He says "no," but then explains that it connects to the themes that have been raised on the blog recently. He perceives the article as advice aimed at men, advice that resembles the kind of advice that's been aimed at women over the years. He's read the article. I haven't. So I was skeptical: "Is this really aimed at men?" At the headline level, it looks like more massage for the female mind, and I'm tempted to translate the title uncharitably to: Why men avoid you: You're smart! A new study suggests that the men who don't want you are not good enough for you.
Okay, now I've read the article. In the study, men were prepped for an encounter with a woman by being told that the woman scored higher than he did on an intelligence test. The men then met the woman and judged her to be relatively unattractive.
MarketWatch asked psychologists about how men can overcome bias (if they have it) against smart women.This supports Meade's perception that it's advice for men. (It is, at least, if you get all the way to the last 3 paragraphs of a 13 paragraph article.) One psychologist tells men to focus on "appreciating" the woman and to "realize that this is an issue with your own self-esteem." Another psychologist says men could try to become more intelligent and to concentrate on other "areas of your self-concept."
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71 comments:
Uh, maybe the chick was somewhat unattractive for real?
Looks like another job for our handy preference-obliterating magnets!
A, If I went into an encounter with a girl that I was told had outscored me on an intelligence test, I would be hiding my boner until I could get seated behind the table.
B, I would know within minutes if it were true or false.
C, I really, honestly doubt it would lead me to find her less attractive. Maybe that's just me, but I find the opposite is true, that as I discover a lady is not that smart, she becomes noticeably less attractive. And I found myself having thoughts about a woman who is morbidly obese, but makes the funniest and wittiest jokes.
@Tim - perfectly put.
My wife is way way smarter than I am (has a Ph.D. from a top 5 school in her field) and a harder worker to boot. And I knew both those things were true the moment I met her. Plus she's very attractive.
I'm not sure where I was going with that, probably I was just bragging.
-XC
PS - I call selection bias on the dudes in the survey. Just saying.
I went with C as well, but I'll give you another theory.
Men's understanding of hypergamy.
Why waste effort on a woman who is likely to ultimately reject you?
Looks like another job for our handy preference-obliterating magnets
Exactly. We are not all Vulcans.
"than they"
[sigh]
The most heartfelt articles written by women are those demanding society rearrange itself so that the writer moves up in the sexual market pecking order.
Nobody ever writes articles telling men that if she can't carry a conversation about whether Rommel or Patton was the better general then she's just intimidated by you and isn't worth your time anyway.
Not in this case because they despise men, but because every man recognizes such as being utterly retarded.
The right to 'have it all', men being intimidated by a BA... if it wasn't for the fact that it is women themselves demanding these things, claims that this is how women think would be derided as misogyny equating female intelligence and reasoning with that of a stubborn five-year-old.
There was no option for me to choose in the poll: "Both - the headline challenges men's manhood and the rest strokes the women's egos."
It provides a motivation for each to read.
"Plenty of men aren’t threatened by a woman’s intelligence..."
Yeah, and we might be less threatened if you gals would learn how to speak English.
I'd like to be certain that the same woman was used to represent both the intelligent and the ordinary woman, and that she was attired the same way, and that she not told whether she represented a woman more intelligent or less intelligent than the man she was meeting. The article doesn't say. I think that third point is important, as the woman might have unconsciously presented herself according to stereotype if she was alerted as to which role she was playing with which man.
For myself, I think that you can either be a mathematician (like me) and be therefore unintimidated by other intelligent people of either gender (make that "of any gender," these days). Or you can reflect that an intelligent woman who is not a bitch beats an less intelligent woman who is a bitch.
