When one gets out 2, 3, 4, 5 standard deviations from the mean, there's only a very small number of others of similar intellect. Very very very small at the high end.
The chance of finding someone who is of compatible intellect and who is also compatible in even basic other ways is extremely small.
This accounts for the results of the study. There's no need to propose mechanisms whereby the exceptionally intelligent somehow foolishly believe that their intelligence gives them a pass, which it obviously doesn't. Mere observation and life experience shows that to be the opposite of reality.
I wasn't trying to say that all exceptionally intelligent people believe that they have no need for social skills because they are so smart. In fact, I brought up an example of the opposite.
And I agree with you that it makes sense that people would prefer to pair up with people of similar "technical" intelligence as them. However, I doubt that if you take a potential couple, where both people possess "technical" intelligence but only one possesses emotional intelligence, that person is going to be very willing to be with someone who lacks it to such a severe degree.
Leading me to a conclusion that a lot of very "technically" smart people are limiting their already narrow pool of people of similar "technical" intelligence level by not working on their emotional intelligence/social skills.
Not sure what's the point of confusion here, but the way I understood the question, my answer is "to themselves". I don't get how one can develop skills "to anyone else", but themselves, unless we are talking about teaching or mentoring or something similar.
I still have no idea what you mean by your question or what's your point of confusion. In my original comment, I said that some smart people "refuse to develop social skills". How is this confusing at all? This is just a simple example of using that word in a context of "someone refusing to do something".
P.S. If you were genuinely confused, I hope this answered your question. If you were just trying to nitpick in hopes to annoy, then congrats as well, because it was definitely somewhat effective.
In analogy, it is entirely possible that a few people have weighed the pros and cons and decided to spend their time in something they find more beneficial than developing social skills. saying they refuse to, implies that they should be willing to, but that is just an assumption that we commonly make. The fact that they are supersmart allows them to get away with it: being able to solve your problems easier than other people creates an extreme sense of self-reliance
You haven't seen many people out there who refuse to work out, despite them obviously benefitting from it? Just because people refuse to do something, doesn't mean that they weighed all the pros and cons and made an educated decision.
If people refuse to learn social skills and are totally ok with not reaching their full potential, that's their right to do so. Just like if someone refuses to learn intelligence skills and is ok with being treated by others like a person with subpar intelligence.
And no excuses like "it has to be one or the other" are really valid, because I've definitely met people who were both extremely smart by any possible metric (even if the baseline of intelligence used for comparison is an average of other engineers), as well as extremely socially intelligent.