Friday 18 September 2015

Do women find bright men sexy?

Although I don’t do trigger warnings, you may want to skip this item. One of the few consolations to shy men with intellectual aspirations was the thesis that women would be tempted to mate with them on the basis of intellect alone. Of course, men were still required reveal their intellects in some way, but telling jokes was judged sufficient. Personally, I cannot recall this ever working. “A friend, seeing Franz Kafka sitting alone at a cafe table, walked across the hall to him and said “Franz, I am sitting with some friends. Would you like to join us?” “No” replied Kafka.”

The young women on whom I attempted this approach would smile appreciatively, and then dance with someone else, usually of taciturn demeanour and singularly lacking in social skills. Of course I would not dream of suggesting that this was a shallow and heartless response. Perhaps the music was too loud, and the joke could not be heard.

So, what happens when you test the hypothesis?

MALE GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (G) DOES NOT INCREASE FEMALE SEXUAL ATTRACTION

Lars Penke, Ruben C. Arslan, and Juliane Stopfer1 1 Georg August University Göttingen, lpenke@uni-goettingen.de.

Human general intelligence (g) has been hypothesized to be an indicator of genomic mutation load and under sexual selection for indirect genetic benefits (‘good genes’ for the offspring), implying that high g should be sexually attractive. People clearly report preferences and assortatively mate for intelligence, but these effects can be due to direct phenotypic benefts of g and social homogamy. Only one study (Prokosch et al., 2009) with methodological limitations has directly tested if higher male intelligence increases female initial sexual attraction.

We tested 88 young men (age 19 to 31 years) on six psychometric intelligence subtests and two measures of information processing speed, from which a g factor was extracted, and on the Big 5 personality dimensions. Standardized photos, voice recordings and videotapes of three behavioral tasks (reading headlines, charade, tell-a-joke) were also taken. Sixteen women and 14 men judged the intelligence and personality of the target men based on the videos. A second group of 16 women rated the attractiveness of the men as long-term and short-term partners. A third group of 25 women received information about each men in five steps, with intelligence cues being increasingly present over and above physical attractiveness information, and rated long- and short-term attraction after each step. Both men and women could accurately judge intelligence and extraversion, but not the other Big 5, from the videos. Measured male g had no effect on female short-term attraction, but a small positive effect on long-term attraction, though only after extraversion and independently rated physical attractiveness were controlled. When information on male intelligence was presented incrementally, measured g did not predict changes in female long-term or short-term attraction ratings formed based on physical attractiveness. Overall we found no support for intelligence being sexually attractive to women on first encounters, and limited support that it increases initial impression of the potential as a long-term romantic partner. This is only the second study on the attractiveness of measured intelligence at zero acquaintance, and the first one that assessed a true g factor, had a sufficiently large sample of target men, and tested whether increasing availability of intelligence information alters women’s reported attraction. Taken together with very limited support for an association between g and mutation load in the currently available genomic data, these results cast doubt on the hypothesis that g is an indicator of genetic fitness under ‘good genes’ sexual selection.

41 comments:

  1. I'm mildly surprised. I'd expect women to be attracted to characteristics of males that are (i) intrinsically beneficial to reproduction, and (ii) hard to fake. I'd have thought that g satisfied the second test. Maybe it fails the first: that reminds me of the old joke that an intellectual is someone who's discovered something more interesting than sex.

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    1. Well, when controlled for extroversion and physical attractiveness, "g" has a small positive effect.

      Meaning that it's more likely that "g" increases attraction, but it comes together with lower extroversion and/or physical attractiveness.
      In other words, "g" is in competition with other characteristics.

      This remembers me that myopia correlates positively with IQ.

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  2. Mensa has no groupies.

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  3. Intelligence doesn't need to be *inherently* attractive in order to make its possessors more attractive. Assuming 'power' is still "the ultimate aphrodisiac," intelligence can be useful for getting it, showing it, faking it, and wresting it from unfavorable circumstances. Therefore, I don't see this finding as necessarily dampening the hopes of shy intellectual men.

