To be clear, "women don't care about intelligence" would be the wrong conclusion. Intelligent women tend to pair with intelligent men, and the women that promiscuous unintelligent men get with are largely unintelligent themselves. It seems like the data just show ordinary women aren't particularly motivated to seek the most intelligent men they can; it would be prosocial if ordinary men too preferred to seek the most intelligent women they could, but they don't. Apparently men and women alike tend to prefer to mate assortatively on this axis.
I disagree that it would be prosocial if ordinary men sought out the most intelligent women. In fact, there would be no benefit to society in that scenario. Intelligent women generally have no interest in dating lower-status men; and even if they did, it would be a net loss for society, as it would exhaust their limited reproductive capacity on suboptimal men.
The impact is asymmetric. If ordinary women shifted their preference toward more intelligent men, the prosocial upside would be massive. Unlike women, whose reproductive output is biologically constrained, a single intelligent man can father an almost unlimited number of children. In a world of scarce reproductive resources, leveraging the male line is simply a more efficient way to increase the population's intelligence.
We're assuming K-selection with monogamy and paternal investment. If men didn't select for intelligence, then the most intelligent men would mostly be with women of ordinary intelligence, and who would the most intelligent women be with, if women don't date down? Thank goodness that in the real world, the most intelligent men do in fact want to be with women who are above average too.
What about serial monogamy with paternal investment -- a common recourse of wealthy and/or high-status men?
I agree that intelligence is an important factor in monogamous mating (whether serial or once-only) but not that high intelligence in a mate is universally desired. See my comments in that regard in a message posted earlier today in response to one from Alex Regueiro.
Yes, and I think this is simply assortative mating, and still not the most relevant/important associative factor. I mean, I don't see any evidence of women viewing intelligence as a status marker even in the slightest, so certainly hypergamy doesn't come into play.
If you've seen no evidence that sexually-attractive women prefer to mate with men who are wealthy, have high social status, and/or credentials (e.g. a law or medical degree from an elite university) conferring high potential for enjoying high-status, lucrative careers you are blind.
Caveat: I think it's also true, however, that both men and women tend to prefer mating with others of roughly similar intelligence. Having a spouse who's clearly less intelligent than oneself is likely to result in frequent frustration, and marrying someone who's clearly less intelligent than most of one's friends and close relatives would be courting frequent embarrassment. Having a spouse who's clearly smarter than oneself, on the other hand, is likely to result in frequent humiliation. Another unscientific hunch grounded in common sense: I daresay more men than women are amenable to mating with someone slightly less intelligent than themselves.
My point is much more specific. As I implied above, it's that intelligence isn't directly selected for by woman. It's not a status marker per se. It may have _indirect_ bearing on success in career and other social status, but only indirect. And in any case, it appears that once someone exceeds a certain intelligence threshold (roughly over 140 IQ, though I'm reluctant to take a one-dimensional approach here) the correlation between both career and social success and intelligence actually reverses and becomes negative – so I recall reading, and it doesn't surprise me! In the more common range of intelligence, no doubt there is a moderate correlation of intelligence with status, but even then... I mean, I'd wager that from 110 IQ above, there are considerably more important factors in success and social status (like personality traits) than intelligence.
We do seem to roughly agree on the point of assortative mating re intelligence, however. I very seldom observed a gulf in intelligence when it comes to long-term relationships. The bias towards the man being more intelligent is likely simply due to men placing great emphasis on physical appearance, plus the aforesaid moderate correlation between intelligence and social status – though I repeat, the latter is what women select for, not the former.
My opening remark was triggered by misunderstanding of your preceding comment re hypergamy not coming into play -- which, on hasty reading, I took to mean that you were skeptical of the premise that hypergamy is a prime determinant of female mating preferences.
I think women still don't understand that what men select and what men get can be a narrow intersection, if not entirely disjointed.
Most men read the signals in the room before choosing to act. Maybe he has a preference amongst the three or four giving him eyes, but that's about it.
This is completely false and pseudoscience. Absolutely everyone cares about intelligence. They simply can't identify it or allow it to identify itself.
So is your theory (Im wondering) that proxies for intelligence have been muddled/rooted out due to credentialism rather than meritocracy, pop culture promoting other traits, IQ being castigated as a metric, etc? And that this means that social benefits accrue to those who are less intelligent, thus skewing women’s mate selection??
Teen groups are notorious for making smart nerds outcasts. Teenagers select boyfriends and girlfriends aiming for the most popular people as decided by the group. Thus teenagers are not the best group to use as a model for female preferences here. You have to give the kids time to mature socially before you can measure their mature adult choices.
Teenage boys don’t really care about a girl’s popularity when deciding whether to date her; it comes down to whether she’s hot or not. Social maturity is largely irrelevant to the raw, instinctive mechanics of sexual attraction. Teenagers offer a much clearer example of what that looks like than adults do, simply because they haven't learned to filter their instincts yet. With adulthood comes greater impulse control, making adults less inclined to act on their primal instincts. This shift is particularly evident in intelligent women, who often begin to prioritize traits such as educational attainment, income, and socioeconomic status in men over more 'sexy' traits like physical strength and social dominance.
In re: “Women swoon over athletes, actors and musicians“
It has been observed that athletes, actors and singers are the heroes of all declining societies. This female preference may be an effect of how status hierarchies become skewed in decadent ages, as my favorite author wrote here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-160354954
There's no such thing as human "good looks" in a vacuum.
The common conception is that physical attractiveness is somehow comparable to art design in a car -- looks pleasing, but doesn't contribute much to performance or practicality.
