Via Seed, a group of economists chose to study human relationship dynamics under tightly controlled conditions: speed dating. Emphasis added.
With the obvious qualification that we’re talking here about a four-minute version of love and dating, we found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks from research assistants, who were hired for the much sought-after position of hanging out in a bar to rate the dater’s level of attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter—but only up to a point. In a survey we did before the speed dating began, participants rated their own intelligence levels, and it turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition—a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.
When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own. Women, on the other hand, care more about how men think and perform, and they don’t mind being outdone on those scores.
Men can be such wimps sometimes.
Has anyone actually read the paper? Have a look at the break down of the sample.
I can assure you that the four minute limit result is no different from my personal experiences. There is no human expression so clear to me as the look of instinctive fear in a man’s eyes. Another smart girl I know had one guy literally run away from her as fast as his cowardly legs could take him. I’m used to attracting only guys who are so arrogant they think they’re as smart as anybody, which automatically disqualifies them from being particularly smart.
Sean on Nov 8th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Sorry, citrine, I don’t really have any elegantly-packaged romance advice. Except to be honest, with yourself as well as with others, but you knew that already.
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You mean, I’m *not* supposed to bat my eyelashes while simpering and saying “I’m SOOOOO bad at Math”? I thought that was axiom #1 when it came to dating advice for women.
Intelligence has multi-dimensional; and I have only a few areas where I excel. Therefore, it is almost certain that she is smarter than me. Depends on which dimensions you measure on, that is all.
🙂
It just seems to me that there could be multiple possible explanations for a guy “rejecting” an intellectually superior woman, and one of them, I submit, is simply to avoid inevitable rejection himself. And not without justification, because in my admittedly anecdotal experience, women find intellectually inferior men to be a big turn-off (and increasingly as they mature), and sometimes aren’t afraid to make that known. Homely women may avoid making advances on highly desirable men for similar reasons: The likely outcome isn’t worth the trouble. Are these people cowards, or simply not gluttons for punishment? It’s actually pretty rational, if you ask me, after having some of the usual, normal experiences we all have in the dating game, to gravitate toward those who we think are not wildly different than ourselves in terms of their positive and negative attributes. One is simply attempting to optimize their likelihood of entering a relationship and having both parties be fulfilled enough to stick with it.
What if I really AM bad at math? Does that help?
Allyson on Nov 8th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
What if I really AM bad at math? Does that help?
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I think revealing it helps more than letting on that you are good at Math.
Arun (# 29) – Not all modes of intelligence pose the same threat level.
I only have a couple of comments to add to this thread:
1. Individual attitudes on this are going to vary in direct proportion to how happy or bitter the commenter might be about his/her own experiences (that applies to me, too, BTW). That said, it’s blatantly over-simplifying things to assume that smart, ambitious and/or successful women are attracted to equally intelligent, ambitious and/or successful men because they’re “looking for someone to take care of them,” a.k.a., a good provider, because we’re unwilling to shoulder responsibility for our own lives.
Yeah, right. Sorry to burst Ian’s bubble, but I know lots of women who fit that description, including me, and we’re not looking for a meal ticket or an easy out; we take control of our lives and accept responsibility just fine. We ARE looking for an equal partner — hopefully one with a strong enough ego not to be easily threatened by a smart, savvy woman, which could ALSO explain the female preference for smart, confident men. A few of us have been fortunate enough to find that. (*waves to Sean*)
2. For Citrine: I second Sean’s suggestion of being honest about who you are and what you want — without being overbearing, of course. 🙂 We clicked in part because neither one of us are much keen on playing games or pretending to be someone we’re not. It takes a lot of the agonizing uncertainty (at least in the early stages of a relationship) out of the equation if you can do that. But honestly? It can be a bit scary. I had to mature a little before I could manage it…
I am not a cheerleader for evolutionary psychology, but I think it has been proven beyond any anecdotal evidence, than women on average tend to prefer men with good providing potential , high confidence, and same age or older than themselves , among other traits, while men on average give more importance to looks, youth and “fidelity perception” .
