Are people resentful of those who are intellectually superior to them?

Question

For example if there is a room full of average-intelligent people talking and arguing about things like history, art, politics and religion, the one person who is sitting across the room just chuckels to himself because such things seem so childish and elementary to him. It's equivalent to a college professor trying to have a debate/conversation with a preschooler. His intelligene (genuis level, higher I.Q.) is much greater than those in the rest of the room. He doesn't find it worth his time or energy to join in their conversation because the things he would like to question and discuss are well beyond the understanding of the average person. He makes college professors feel insecure and intimidated by the narrowness of their knowledge compared to him.

Would the other people feel intimidated and threatened by him? Why? Does it make them feel insecure being viewed in such a way in the eyes of that person? Why the envy?

Answer 1

they shouldn't care, because if he thinks/knows that he is better than everyone else around them, he shouldn't bother, nor should they. besides he maybe just getting ideas from the debate. but the point is that, everyone may not agree with each other, so they should let it be...

Answer 2

The fact that this professor behaves this way is his downfall from grace.  This professor with such an ego that he thinks others are not worth speaking with makes him that much more the idiot.

Answer 3

The person in your example is a fool.  Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing, and anyone with even a touch of wisdom knows that persons of average (and even low) intelligence can still accumulate vast knowledge and wisdom through experience.  In addition, other viewpoints are always useful, because the intellectual view is often divorced from reality and the intellectual is not even aware of it.  

This is a problem not of those who are 'inferior' but of anyone fool enough to reckon himself 'superior.'  In terms of IQ I rate in the top 4%; in terms of wisdom I don't want to compare because I won't come off so well.  I have heard little nuggets of wisdom from the strangest places, and I ALWAYS try to listen.  

I don't know anybody who resents my intelligence because of the way I treat people--they respect me because I first demonstrate my respect for them.  Lots of people are very leery of me at first, but once they realize I listen, won't talk down to them and have no problem laughing at myself they warm right up.  Which of course aids in my attempts at accumulating wisdom and knowledge, because one can't learn anything if one won't listen.

In your example the 'inferiors' of the piece have every right to resent the fool who thinks himself so far above his company.  Intellectual superiority is self-deception, i.e. foolishness.  If he were really superior he'd be leading the discussion, not snootily congratulating himself on his own greatness.

So I suppose the answer to your question is yes; except that in reality there is no intellectual superiority.  High intelligence does not make one superior, it is just a talent like any other, and once off home ground an intellectual is as likely to make a fool of himself as anybody else.  True polymaths are very rare, but fools are ubiquitous.