When intelligence hurts and ignorance is bliss: Global pandemic as an evolutionarily novel threat to happiness.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

The savanna theory of happiness posits that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation that affect happiness but also its ancestral consequences, and that the effect of ancestral consequences on happiness is stronger among less intelligent individuals. But what about situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment and thus have no ancestral consequences? Global pandemic is one such situation that has no ancestral analog, and the theory predicts such evolutionarily novel threats to have a negative effect disproportionately on the life satisfaction of more intelligent individuals.

Methods

We analyzed prospectively longitudinal data from population samples from the National Child Development Study (Study 1) and the British Cohort Study

SUBMITTER: Kanazawa S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9115175 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature