Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Brains are not attractive

The popular myth of the unattractive nerd has a solid basis in reality:
Depending on the specific age and gender, an adolescent with an IQ of 100 was 1.5 to 5 times more likely to have had intercourse than a teen with a score of 120 or 130. Each additional point of IQ increased the odds of virginity by 2.7% for males and 1.7% for females. But higher IQ had a similar relationship across the entire range of romantic/sexual interactions, decreasing the odds that teens had ever kissed or even held hands with a member of the opposite sex at each age.

While these authors leave off at grade 12th, it would seem plausible to expect that this relationship extends beyond high school. To explore this, plenty of interesting facts come from a 2001 campus sex survey by the joint MIT/Wellesley college magazine Counterpoint (PDF). Looking within and between colleges, IQ appears to delay sexual activity on into young adulthood.

By the age of 19, 80% of US males and 75% of women have lost their virginity, and 87% of college students have had sex. But this number appears to be much lower at elite (i.e. more intelligent) colleges. According to the article, only 56% of Princeton undergraduates have had intercourse. At Harvard 59% of the undergraduates are non-virgins, and at MIT, only a slight majority, 51%, have had intercourse. Further, only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex.

The student surveys at MIT and Wellesley also compared virginity by academic major. The chart for Wellesley displayed below shows that 0% of studio art majors were virgins, but 72% of biology majors were virgins, and 83% of biochem and math majors were virgins! Similarly, at MIT 20% of 'humanities' majors were virgins, but 73% of biology majors. (Apparently those most likely to read Darwin are also the least Darwinian!)
The least surprising thing is the number on "studio art majors". I have no idea why, but female artists are complete freaks.

Anyhow, I've been pointing out for years that smart girls are not attractive to men. Smart men, on average, are even less so to women.

33 comments:

August said...

Brains also increase likelihood of thinking ahead, past right now, to what could potentially happen nine months from now. Brains also makes you notice things, like tattoos, and other signs of trouble and/or potential contagion.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the nursing majors, especially the emergent cluster B's...top tier of freaks.

Krul said...

"0% of studio art majors were virgins"

I laughed

PhantomZodak said...

it's true, girls dont like it & are not impressed by smarts. you need to tone it down in front of them.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Krul said...

"0% of studio art majors were virgins"

Further confirmation that art majors are lacking in the brains department, not that any was needed.

kurt9 said...

Smart guys tend to be nerdly geeks.

Smart girls, some of them at least, tend to not be exactly geeks. But they have a sort of anal retentiveness and neuroticness about them that makes them unpleasant to be around, even if they are physically attractive. So the cool guys tend to stay away from them.

Ron said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SQT said...

I tend to agree with the others that point out that intelligent people are more likely to spot pitfalls. Besides, isn't virginity a good thing as it relates to young women?

Hammerli 280 said...

Smart men do their thinking with their brains, not their gonads. And denying sluts their sperm sounds like a good way to avoid trouble down the road...especially in the current college environment.

It's true for smart women, too.

Anonymous said...

With women, you want to appear savvy ("street-smart"). They don't give a crap about your 150 IQ, and if you do, you'd do better to mask it.

August and Hammerli280: If anything, really smart guys are less likely to be able to tell which girls are skank-hos, but a savvy man could tell right away.

Jehu said...

Most women want you to be smarter than them. No more than 2 sigmas though. And don't expect them to give you any 'points' for it, she still expects you to have status commensurate to her desirability versus her competition.

heyjames4 said...

I can't get to the study itself. Does it control for race? Engineering & STEM at elite schools is full of Asians and has been for decades. That's got to be a factor.

1337kestrel said...

A more intelligent individual is less likely to act spontaneously, which is perceived as less confident/powerful (Alpha) and also less friendly (Beta).

I think that's a bigger factor than the reasonable relative reluctance of nerds to rut.

Mastermind said...
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MichaelJMaier said...

So I should be aiming for freshmen STEM students at elite colleges... good to know. I have the roofies ready.

Amethyst Dominica said...

Studio Artists have been freaks ever since Picasso. But at least Picasso had some talent for drawing. These days, anyone willing to piss on a section of carpet, place it in a museum and write a paragraph or two about how it represents Da Patriarchy can call themselves a "studio artist." I was quite disappointed when I signed up for my college art courses and found that, after Life Drawing 101, most of my studio time would involve gluing household objects together and finding some bullshitty way to tie it into the Professional Grievance Racket. I wanted to learn how to paint portraits like the Renaissance Masters. I would have had better luck learning how to perform brain surgery from the Weed Bum sitting in front of the campus bookstore.

Anonymous said...

A more intelligent individual is less likely to act spontaneously, which is perceived as less confident/powerful (Alpha) and also less friendly (Beta).

I think that's a bigger factor than the reasonable relative reluctance of nerds to rut.