Human evolution took place in the kind of culture we would now call hunter-gatherer (though it started off more like scavenger-gatherer). One thing hunter-gatherer societies have in common was that the gathering part, most commonly performed by the women, provides over three quarters of the food. So really, if there was any Darwinism involved, it’s the men who would be looking for “providing potential.”
I guess that as much as we want to include a rational and politically correct flavor to mating selection, good old chap Darwin still gets it right about sexual selection being a blind, amoral evolutionary process .
Except that men are making selections against any natural interest.
Ian B Gibson on Nov 7th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Are there studies about that which show that women are more likely to be looking for someone to take care of them?
If so, is there an age-differential thing going on? Are younger women more likely to be looking for someone to take care of them or is it women of an older generation who are looking for a caretaker? Or is such a predilection spread equally across all generations of women?
Speaking from the experience of living to half a century so far, I don’t know any women of my circle of friends or acquaintances who are looking for a caretaker.
Actually, the women I have known and know today are more likely to be the caregivers than the ones being taken care of. And research seems to witness to this appearance as it is found that the average caregiver is age 46, female, married and working outside the home earning an annual income of $35,000 per year.
With the advent of the Sandwich Generation, women are even more likely to be taking care of others rather than being taken care of. Although research shows that fathers and sons are taking an increased role in care-giving, 73% of all family elder caregivers are women.
A 1999 study by the New England Journal of Medicine also found that 72% of the primary care-givers for the terminally ill are the wives, daughters and sisters of the dying.
So at the end of hard day of working outside the home as well as providing the lioness’ share of the care-giving for all the generations of a family, perhaps women are looking for a little intelligent conversation from a man who also values intelligence and shared responsibilities.
Ian Gibson quoted part of the study that said:
This reminds me of something I heard about gender asymmetries in human migration. People study this using Y chromosomes, mitochondrial DNA and the like. I think the story was that when one culture invades another, women are more likely to “marry up” and spread genes from the conquered culture to the conquering one. It reinforced my impression that men from conquering cultures have always been interested in having sex with cute gals from the conquered culture, while women from conquering cultures are less interested in sex with the conquered men.
But, I can’t find any links to those genetic studies right now… Can anybody find them?
On the other hand, perhaps it is still accepted for a woman to seek a partner smarter than they, whereas we’ve only moved men’s expectation to want equals.
I know I wouldn’t be attracted to my spouse if she didn’t seem smarter, more successful. But the same is for her: She wouldn’t have me if she didn’t think I was smarter than her. And she is troubled when I am not as ambitious than her.
Maybe we’re looking at the wrong point – not why are men looking for equals, but – why are women still willing to accept a position in which they perceive themselves inferior?
Nobody’s bursting my bubble. I was merely offering a different interpretation to the one Sean gave, equally plausible or implausible depending on how you look at it.
P.S. My wife had a 3.9 college GPA and is now an MBA and successful business director. I am a biology undergrad..
John Baez #36:
I have also come across that one. I assumed it had to do with more males from the conquering culture going to the conquered culture (as soldiers, administrative people were mostly if not exclusively males), and the conquered people not usually making it to the lands of the conquering.
Jennifer # 33
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! Yeah, it’s scary to be honest especially when you see the rejection potential. I agree that you can’t sustain a relationship on mind games.
It’s ironic, though, to see lots of very high quality women – friends, colleagues, students – single and dateless for years while the ..ahem.. more generic women
seem to attract much more romantic attention.
BTW, I’m still waiting on the photos (with captions)!
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rgb on Nov 11th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
#39:
This could also be due to the dearth of eligible single men in the conquered culture after the war. When you add the war widows to the numbers of single women, that must account for a pretty large supply of marriageable females for the incoming (mostly young and therefore more likely to be single) males to choose from. When any kind of long distance travel was slow and hazardous, it would have been much more convenient to find a mate in the new country/ region. Young single women from the conquerer culture must have been in scare supply for either group of men.
Easy to believe this research.
