Throughout most of fiction, intelligent characters are mainly placed into two groups. You have the nerdy, nonathletic guy with incredibly low self esteem and a major case of social anxiety, and you have the narcissistic, borderline sociopath who uses his intelligence and good looks to swindle himself into the good life. Usually by acquiring massive amounts of money and power. While these two definitely happen in the real world, those by no means encapsulate the life of the average "genius".
For the most part, the people with above average intelligence are hard to pick from a crowd. They may be a little more witty in their humor or show some slight inability to make close connections, but for the most part intelligent people are, on the exterior, almost identical to the average person. Where the difference lies is in the way they go about solving problems, how they tend to over-analyze a situation, and just how they think as a whole. The "closet genius" is known to have a whole slew of problems to counteract the obvious upsides to being smart. A few of them are, increased risk for depression and other mental disorders of that nature, a tendency to lie, a gullible nature, and a self destructive nature. The thing that connects all these pitfalls is the common ground of them being self-induced. The belief that they are of a different crop, better or worse, keeps a hefty amount of them ensnared in their self-destructive habits. While outside appearances often hide it, the average overly-intelligent person tends to struggle severely with creating meaningful relationships. There are, of course, exceptions to these rules, however, the better portion of those diagnosed with intelligence have to deal with these problems.
Over recent weeks I have witnessed a crazy amount of smartness stereotypes through movies, TV, the internet, and every day conversation. On top of that, my psychology teacher mentioned the other day that we will be studying intelligence as well as the debate over what really constitutes a smart person. This inspired me to do a little research and mix in a little concrete fact with my heavily biased opinions on this particular subject. I, of course, found a plethora of upsides to having an abnormally large intelligence, but I figured I'd skip past that because everybody already knows what smarts can get you. The real things I thought would be worth sharing are the heavy drawbacks associated with it. Once you know the full spectrum of effects a good brain can have on you, does it make you question if having superior intelligence is worth it? If you had the choice, would you rather be at the same level intellectually as the majority of those around you, or would you rather be one of the intellectual "elite"?
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