HSS: Why Intelligent People Do Unnatural Things

If general intelligence evolved to solve evolutionarily novel problems, then the human brain’s difficulty in comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment (proposed in the Savanna Principle) should interact with general intelligence, such that less intelligent individuals should have greater difficulty with evolutionarily novel entities and situations than more intelligent individuals.  The new Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, applied to the domain of preferences and values, suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel preferences and values than less intelligent individuals.  The Hypothesis can explain, among others, why more intelligent people are more likely to:  1) be left-wing liberal; 2) be atheists; 3) value sexual exclusivity (but only if they are male); 4) be nocturnal; 5) enjoy classical (and other instrumental) music; 6) drink and smoke more; and 7) be the ultimate losers in life.