Sadly I have had many friends and acquaintances over the years who I would consider very bright and well read, really nice interesting people who for one reason or another failed to see their own worth. They were all very good at contributing to others success but often not their own. I sometimes get the impression that high intelligence causes them to look too closely at things and if they can’t resolve all the variables they tend to move on to something else and avoiding the risk. So maybe my question is really are highly intelligent people more adverse to taking risks?
Averse. Averse to taking risks.
Sales careers seem to be a great example where the top producers are confident, personable, and dumb as milk. Makes sense, really. Someone who doesn’t think much and is naturally inclined toward optimism will come off as friendly, optimistic, and lighthearted. You find them comforting to be around, you like them, you accept their assurances (which may be the complete extent of their product knowledge), you buy from them.
Also: The more you know about the world, the more you realize how much you don’t know and how unimportant you are to it. Hard to keep your chin up with that knowledge without adopting a healthy dose of humor and nihilism.
I’m a highly intelligent person (if I do say so myself) and I’m extremely risk averse - but I’m not prepared to say that my intelligence has led to my risk aversion, in part because I have a friend who is also highly intelligent and is much more inclined to take risks than I am. He does this because he has felt driven to try and constantly prove himself due to low self esteem. Whereas myself, well, I don’t really bother to esteem myself one way or the other (seriously, I don’t know or care whether I like myself), and I am much more concerned about being secure and comfortable.
So I disagree that intelligence results in risk aversion, and I disagree that low self-esteem results in risk aversion. I can’t really say whether intelligence results in low self esteem since I don’t know where I fall on the self-esteem chart. I mean, technically I have no self esteem, but it’s not that I don’t like myself - I just don’t consider my own value something to be worth quantifying, if it’s even possible to quantify it in any objective sense.
Oh, that is why my sales career never took off. Good to know.
Glad to be of service, Beck. 
How have I survived 67 years thinking the word was “adverse”? Ignorance fought.
Gustave Flaubert, from a letter to Madame Louise Colet (13 August 1846): “To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”
I think it can work both ways, depending on the individual highly intelligent person, their personal traits and experiences and many other factors. I don’t think their is a direct correlation between intelligence and self esteem/depression.
I could be mistaken but I believe the theory that more highly intelligent people were more prone to depression was shown to be untrue. But my memory is hazy and I have no cite.
I don’t believe depression has much to do with higher mental acuity. I think the risk for depression for more intelligent people is on par with people of average intelligence, but the depths to which that depression can sink an intelligent person is perhaps deeper than that of a person of average/sub-average intelligence. IMHO, of course.
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know” - Ernest Hemingway
Only if ignorance is bliss.
I’m confused. Is the OP’s question the title? About self esteem?
Or the last sentence of the OP, asking about being risk averse? Maybe the OP could clarify?
Because some of the biggest risk takers I know, also the smartest. They pursue dangerous careers in difficult locations. I would imagine it’s because they feel they are smart enough to better evaluate the risks of being a human rights attorney in Kabul with the UN, than Joe Schmo is.
On the other hand, I know plenty of persons of higher intelligence who have self esteem issues. In many cases because they maninfest their cleverness quite early and were then subjected to debasing by someone who felt threatened by that intelligence. Often a parent or relentless sibling!
In my experience, the more intelligent the person, the more likely that person has some sort of anxiety and/or mental health issue.
Granted, this article focuses on any possible causal connection between depression and other mental illnesses and creativity. But
“There are plenty of geniuses who are not mentally ill, and there are plenty of mentally ill people who aren’t geniuses,” said HuffPost Mental Health Medical Editor Lloyd Sederer, M.D., medical director of the New York State Office of Mental Health.
“Sometimes you have the two combined. When you have geniuses who have such prominence, like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Robin Williams or John Nash, they make you think that this is more common than it is,” said Sederer. “One in four people annually in this country has a mental illness that impairs their function. That’s pretty common. The illness is pervasive. Genius is much more rare.”
I wonder whether a possible link between high intelligence and low self esteem might be (unrealistically) high expectations for oneself. “I’m really smart, I got straight A’s in school—why am I not more successful, or rich, or popular?”
My thoughts, based purely on personal observation (so please don’t ask me for a cite because I don’t have one): I think intelligence in the traditional sense is acquired by spending a lot of time alone, reading or tinkering with things or working out problems inside your head. I think you’re more likely to spend large amounts of time alone if you’re less socially adept than your peers. Or, alternately, I think you can *become *less socially adept than your peers by spending more time alone. I think being socially inept could lead being less likely to take risks that involve talking to or working with other people, likewise that it could make you more nervous about pursuing an idea which requires pitching and selling the idea to a company or donor. And I also think that being socially inept could lead to low self-esteem.
Non-intelligent person: “Life is unfair, but everything happens for a reason. Everything always works out. Don’t think too hard and you’ll never be unsettled by reality. Let someone else think for you. Believe whatever they tell you to believe and you’ll be ok.”
Intelligent person: “Life is unfair.”
I don’t think intelligent people suffer from low self-esteem. I don’t think they are necessarily risk averse either. I do think they are more prone to depression and disagreeable personalities, however.
IMO, it’s not intelligence but self-awareness. Everyone has flaws, but some people just don’t focus on them and maintain a breezy self-confidence which helps them in life. Other people dwell on them and it saps their self-confidence. The first group is not necessarily any dumber than the second, it’s just that their minds are not oriented that way.
[When I was in HS there was a story in our literature book in which the author explicitly made this point upfront, and the story itself illustrated the point. It was about a kid who had a “policy” against going out on blind dates but whose cool friend convinced him to give this one girl a shot. He met the girl who turned out to be a knockout, and he thought he hit the jackpot. But the girl seemed strangely detached during the date, until at one point he suddenly had a blinding flash of illumination in which he realized that he was the blind date, and that the girl was only going out with him as a favor to his friend who felt sorry for him. The narrator described his psyche as taking a blow from which it never recovered. I don’t remember the title of the story, though I do remember that it began with the words “Mewling, puking babies. That’s how we all come into this world …”]
You are lowering the OP’s self esteem. 
Or OR pointing out their lack of intelligence, which would mean they were happier.
Could go either way. 