1337kestrel
True that. To put it another way, smart men analyze social situations more than the normals and numbskulls do and are therefore more cautious, making their behavior seem calculated, stilted, and artificial. (And hence, very often, creepy.)

Studio Artists have been freaks ever since Picasso.

Amethyst
Art and classical music are both overrun with no-talent hacks. In The Art of the Deal, The Trumpening noted with mixed amusement and disgust how a rather cynical artist friend of his made $25,000 before lunch by walking paint on a canvas, stating that oversophisticated idiots with too much money would gladly buy it. Art takes no brains any more, or at least not any more than being a women's studies major does.

ScottC said...

More evidence that women are anti-civilization.

Aeoli Pera said...

I was wondering how much effect the academic grind is having on the correlation...and my intuition kicked in and said "basically zero". So that's interesting, if true.

Aeoli Pera said...

I think the word "reluctance" mentioned in comments above captures the essence of this difference. The high-IQ types who are sexually active are purposeful about it, contra the low-IQ types who are more opportunistic and impulsive.

Unknown said...

*snigger* - Kurt9 said smart girls and anal in the same sentence

Ron said...

Nerds focus on nerd issues to the exclusion of social graces. This isnt a smart thing, its a nerd thing. Gina Davies is Mensa smart, Gina Davies got hit on a lot because she was a hot and knew how to swing it. You are smart, you got laid a lot because yiu knew how to act like a man, which for women is mad hot.

Chrostian Bale is smart, Chrostian Bale is described by spanish women as, and I quote, "mui caliente"

The guy playing Loki is probably an idiot, but he plays a smart bad guy, ditto the guy playing Ramsey Bolton. Both men get women shaking. Why? Because they play aggressive men who have confidence, courage, a disdain for the rules, and above all, Mastery.

Richard Feynman was a great genius, but Feynman was also a balsy no nonsense Brooklyn Jew who grew up in a time and place where boys were expected to stick up for themselves. Listen to his early lectures at Cornell, the man sounds like he's going to be fighting in a boxing match. That man was known to be a hit with the ladies.


Nerds are nerds because they neglect an important part of their personal development as men or as women, not for their intelligence.

dc.sunsets said...

So brains don't get you the homecoming queen. News Flash: water is wet.

OTOH, making $100k, $250k on up does probably give a man some SMV, right?

This "study" proves what we already know, that the masses of women are throw-backs from puberty forward, and that the few high-quality men have little choice but to be patient. Not just any port in a storm.

dc.sunsets said...

@ Ron, Mensa smart ain't much, often it's no more than the pimply-faced tubby pushing the computer cart down the school corridor.

Mean+3sd (or more) smart gets laid if he wants to, as I saw it.

Gunnarvoncowtown von Cowtown said...

The least surprising thing is the number on "studio art majors". I have no idea why, but female artists are complete freaks.
They are entirely driven by "muhfeelz". Even more so than regular women.

GB said...

This may be an issue of correlation vs causation. Women aren't attracted to brains per se, but women do want a man who is smarter than they are. The key though is that in a woman's eyes, exhaustive knowledge of medieval polearms does not make you smart, beating her shit tests makes you smart. Nerds are HORRIBLE at shit tests, often because they have been brought up to be.

Intelligence in men leads to shyness and an aversion to risk taking, as well as conformity. In our society, we train males to be obedient and submissive to women, and nerds are the most likely to absorb these lessons. High-T, average Int jocks will allow their dicks to take over, but it's the nerds who tip their fedoras and pride themselves on their ability to control their wang impulses. Nerds will probably get access to porn earlier too.

Anonymous said...

What this research actually says is that IQ is inversely related to onset of sexual activity.

No, it says that smart people usually have the self-control to not engage in self-destructive behavior. There is literally no good whatsoever than can come from sex outside of marriage.

tz said...

Are hymens attractive?

Brains may be attractive, but the more brain, the more it might realize that "No" is the best option.

Chuck said...

Related -

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4fsds1/adults_from_reddit_what_do_you_regret_most_from/

Stephen J. said...

I think it's more that intelligence in excess of your peers directly increases self-consciousness, and self-consciousness directly interferes with developing the social confidence needed to initiate and sustain relationships. Intelligence in excess of your peers also directly decreases the nature and likely overlap of common areas of interest which facilitate amity and interaction. The brains themselves are neither attractive nor unattractive; it's the correlated social and interpersonal divisions which are the problem.

(I myself would be very interested to see if there's a similar pattern of correlation between age of virginity loss and level of alcohol use.)

Dominic Saltarelli said...

Also good way to tell if a woman is a compulsive liar is if she calls herself 'sapiosexual'. I've met a few who made the claim, all were horrible people.

pneutral said...

Waiting at a bus stop at my first year at university. Two girls on my course moaning about how guys just don't want to date girls that are more intelligent than they are.
I told them that was nonsense. I would love to. Just never met any.

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