But one thing puzzles me. The circles I move in include a large number of intelligent women, and except for a handful that seem to go out of their way to be frumpy, my impression is that intelligent woman know more about how to fix themselves up and to present themselves well. With the exceptions of the deliberately frumpy, I don't think you'll find an intelligent woman with a hairdo that is not attractive on her, nor do I think you'll find one wearing colors that are ill-suited to her complexion.+
Basically every successful romantic comedy works on the formula of telling women what they want to hear and giving the men sufficient eye candy. My analysis of this article? Insufficient eye candy.
Needless to say, to the extent this study reflects reality, it means lots of dateless nights for everyone.
Men are a shrinking minority in colleges.
Just read an interesting article on this. Makes the case that the gender ratio in college created the "hook up" casual sex culture, as well as increased sexual assaults.
http://time.com/money/4072951/college-gender-ratios-dating-hook-up-culture/?xid=tcoshare
People should be arrested for committing sociology.
The article suggests that most women will be smarter than psychologists. Not interesting a pshchologist is probably a good thing.
The number dating rules for most men are (1) is she physically attractive and (2) is she pleasant to be around. Of course, for some it just comes down to (1).
But yeah, the article was Chick Click Bait. Men don't usually read this kind of thing - these kind of articles are almost always either thinly disguised male bashing or unwanted and useless advice.
If you look at the article not from the point of view of someone who is trying to honestly find truth and report it, but from the point of view of a progressive tart who wants to tear down our society this article will make more sense to you.
"Smart" college women aren't being deemed unattractive because they are smart. They are being deemed unattractive because they are pretentious bitches. This article just reinforces for these "smart" women that men are all pigs and it isn't their fault.
Progressives are trying to divide the people from this country. Discouraging healthy relationships between men and women is one of their top 3 goals.
A lot of women seem to think, these days, that possessing and espousing doctrinaire political positions makes them "smart," so maybe they are having a definition problem?
Define smart.
I'm with Tim on this. Hey, she's attractive and really smart .
But many of the college level women I know (one of our sons is still in that loop) are very highly educated and, rally not that smart. But, boy oh boy, do they know EVERYTHING wrong with men.
If there's any truth to this finding, and I'm skeptical, it's most likely a reaction to female hypergamy. If she's smarter than he is, he knows she'll eventually meet someone smarter than her and look to trade up. Why waste time? But I suspect that number is offset by a number of men who fail to take hypergamy into account and who appreciate the advantages of being with a smart woman.
That said, yeah, I agree with others that the sociologists probably equate smart with Progressive.
Articles written as advice to men are the ideal chick bait.
This is probably a good time remind folks that most of these type of experiments have poor success at being replicated - replication being a basic necessity for science.
rcocean said...
The number dating rules for most men are (1) is she physically attractive and (2) is she pleasant to be around.
This pretty much sums it up. Intelligence is sort of a subset of #2.
Actually, I can't see how this study could be conducted properly because you can't really establish a control group. You can't introduce the same woman to the same man, first smarter and then less so. You'd have to use an entirely different set of men for the smart woman vs. the other. Were the men equally attractive themselves? Were the women equally attractive physically? Way too many variables that can't be accounted for with the methodology described.
""Does this article say anything I couldn't just easily guess?""
About the article? Nope- it was pretty much the stew of factoids, poor reasoning and grievance I expected.
"“distanced themselves more from her, tended to rate her as less attractive, and showed less desire to exchange contact information or plan a date with her”
How much less attractive? What percentage of men did this? How much of a score difference matters? All of these numbers are presumable available in the unpublished study (which next to no one can see) but no sign of them end up in this article. Is it 10% of men will find you 3% less attractive? Cant mention that because then there is no need for a moral panic.
And researchers go to all the trouble of setting up the study but then dont control for what is the whole point of the thing- gender basis. Maybe the subject dont like meeting smarter men in person either.
And ultimately this has no real world equivalent. Subjects were told someones score on an intelligence test and then took it themselves and were told the person they were going to meet scored higher. This is not a real world situation. I dont know the last time I meet someone who I had empirical comparable intelligence data on.