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  4. I'd be curious to see the result with respect to some measure of social intelligence, which I think is very highly appraised by women.

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  5. Sample sizes are kind of small.

    Assortative mating is also a factor. How smart were these girls.

    And finally, there may be a big difference in what people say they want as a mate and what happens in the real world. Though part of that is due to people having to take what they can get.

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  6. Sapiosexual: One who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature; behaviour of becoming attracted to or aroused by intelligence and its use.

    http://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/6304/Sapiosexual

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  7. I've always been told that the secret to success is to tell the pretty girls that they're smart and the smart girls that they're pretty.

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  8. Important traits to women would not be general intelligence per se but more social and emotional intelligence (with other intelligence types following).

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    1. Pick any of those attributes, impose them on a person who is broke and not accepted by the group.

      Having intelligence is meaningless if you refuse to go along to get a long

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  9. Except that we have little evidence that social and emotional intelligence are separate and substantial factors in addition to general

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  10. Except that we have little evidence that social and emotional intelligence are separate and substantial factors in addition to general

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  11. This is not a joke?

    First, serious comment: At what point in their cycle were the females? Were they taking hormonal birth control? Other studies have found that such things influence females when judging potential mates, so that should have been noted.

    Second, also serious comment: Why does one assume intelligence is an evolutionarily favored trait? I've found studies which suggest that the more intelligent a person or family are, the fewer children they produce. The result seems stronger for women.

    We regard high intelligence as a good thing, but perhaps it isn't a universal good thing. What if we should regard both very high and very low intelligence as outliers, and the best result to be "normal" intelligence?

    If natural processes were to select for high intelligence, no one would be able to put up with the tedium of training to fight other humans. That would be a bad thing, when the Spartans show up over the hill looking to gather more Helots.

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    1. Among 88 women menstrual cycles will cancel out. Don't know the literature for effects of hormonal birth control. Doubt any of that is relevant. More problematic is whether the method picks up real choices. Need to see the procedures in more depth, which might come later.
      Intelligence and evolution: Intelligence favoured until 1870, when the intelligent stopped having more surviving children. See Gregory Clark "Farewell to Alms". Present trends may be dysgenic. Search for Woodley on my blog. War is sometimes an intelligent option if one is under attack.

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    2. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704681904576313243579677316

      http://www.psych2go.net/new-research-suggest-birth-control-pills-make-us-attracted-less-masucline-men/

      There weren't 88 women. There were 88 men. The women were broken up into groups of 16, 16 and 25.

      I can't reach the study. If the female participants were, say, college freshmen, their cycles could have been synced, due to living together. The segment of the study subjects on birth control would not have had synced cycles, but the fact should have been noted. Studies have shown women prefer different features at different points in their cycle--and the study showed them photos.

      It would have been interesting to see how intelligent the women were, as JayMan noted. How large was the range in intelligence for both genders?

      It would have been interesting to do a t-shirt test, without photos. Would women find more intelligent men's scent more sexy than less intelligent men's scent?

      Tell me where is fancy bred,
      Or in the heart or in the head?

      In the pheromones, of course. And the pheromones of intelligent men may well be different than those of less intelligent men, particularly if genetic fitness is involved. If women are (unbeknownst to them, of course) seeking out compatible immune systems to produce healthy children, intelligence may be associated with attractiveness--but the eyes are not the only sense involved in determining attraction.

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    3. Yes, you are right, not 88 but 16 plus 25. Apologies. Menstrual cycles and contraception might be influences, but I think you and I are converging on other more important factors. " More problematic is whether the method picks up real choices." Actual potential mates reveal much more than photos and recordings.

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    4. I found this article fascinating: http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/we-are-all-classists#.rcarNRK6G.

      The online dating websites may have a much better idea than anyone else how attractive qualities associated with intelligence are to the opposite sex. It is possible that our technical toys and education patterns support ever-stronger divisions along class (and education) lines: Now, the results of a small sample-size Tinder simulation doesn’t mean that we’re all destined to marry within only our own classes. Data on the tendency to marry within one’s class is difficult to come by, but if relying on education level as an (imperfect) proxy for class, then the rate has decreased dramatically over the 50 years. Even as more and more people marry “across” lines of race and religion, fewer and fewer are willing to cross the education/class line.

