I once had a girlfriend who systematically acted less intelligent than she really was, especially when her friends and family were near.
Her main reason to do so was that she wanted to fit in, and to some extent I understood her.
Because actually, she needed to fit in.
Her parents — my neighbors, alas — were, and are, “common sense people.”
They never read a book, are not interested in culture whatsoever, hate Nature (I will come back to this interesting feature in a minute), hate intellectuals, and Science in general.
“Common sense” is their Science, your honor.
And thinking is a city in China.
When her father tries to talk to me about our trees — this is the big problem, we have trees in our garden ! — it feels like talking to a wall. An aggressive wall, that is.
(He becomes frantic if he finds leaves and twigs in his cement garden, and so does his wife.)
He does not listen to what you say, even if he would be able to understand what you are saying. (He’s not.) He lives in this entirely fabricated delusional world, by his own “common sense” rules.
And that is the world in which Ebba grew up — constantly fighting against her father’s one-dimensional reasoning, against his bullying and stupidity. Her mom is much friendlier, but intellectually much alike her husband.
To rebel especially against her father, Ebba developed a drug problem, was thrown out of the house, and lived on her own as a young teenager. But smart as she was, she obtained a college degree in the end.
Still, the friends she had tended to be more like her parents, probably because she met most of them in bad times.
So every time her friends and family were near, she acted just like them, ignoring her real thoughts, and swallowing any objections against their constant no-brainer truths.
When we were an item, she refused to enter any kind of even slightly intellectual conversations, because she wanted to be like them — she neededto be like them and fit in.
So I guess the short (but honest) answer is: survival of the fittest.