At best the advice in this article should be for women not to announce their SAT scores in the first 5 minutes of meeting a new person or they will have a 5% risk of appearing somewhat less attractive and a 100% risk of appearing like a tool.
"Actually, I can't see how this study could be conducted properly because you can't really establish a control group." There's a standard way to deal with this in study design: Randomly divide the men into the two groups. If your sample is large enough, differences between the men will average out.
The article is aimed at men - it says is aimed at men right at the beginning of the fuirst sentence:
Men, do smart women threaten your masculinity? A new study suggests they might — and that you might not want to date them because of it.
Now, of course this might be a lie. It might really be aimed at nobody in particular, but the writer had to give it a purpose.
And as for working, it might work too well.
Of course I can't really speak to it because not many people are smarter than me - except in practical things.
In any case this is niothing to worry about. If a women finds she is smarter than the man and that's a problem for her she won't be interested. Usually it is the woman who wants to marry a man she can look up to. Since it is her natural inclination to look up to a man she naturally wants a man worthy of being someone to follow the advice of.
It is reporterd that Carmen Berra was smarter than Yogi.
It is not that the womnen were less attractive - it is that teh men had fewere hopes and rated them less attractive.
Try it with women having a sense of humor.
I once had a severe crush on a woman who was not only beautiful, but also much smarter than me. However, I also knew I simply was not in her class.
The article is aimed at men - it says is aimed at men right at the beginning of the fuirst sentence:
LO FUCKING L.
There is a difference between reading comprehension, "what are they trying to tell me to think so I can think it" and critical thinking, "why did they really write it, and what are they really trying to say, and is it bullshit or not?"
Thanks for playing Sammy.
"It is reporterd that Carmen Berra was smarter than Yogi."
She was a beautiful woman as well. She must have sensed there was something different about this unattractive, inarticulate ballplayer who was pursuing her. A smart lady.
"Actually, I can't see how this study could be conducted properly because you can't really establish a control group."
The control group would be men who weren't advised the women were smarter than them.
Avoid the smart alecks is sage advice for both men and women. Also, intelligence is a poor indicator of quality. And avoid the unrepentant premeditated abortionists and planned cannibals. These are unstable orientations that are incompatible with life.
However, I also knew I simply was not in her class.
Tracking in High School. Put the smart kids in a different classroom.
“Feelings of diminished masculinity accounted for men’s decreased attraction toward women who outperformed them in the live interaction context,” the researchers wrote.
I'm curious how they documented the feelings of diminished masculinity in the men who met the perceived smart vs. dumb women.
All the paper says about the actual meeting: “distanced themselves more from her, tended to rate her as less attractive, and showed less desire to exchange contact information or plan a date with her,”
How are feelings of masculinity teased out of that behavior?
I strongly suspect that the conclusion of this study was crafted before the work started.
Absolutely not. Public school teaching should be down the middle, and the school system should not be permitted to "evaluate" the children and segregating them by any classification system whatsoever.
(And anyway, for this posting, I am smart enough that in high school we would have been put in the same Madison Man class.)
So who is smarter? Althouse or Meade? And no "types of intelligence" bs. We're talking smarts.
My sisters both had this problem. The solution, in both cases, was to find a man who was very good at what he did. My older sister's man worked in the same field as she did. They improved each other, although they worked for different outfits. My younger sister married a guy who was as good in his field as she was in hers. If they guy knows he's good, a smarter woman isn't threatening.
Based on what single men say they're looking for to my husband, smart is in high demand.
Men don't expect a very attractive woman to have a well-developed intellect, because she doesn't need one. I note that that article is illustrated with a photo of Daenerys Targaryen--the actress probably didn't get that role based on her SAT scores.
The study was aimed at whoever approves grants for stupid studies.
Smilin' Jack said...
I note that that article is illustrated with a photo of Daenerys Targaryen--the actress probably didn't get that role based on her SAT scores.