      Self-selected sample. No controls. Not intended as a scientific study. But then again, 799 participants. I would think such an approach might be more effective--create the same collection of profiles, but vary only the education, or the tag lines. Will mentioning a science fair win increase the swipe rate?

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    5. If a female doesn't have a static sexual preference, then she isn't monogamous

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  12. I recall from when I was in the meat market that women paid attention to my use of big and sophisticated words.

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    1. Did you also notice that using big words repelled them?

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  13. Agree the assortative thing may be a factor - the sort of people I grew up with were like that - they were less attracted to people dumber than their niche but *also* people smarter than their niche.

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    1. Think about what its like to be in the 140 category. Thats in the 0.3-1% group.

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  14. Well, my opinion may not count for much but I remember as a young woman that no matter how good looking a boy/man might be, a lack of intelligence was a complete turn off.

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    1. I agree, and feel the same about a good looking woman with nothing to say. However, the paper (we will have to see the full details) seems to contradict our personal views, so I have to give it precedence, understand it, and then look at further work (concentrating on whether the experimental set-up is a realistic measure of real life courtship).

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    2. Giving in "scientific" paper in this field precedence over what "everyone knows" (aka, common sense) is folly.

      f the statistics on reproducibility are bogus, please do let me know:

      http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/making-it-all_1042807.html


      If you want to see the mental mechanisms behind romantic love, try consulting martial therapists instead of sociologists:

      http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Love-You-Find-Personal/dp/0671734202/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3

      The short version is that one will feel the "In Love" feeling only for a sexually-appealing member of your gender of choice, but one does not experience "The Divine Madness" for all of them. What also has to be true is that he/she exhibit one or more of four primary human capabilities that you feel (rightly or wrongly) are missing in you. Dr. Hendrix's list:

      1) Intellect

      2) Emotionality

      3) Sensuality

      4) Athletic ability

      In my long-term relationships, women have come for "intellect" and stayed for "sensuality". I lovingly referred to such women as "IQ Whores", back in the day.

      Obviously women don't complain to you about the men who have disappointed them like they do to me. I vividly recall one woman who brought home a beautiful much-younger specimen and nailed him. She was completely happy with the sex, but then the dude had to try to *converse* afterwards. She could not endure how stupid he sounded so she had her husband throw the wretch out.

      Hasn't every male reader of this thread not heard such stories from women? Hasn't every female member not had at least one?

      I am emotionally "flat" and am a total physical klutz, so, of course, my first wife was a "Big Six" company ballerina.

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  15. If intelligence were attractive, the library would be a pick-up joint

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    1. You can pick women up at the library...though they will expect relationships more than sex

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  16. I can only speak for myself. I was attracted to the man I eventually married when I saw him reading a book. He was also pleasant to look at, but the idea that he liked to read was the main thing for me as I am a reader.

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  17. Heartiste writes in his Dating Market Value Test For Men (https://heartiste.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-men/) that only slightly above average men have an advantage. I would agree with that as it not only is consistent with my own experience but also coincidentally is found by a mathematical model of democratic election (http://www.maxwellsci.com/jp/abstract.php?jid=CRJSS&no=64&abs=07). Finally, it seems quite logical that higher intellectual capabilities are not perceived as an advantage but as a threat. According the Dunning-Kruger effect, we all are incapable to correctly evaluate capabilities that are more favorable than ours. We cannot understand a more intellectual person, and everything that we cannot understand we use to fear instinctively.

    Fortunately, if women are capable to select slightly more intelligent men this is of evolutionary advantage over many generations, as these INDIVIDUAL decisions sum up over the generations.

    Unfortunately, that is not true with democracies, as COLLECTIVE decisions always cut down over the generations.

    The mathematical effect on variance is as follows: the former will increase variance, the latter decrease towards idiocracy.

