They are intelligent, confident and completely independent. Therefore, smart women must be every man’s dream, right? Wrong!
A new scientific study from The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that this is only true on some occasions, primarily when the woman in question is simply an abstract thought of an unknown woman.
The leader of the study, Dr. Lora Park, found that when an intelligent woman was actually in front of the men that took part in the study, many shied away.
The study found that men were more attracted to hypothetical smart women. At the same time, they felt threatened when they were outperformed by the women who took part in the study and were then less attracted to them.
The study looked at the men in a romantic dating environment and each couple was given a range of different scenarios. The study was broken into six parts, but each scenario was different. All scenarios were based around the men being shown a profile of a woman, expecting to meet a woman, and then meeting them in real life.
What was found was that the idea of the smart women was seen as much more attractive than the reality.
This may initially seem as though the men were more attracted to the hypothetical rather than the reality of an intelligent woman. Yet, the results may not be so damning after all. Dr. Park went on to say that there is more research to be done on the subject.
It may be that being outperformed is a threat to women as well as men, and that attraction levels may fall then, too. It just so happened that this study focused on the male side of the study.
The main finding was that it mattered how close in intelligence the couple was, and where they dated.
If they were closer to a home or an area that the male felt was personal, he would feel threatened and not attracted but if they met on a more neutral then it didn’t matter as much.
There are many factors that we consider when dating, and intelligence is most definitely one of them. We tend to look for those who are similar to us in performance and creativity.
So, intelligence does matter when looking for a potential mate.