Although you might want to check the variance. Eg if the women are that much smarter than the men present relative to the converse.
It seems to me couples tend to form who date within their own intelligence pools.
So while you may find a very intelligent man with a dumb woman, the success rate for those types of ‘arrangements’ isn’t exactly what I would call great.
-shrug-
Im not sure if women really care one way or the other. I don’t see many smart women willing to date idiots.
Yep, this is evident in the genetics of many South and Central American populations, like in this study:
“Admixture analysis of the Colombian populations suggests an asymmetric pattern of mating involving mostly immigrant men and native women.”
rgb: “…the conquered people not usually making it to the lands of the conquering.”
(Mostly) true for Amerinds, but don’t forget the effects of slavery.
Interest, or opportunity? Or both?
But what happens during colonization may be a bit different from what goes on in other situations. Often it’s assumed that most human cultures are patrilocal. Chimps are as macho as anything, and they are even more strongly patrilocal (young females are the ones that migrate). So on the other hand the stereotype is that men travel and “spread their seed” more, and on the other hand they “bring home the bride” rather than the other way around, and these should actually result in contrasting trends in the genetic data. One way to make sense of the data is this hypothesis:
“Analysis of forager populations in the ethnographic record suggests that patrilocality may not have predominated among pre-agricultural humans. The higher female migration rate inferred by some genetic studies may reflect a shift to patrilocality in association with the emergence of agriculture.”
Hope this helped!
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I’d be interested in people’s take on something:
I definitely agree that a large percentage of the hetero guys are looking for “femininity” in their potential mate. What percentage of those women wish their partner to reinforce their own sense of femininity?
My comment may arouse the usual ad hominem critique (e.g. some suggestion that I lack self-esteem and project my bitterness outward), but for the sake of case-study level research, here’s something about a “negative” trait of mine: I’m short, around 171-172cm. I once dated a woman a good 3-4cm taller than me. I really wasn’t bothered, and neither was she most of the time, except when we danced or went to formal functions. Her dressy shoes tended to leave her about eye-level to the top of my forehead or worse, and she finally broke down and confided in me one night that it bothered her. “Oh, who cares what they think,” was my love-struck reply. Her reply: “I don’t care what other people think. I just feel so HUGE.” Further discussion decoded the message: The size differential, especially enhanced by high heels, made her feel unfeminine. All her previous boyfriends had been taller than her. When they danced, she looked up at them. When they embraced, she enjoyed the sensation of a larger body encircling her. This was not an insecure, unintelligent, unattractive, unliberated woman. And to her credit, she learned to look past the matter, and when we did split (amicably), I really don’t think my being shorter than her had anything to do with it. I’ve “learned to love again” as they say, my wife is just about exactly my height (she’s maybe 1cm taller), I’m super happy with my relationship, and if I’m bitter about something, I’m sure not dwelling on it, or nursing any unhealed emotional wounds that I’m aware of.
That said, I don’t think many guys hear something to the effect of “you make me feel unwomanly” and wonder how prevalent that attitude might be. And having other female friends, I asked them for their brutally honest opinions about guys and size. I can’t help it; I’m a curious person. Not a one said they wanted a man much shorter than them. Some of them said they could deal with maybe an inch or so of height advantage, but no matter what the woman’s stature, she preferred a man who was larger than herself, and some said that was a requirement. I’m sure there are women out there who feel completely differently, but I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a very natural, normal, even predominant mating preference for heterosexual women. Perhaps it’s even instinctual, i.e. an inherited trait.
So, looking at things in the most dispassionate evolutionary light, leaving entirely aside the pejoratives (gold-digger, etc.), might some of the preference that women show for mates who are at least their equal in terms of intellect and/or income potential have something to do with the woman’s self-image? In other words, does being noticeably the man’s superior make the woman feel, paradoxically, less like how she imagines herself, just as the same arrangement might make the man feel less masculine? If so, is it too nuts to wonder if evo-psych hasn’t something to say about that phenomenon?
There may also be a perception with guys that with a really ambitious women they may be raising a cuckoo in the nest.
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