Brainy Women are Less Loved

Newsflash: Men actually love women who are smarter than they are. That is, as long as the brainy broads are far, far away — and imaginary.

In other words, men prefer women who won’t challenge them mentally. That’s the latest finding of researchers looking into the puzzles of the heart. And for many women, the results ring true.

In college, I asked a male friend why I was dateless on so many Saturday nights. He said, “You are amazing, but totally intimidating.”

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Sure, I thought. You’re just letting me down gently. Over the years I’ve reconsidered. Men can be daunted by women.

Of course, any potential love interest is frightening. You’re emotionally vulnerable after putting your heart on the line. But, what is involved in determining attraction in the first place?

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Previous research has focused on physical attractiveness based on things like facial symmetry and body odor, and on personality traits like sense of humor, kindness, and intelligence.

In fact, people generally envision their ideal romantic partner to rate higher than themselves on personality measures and overall mate value. However, when put to a face-to-face test, men seem to be less interested in smarter women.

When put to a face-to-face test, men seem to be less interested in smarter women.

Essentially, men say one thing, then do something different. To get to the bottom of this psychological paradox, a group of researchers engaged in a series of experiments involving college-aged men, the results of which are published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The six studies investigated the influence of psychological distance and intelligence on attraction, namely: How does being in the same room with someone, versus abstractly imagining them, affect one person’s attraction to another who performs better or worse than them on a test Does being outperformed in intelligence affect the result?

The first two experiments found that men were more likely to want to meet a hypothetical woman who outperformed them in a display of intelligence. Basically, the men preferred imaginary intelligent women.

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However, in the second set of experiments, when men were put into a room with a woman who scored better than they did on an intelligence test, they were less attracted to her. Interestingly, their level of attraction correlated to how closely they placed a chair to the woman after hearing their test results.

So far, the results corroborated previous work — men preferred imaginary intelligent women to real ones.

In the final set of experiments, the researchers explored how being bested on an intelligence test by a woman sitting in the same room or in another room affected men’s sense of masculinity. These results were less clear, but suggested that manhood is reduced when men are physically face-to-face with a woman who outperforms them.

Lora Park, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Buffalo who was lead author in the research, told LifeZette, “We found that men reported feeling less masculine … when they were outperformed.”

Masculinity, which derives in part from competence and competitiveness, is important to creating the confidence necessary to drive romantic interest. Lower masculine feelings might explain why the men were less attracted to the more intelligent woman.

It’s possible that older, more secure men feel less threatened by more intelligent women.

When asked whether these results based only on college-aged men were representative of men in general, Park said, “If older men have a more secure and stable sense of masculinity, then perhaps they may not be as threatened as men who have a less secure or stable sense of their masculinity.”

“Most studies done on precarious manhood have used college student populations, so it might be the case that this feeling of manhood being easily lost is especially salient among men in this age group,” she said.

From my own unscientific survey of friends on Facebook, I know men not only appreciate intelligence in women, but are also married to intelligent women. And most men, when asked, said their wives were the more intelligent of the pair.