You're Not Flaky, You're Actually a Genius, Says Extremely Validating New Study

Everyone has that one friend in the group who never makes time for anybody: the flaky asshole, the elusive chanteuse, the one who always chooses to spend a quiet night at home alone over a loud night of socialization with friends, because why should anyone have to miss Jeopardy? To maintain lifelong bonds that some studies have suggested are essential to personal happiness?

Psh, those studies can have several seats. There's a new study in town, and it says that people who dislike spending time with their friends are basically geniuses.

Congratulations, misanthropes! You're all a bunch o' smarties!

The extremely validating research, which was published in February in the British Journal of Psychology, was led by a pair of evolutionary psychologists in the U.K. and Singapore. Satoshi Kanazawa and Norman Li sought to analyze the effects of "population density and frequency of socialization with friends" on "modern happiness."

To do this, they analyzed survey answers from 15,000 18- to 28-year-olds, the Washington Post reported.

The team found that for most people, hanging out with friends is associated with increased life satisfaction. But that isn't the case for everyone: 

The main associations of life satisfaction with population density and socialization with friends significantly interact with intelligence, and, in the latter case, the main association is reversed among the extremely intelligent. More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends. 

Did you read that last sentence? The one that called you more intelligent than everyone else? Of course you did, because you're more intelligent than everyone else.

So in conclusion, below are some handy "leave me alone" GIFs to text your friends the next time they try to inconvenience you with their requests for "quality time" or "face-to-face interaction." Those simpletons. Just stay at home with a glass of 2005 Château Lafite and a copy of Proust's Time Regained. (Or stay at home with a glass of two-buck chuck and watch Vanderpump Rules, either one.) 

h/t Quartz