Beside the facts that she is imaginary and that they don't use the SAT in England...
She was educated at Rye St Antony School and at St Edward's School*, Oxford. She then attended Drama Centre London, graduating in 2009.
*The Good Schools Guide described the school as "a less grand place than its obvious competitors and less pressurising than some, but offering every kind of opportunity in a highly privileged and civilised setting.
Here are some smart women.
MALE GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (G) DOES NOT INCREASE FEMALE SEXUAL 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."
The idea that men don't like women who are smarter then them sounds like something only women think about men. Not something that is actually true.
This reminds me of a study where they found that a lot of studies are just plain wrong, or made up.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone tried to repeat this study and found just the opposite. Men find intelligent women more challenging, and therefore, a more attractive conquest.
The study appears to be flawed to the point of uselessness. Probably the typical science (snicker) by press release followed by funding request hook.
But, yes, there is a difference between the hypothetical smart woman and the real, right-in-front-of-you woman. The hypothetical one gets the automatic fantasy upgrade of "she actually likes you and would like to date you" attached to it, which tends not to be the universal scenario with real women much to my general disappointment. Heck, the real woman when she is not present can get the fantasy attached. There is a reluctance to pursue a woman or any goal that will require a great deal of effort and has a strong risk of soul crushing failure.
There's a reason that the beautiful girl with no boyfriend and low self-esteem is a recurring character in Japanese media directed at men (and, if to be believe, octupi). Also featured are the beautiful, smart girl with no boyfriend and low self-esteem; the beautiful, smart, rich girl with no boyfriend and low self-esteem; the beautiful, smart, rich, sweet girl with no boyfriend and low self-esteem; and, of course, the beautiful, smart, rich, sweet, immensely talented, athletic, completely devoted, owns a giant robot girl with no boyfriend, low self-esteem, gravity defying green hair, and big boobs. Without the low self-esteem the suspension of disbelief gets rattled very quickly.
Another bullshit study that won't be replicated.
Two problems with this study (or at least the reporting of it in this article):
1. There is no break-down by intelligence categories of the participants. That is, do average men find smart women unattractive with the same frequency that smart men find even smarter women unattractive? I suspect that the latter group would have significantly lower bias.
2. There is no comparison between men's attitudes and women's. "Men don't like smarter women" may easily be a subset of "people don't like smarter people". Other studies have purported to show that men are particularly susceptible to this sort of bias, but this study should at least have made reference to the issue.
A data set of 105 men in probably not nearly enough to draw conclusions on either of these two factors. I don't understand why people even do studies with small groups like this. You need at least 1000-1500 to get anything like statistical significance.
But there is one guess that seems worthy of following up: "men’s avoidance of more intelligent or ambitious women could be due to fear of rejection by these higher quality women". I suspect this is the real issue which has nothing to do with masculinity. Masculinity only gets involved because "real men" aren't supposed to care what others think of them, but of course that is just nonsense.
Important note: This study did not measure the effect on men of meeting a woman who is smarter than them. This study measured the effect on men of being insulted and put in a negative frame of mind right before evaluating a potential partner. It has nothing to do with actual levels of intelligence, since the participants weren't actually measured or sorted by intelligence.
Repeat, this study has nothing to do with actual intelligence. It has to do with affective priming and social cues.
Hmm, let's run a similar study on the effect knowledge of wealth has on perceived attractiveness women report for men.
"You're about to meet Chad and afterwards we'll ask you for some survey data. Oh, Chad's a millionaire."
"You're about to me Chet and afterwards we'll ask you for some survey data. Oh, Chet's flat broke."
What would the MarketWatch article writing up those findings say, do you think?
Ferdenande,
I call BS on your study. It takes a while for intelligence to work its magic on women, and displaying intelligence in a non interactive and impersonal manner the way it was done in the study is not going to work.
Only one study (Prokosch et al., 2009) with methodological limitations has directly tested if higher male intelligence increases female initial sexual attraction.