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    1. I don't know what dating market this Heartiste guy inhabits, but it is one where women are not attracted to money and power, which are disproportionately possessed by men far above the population mean in IQ.

      I think what you are calling a "threat" is really just the life of a male too far up the IQ ziggurat from her seeming "weird". For example, I would, as boggled as I am by the notion, I would never share with an IQ-100 female how strange I am feeling about the possibility that I might have to address a long-term (of 15 years), much-younger (22 years) friend as "Mr. Speaker". But for an IQ-130 type of gal it would work as a conversation-starter. (Most people on this thread will have to trust me on this one.)

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  18. Interesting methodology but I'm afraid what you call g is nothing but a 'resource'.
    It is how your subject male uses this resource that makes him sexually attractive to women.
    Even more interesting is the fact that many people who have commented here speak of what 'chances the shy intellectual men' have to 'mate'. When considering this we must remember that no matter how modern we have become, how 'feminist' in our manner of thinking, sexual behavior is still gender based. Men are supposed to be (just a tad) more active than the women. So it's their shyness that drags 'shy intellectual men' back, not their g. And this happens only until they meet their right one - that's when they become 'energized' enough to 'score' - to the bewilderment of their acquaintances.

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  19. Both males and females choose associates (whether romantic or not) whose intellects are close to their own. We want the most physically attractive partners but not the brightest. Why this is the case isn't completely clear to me, but part at least is that the ability to communicate falls off differences greater than a standard deviation.

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  20. You’ve got lots to offer in a relationship, so why do you find yourself single? Lots of men ask themselves this, and often the answer is simply a lack of access to quality partner potentials. Sure, you can meet friends of friends, or hang out in bars hoping that someone special will come strolling into your life, but it’s certainly not the most effective , nor efficient ,way of connecting with meet single women looking for men. If you tend to agree, it’s time to try online dating and give your love life a little helping hand. There's even mobile dating for those of you who are always on the go!

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    1. I'm single because most chicks are lame and expensive. Even for just sex really

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  21. You’ve got lots to offer in a relationship, so why do you find yourself single? Lots of men ask themselves this, and often the answer is simply a lack of access to quality partner potentials. Sure, you can meet friends of friends, or hang out in bars hoping that someone special will come strolling into your life, but it’s certainly not the most effective , nor efficient ,way of connecting with meet single women looking for men. If you tend to agree, it’s time to try online dating and give your love life a little helping hand. There's even mobile dating for those of you who are always on the go!

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  22. It has been my observation that many, if not most women are very much attracted to the consequences of higher g, that being wealth and power.
    There is a whole series of you tube videos in which a fellow hits on a girl only to be rebuffed, then he goes to get into his Maserati and she immediately becomes let's say, available. :)

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  23. I've rarely seen women being attracted to smart guys, young attractive women are especially unlikely to be attracted to smart guys -- if the guys isn't handsome, talkative and/or tall.

    This finding is common sense.

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  24. We might consider that a motivated "high g" man on the hunt will have a higher likleyhood of closing with his prey.

    High g men attract women because of greater affluence and or ingroup status.

    We have to remember that the cause of this study is due to women saying that they like a sense of humor, but what women really want is status and this historically comes from association.

    All you have to do to prove this, is to go rent a very high end convertable sports car. You will be amazed at how attrative you suddenly become.

    I respectfully submit this:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZgOqjNVbcE
    QED

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  25. I wonder if the results might have been different had the researchers sat the women through five minutes of a stupid man saying stupid things.

    I'm attracted to good looking but stupid women at first glance. But then they do the world a disservice by saying things, and I quickly get bored and lose interest.

    Commenters talking about menstrual cycles probably aren't wrong; an odd proportion of womens' cycles line up with lunar cycles. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3716780

    So that can mean that disproportionate numbers of women are in a given part of the cycle at a given time of the month.

    I'd like to see such a study with a big sample size conducted over a 28 day period, with the dumb people in the experiment simulated to be as annoying as dumb people are in real life.

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