UnNews:Ignorance not bliss, new study finds
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| Ignorance not bliss, new study finds | 
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26 September 2012
LONDON, England -- Researchers from University College London have established (that is, have posited after doing a survey and an above-reproach intelligence test) that people with lower IQ's are actually less happy than smart-arses.
The study correlated the results of an IQ test - the validity of which no psychologists have ever questioned, because reducing a person's intelligence to a number obviously makes sense - with the answers given to a questionnaire about their happiness.
One example of a question was, "Taking all things together, how would you say you were these days - very happy, fairly happy or not too happy?" The group which was most likely to describe itself as "not too happy" was the one with the lowest IQ, between 70 and 79. This group also recorded the highest incidence of incomplete papers, and participants drawing faces instead of ticking boxes. One group member even misunderstood the use of the verb "take," asking "How can I take all things together?" and another simply scrawled the word "sad" in enormous letters on the page.
The findings stunned the academic world, which is full of intelligent people who are miserable as sin, and led them to question whether they were really happy. Or intelligent. Dr Brian English, head of the study, was unabashed at his conclusion: "Doing the study itself made me happy, because I got tons of funding for it. Then, the results made me happier still, because it suggested that dumb people are unhappy, which must mean that I am clever, 'cos look how happy I am!!"
Rival professors were quick to jump on the study's causality problems. Dr Ewan Scottish, from the University of Edinburgh, trilled all the r's in the following sentence: "It's a ridiculous, preposterous hypothesis. Are people unhappy because they're stupid? No, look at Kim Kardashian. Look at all the viewers of The Only Way is Essex, mindlessly grinning their ways through their inane lives. They're happy as pigs in shit. The problem's not being thick, it's being thick and not getting a job, and being fookin' poor. But you know what, being clever and poor isn't much fun either. Just ask one of my PhD students. They have to do awl ma photacopyin, ya bawbag!"
The middle-class media selected one participant, Derek Grimley, for interviews as the typical subnormal participant, as he was the unemployed father of five children by three mothers who all live on the same housing estate. Unfortunately, Grimley was unable to speak about the questionnaire, as his mouth is primarily for breathing and smoking. Polly Toynbee of the Guardian immediately rattled off an article claiming the findings of the study discriminated against both stupid and unhappy people, and perhaps poor people as well, while Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail said that Grimley was "everything that was wrong with broken Britain."
Sources
- Staff "IQ linked to levels of happiness". BBC, September 26, 2012
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