I usually hear the opposite stereotype, of smart people being edgy and mean. I wonder to what extent people’s stereotypes on this is due to noise, selection bias, or similar, but it seems hard to figure out.
In this specific case, I would wonder how much the true correlation is obscured by the school environment. Schooling institutions are supposed to value learning, intellect, etc.., so smart people and conformist/authority-trusting people might be hard to distinguish in schools?
I don’t think the USA is an outlier with respect to this, I think most differential psychology studies are done in the US.
Confused about something—about smart people not being nicer. That fits with my theory of how the world works, but not with my observation of children and teenagers. The smart kids are (usually) way nicer to each other. My 12-y-o observed this as he went from (nasty) 2nd grade to (nice) gifted program to middle school, with the middle school being a mix of nicer smart kids and more poorly behaved, poorly performing students. This also matches my personal experience, my wife’s experience, and what we see in pop culture.
Now, you could say smart kids just find it more useful to be less randomly nasty, but whatever the reason, the proof of the pudding’s in the eating, right?
This is only one country (USA). Maybe there’s something about our culture that makes it so.
Do we grow out of that? I don’t know many adults who are needlessly nasty, even if they’re not good people. Maybe even the less smart kids eventually get that there’s no point.
I don’t know. I usually hear the opposite stereotype, of smart people being edgy and mean. I wonder to what extent people’s stereotypes on this is due to noise, selection bias, or similar, but it seems hard to figure out.
In this specific case, I would wonder how much the true correlation is obscured by the school environment. Schooling institutions are supposed to value learning, intellect, etc.., so smart people and conformist/authority-trusting people might be hard to distinguish in schools?
I don’t think the USA is an outlier with respect to this, I think most differential psychology studies are done in the US.