A person’s level of intelligence was related to their psychological response to COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality and co-authored by Satoshi Kanazawa, a reader in management at the London School of Economics, SMU Professor of Psychology Norman Li and Dr. Jose C. Yong from Northumbria University. The study, “When intelligence hurts and ignorance is bliss: Global pandemic as an evolutionarily novel threat to happiness“, found that more intelligent people tended to be less happy with their lives during the pandemic than their less intelligent counterparts. The new findings provide evidence that higher intelligence can have a downside in the modern world and support a growing body of research known as the savanna theory of happiness.