No, a high IQ is not going to get you picked up in a bar, but it will get you laid from the "friend zone" often enough, and often by women whose looks are otherwise out of your league.... Not that I would know...
I bet female intelligence could work in a similar way. If she sets her cap for a man, I bet she has a better chance of getting him in the long run than an similarly attractive but less intelligent woman. My guess though is that she wouldn't announce to him up front that she is smarter than he is and has numerical proof!
Sorry, but in the real world, all the smart women I know tend to be in relationships far more often than not, and tend to have a large selection of partners when they aren't in a monogamous relationship.
So I call bullshit.
We've been fed this line for decades. The reality is that, at any time after junior high, smart women have very little difficulty getting dates, certainly less difficulty than tall women face.
I perceive this study as written to comply with Althouse's law of gender studies - "All gender comparison studies must show women as superior". I think 'because tenure'.
I wonder if they did a reverse study where women were told that this man is smarter than they are? How would that come out?
PS: The fact that my wife has a significantly higher IQ than me made her really attractive as far as I was/am concerned.
It's handy traveling with a companion that speaks five languages and does complex currency calculations in her head! :)
The bigger issue is the reverse. Generally women want three things in a man. They want a man who is:
1. Taller than she is.
2. Richer than she is (ability to earn more income)
3. Smarter than she is.
This is because women are hypergamous. They marry up, not down. Men are willing to marry down, less likely to marry up.
Women simply do not want a man they view to be less than they are.
tim in vermont said...
I call BS on your study.
It's amusing. If replicated, it'll be more amusing; also some good comments over there.
Although fertility != attractiveness, they're related.
New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States.
"Abstract
Data were taken from the 1994 National Opinion Research Center survey of a representative sample of American adults to examine the relation between the intelligence of adults aged 40+ and their numbers of children and their numbers of siblings. The correlations were found to be significantly negative at -0.05 and -0.09, respectively, indicating the presence of dysgenic fertility. Further analysis showed that dysgenic fertility is present only in females. The correlation for females between intelligence and ideal numbers of children was effectively zero, indicating that if women had the numbers of children they consider ideal, dysgenic fertility would be reduced."
Also Wiki Fertility and intelligence
In my study the men are told they are part of a double blind test. Half the men are told that the woman knows what that means.
All of the smart women I know wouldn't waste their time on a man who isn't smart, too. What smart woman wants to spend her time with a stupid guy? If a man prefers dumb eye candy, then he doesn't qualify as "smart". He's just a guy with a fragile ego who needs the world to see he's attractive to an attractive woman. Smart women who are interested in being attractive to men know they need to make the most of what they have to increase the size of the pool of smart men they have to choose from. Unfortunately, a lot of otherwise smart men don't realize they need to do the same, and instead of working to make themselves as attractive to women as they can, they blame the "bitchy women".
My personal data point involves a number of female military pilots involved in a masters or higher program and had a number of real "lookers" amongst them.
They were all single and spoke of the diffculties of getting guys to hang with them (clubs, dates etc) once the guys were told the "chick" was a fighter pilot/scientific graduate student.
I was astonished then and remain so today.
I cannot say what the biggest intellectual or "guy hurdle" was for those guys.
I'll let you know when I find one...
rhh,
"Try it with women having a sense of humor. "
Find a reliable test for that, and you can retire young and rich.
Wilbur,
"She must have sensed there was something different about this unattractive, inarticulate ballplayer who was pursuing her. "
Make that "inarticulate but wise" and I'm with you. Fully 90% of the attraction of the Yogi-isms out there is that they encapsulate, in a malprop way, a Deeper Truth.
Drago,
One assertion I've seen in the manosphere is that the top-tier women get approached a lot less often then the lower tier gals because guys disqualify themselves w/o even trying. I have no idea if this is true for the population at large, but it certainly could by validated by my experience and behavior in junior and senior high school.
""Okay, now I've read the article. In the study, men were prepped for an encounter with a woman by being told that the woman scored higher than he did on an intelligence test. The men then met the woman and judged her to be relatively unattractive."
there are many ways to read the results of the study that don't suggest men find women smarter then then unattractive.
1) she could be unattractive
2) she could not be their type,despite being attractive
3) she could be boring and uninteresting, despite being smart. Thus,unattractive
4) she could be a letdown as the men assumed she was smart and instead came across like an airhead
5) there is no chemistry, and her innate intelligence has no bearing on whether they find her attractive. Even if attractive they aren't interested.
6)she could come across like a know it all. Yes she's smart but she makes you know it. All the man wanted was to have a casual dinner and chit chat. instead she is correcting him and acting like a beyotch.
7) she's a SJW type which instantly nulls her attraction to him because he'd rather stick his penis into a socket than deal with her.
8) any other possible variation.
There is no causation proven simply because you get a reaction. It would be like me telling people that she is left handed and then determining if men find women who are left handed less attractive. Even if the majority of men find her to be unattractive it says nothing about whether them being told she was left handed led to an increase in finding her unattractive. How are they proving the two are related?
Well, I have always liked smart women - probably because my mother was, graduating first in her class from college. So, almost every woman in my life over the last 47 years since I started college has been smart. Usually very smart. Last decade and a half, the woman in my life has had a photographic memory, and maybe a bit of Asperger's. Let me caution the other guys here to steer away from women with true photographic memories - women tend to have much better memories when it comes to relationships, but it is especially disheartening when she can recite conversations verbatim from years ago.
Almost two decades ago, when I was new to living in Austin, I joined a video dating club. Knowing that I liked smart women, I only asked out when with at least one doctorate degree (and did go out with several with two such degrees). Didn't click with any of them, but did end up for awhile with another attorney I had met elsewhere. That one had told me that she had graduated second in her class in high school, and swore that would never happen again. Similar to my mother, whose HS PE grades knocked her to salutitarian. Took me a bit to figure out this meant that this attorney was first in her college class. Somehow, I seem to click with some of a certain type of relatively introverted bright overachievers.
How would I have reacted to being told that a woman was smarter than I? Challenged, since I would figure it statistically unlikely. Which means that I probably would have challenged them to prove it. And, yes, I think I would have figured out if that were true in a couple of minutes. Usually, for me, it means making logical leaps or associations, and then seeing how far the other person can jump. Some jump further than I, where I need two or three jumps for their one, and I most often consider them smarter than I (not sure, after 16 years of my partner). I find this more of an indication of smartness than mastery of some area or straight As (remember, my partner has that photographic memory, and that lets her learn massive amounts of data - sometimes almost like a savant. It was also helpful for straight As). I have been with enough people over the decades who were that much smarter than I, and I have little doubt that I would have reasonably quickly detected whether or not this woman were in that category or not.
I can't imagine judging a person's intelligence by their degree. Maybe that is because I have two siblings with PhD's.... I didn't say that!
My smartest sibling (IMHO) dropped out of grad school to take a job.
But then I have never had to approach the problem of finding smart people in a wide pool, and were I ever in that situation, I don't know how I would manage it. But one thing I have noticed is that there are smart people in all walks of life, so I am guessing that I would date women that appealed to me in some way, and leave it to nature.
Unfortunately, a lot of otherwise smart men don't realize they need to do the same, and instead of working to make themselves as attractive to women as they can, they blame the "bitchy women".
Sounds like somebody is doing some "blaming" themselves.
I can think of one way in which this study's results could in some way be valid, and that is if the women were in reality no more intelligent than the guys they were sent in with.
Because if you're told a woman is smarter than you, but you talk with her and she fails to impress, that failure is going to carry over to everything.
So by all means do this test, but do it with women who actually ARE smarter than the men they're talking to.
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