The truth is human beauty is more comparable to a a jet aircraft looking cool, although every element of its design serves entirely pragmatic purposes.
Human looks are only a way to advertise our genetic quality to prospective mates. Since we're such heavily visual creatures, I'd go so far as to say that every visually attractive phenotipic trait may be linked to an advantageous characteristic that can't otherwise be evident at first sight.
In this sense, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there's no beauty that's only skin deep.
It annoys me how many people can't or won't grasp this simple, intuitive, fact.
The only point of contention I could find was in the assertion that there was a mismatch between wanting a man with money and not wanting one wearing spectacles. Wanting a man with money is obviously eugenic but so is not wanting one with glasses as wearing these codes for a prehistoric genetic weakness that results in being unable to hunt and fight with the rest of the men in the tribe.
I don't believe that poor eyesight represents a prehistoric genetic weakness in most cases, since it results from the interaction between certain genes and modern childhood environments (such as reading and writing).
Yeah, it's hard to believe for the reason that it would signal genetic lack of fitness. What's much more likely is that spectacles just detract from aesthetic appeal in most cases.
It's not clear to me that a positive female mating preference for wealthy men is antithetical with aversion to those wearing glasses. To the contrary, I surmise that the latter is a corollary of the former. I daresay that a high proportion of men who wear glasses nowadays in settings where mating overtures tend to occur have nerdy personality traits -- particularly shyness, which, I'm guessing, has a strongly inverse correlation with high-status career success. (That's not necessarily to say there's a strong correlation between shyness and weak eyesight, which those more socially adept may prefer to correct by wearing contact lenses in mixed-sex gatherings.)
"Wanting a man with money is obviously eugenic but so is not wanting one with glasses as wearing these codes for a prehistoric genetic weakness that results in being unable to hunt and fight with the rest of the men in the tribe."
I get your point, but hunting and fighting are rather useless in modern society.
Probably so, but a glasses-wearing nerd exercising the privilege conferred by a concealed-carry permit might be better able to deal with predatory criminals than an unarmed hunk with 20/20 vision.
But what if the unarmed hunk with perfect vision is also carrying? If the hunk has a Glock, but the nerd has an AR-15, does the nerd still get the girl?
I claim no expertise in the field of feminine psychology and will venture no opinion as to how "the girl" might see it, but IMO the protective capability of a guy carrying a loaded Glock is essentially the same, whether he's a hunk with unaided 20/20 vision or a glasses-wearing nerd. And, at least as regards protection from run-of-the-mill street criminals, I don't think there's any advantage to be had from upgrading the carried weapon to a semi-auto rifle.
I don't think it is a sad relic from the past. It looks like it will be the future in Europe too. Maybe US also? No one really knows. If the US people were polled in the 1850, no-one would have predicted the US Civil War in 1861.
It's hybrid. If it were just high tech, Ukrainians wouldn't have such a hard time. They do however, despite access to all the high tech produced by the 1 Billion+ West.
With Israel, one can also see how anxious they are to make as many men as possible have updated real-life combat experience. Because next time they maybe facing 10-30x more hostile combatants (Turks, Egyptians, Pakistanis, make your choice).
Bad eyesight might be a weakness that makes a man less attractive for mating, but eyeglasses didn’t exist in the ancestral environment so it isn’t clear that women would be primed to associate them with a weakness. It’s like saying bad knees are a weakness, so a woman would find a man with a scar from knee surgery less attractive. Not being able to throw well is a weakness, but I doubt mentioning you’ve had rotator cuff surgery has much effect on attraction. (I don’t actually know if rotator cuff injuries and surgery affect throwing but you get my drift. Evolutionary signals aren’t necessarily sophisticated.)
My physical attributes are quite modest. My future wife kindly told me, during courting, that she believed an intelligent man (like me) would be adept at both achieving his ambitions and avoiding the slings and arrows of misfortune. Decades later she laments sometimes that she ought to have chosen a luckier more ambitious guy.
My wife repeatedly has told me that she always imagined she’d marry a tall man (6+ feet) like her father and brother. Not sure if my academic success (PhD) potential wooed her, but I really don’t care. She married “down”, I “up”, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the result. ;-)
I am 6’2”, 200lbs with a washboard stomach. Women (and men) have been known to faint at my extraordinary handsomeness. I have a very high IQ - 91, which I presume is out of 100. I am in no way sexually dimorphous, which is in any case illegal in my country. My wife, who is very rich, often tells me I am both stupid and lucky, albeit endowed with dark cunning. Your excellent theory confirms to me that since it is she who pays for all aspects of my life, including my unaccountably high turnover in puppies, it is me who is the smartest one in our relationship. Probably.
Really interesting piece, and almost certainly correct in its core claims.
I would propose the following possible explanations as to why intelligent men don't typically have high success when it comes to finding mates. Most likely a combination of them.
- The simple statistical fact that being close to any distribution tail is unhelpful whenever an assortative effect is at play. This seems to be corroborated by the low success of both highly unintelligent and highly intelligent men, but doesn't explain the lower relative success of highly intelligent men, of course.
- Perhaps intelligence just isn't a good measure of genetic fitness, even in the historic (versus prehistoric) era. Perhaps its correlation with neuroticism (or indeed mental illness proper), which is certainly present, outweighs any direct benefits that intelligence confers in terms of survival. I can imagine this being especially true for the highest tier of intelligence (roughly speaking, IQ > ~140), for which studies clearly indicate that it decreases the ability to relate to most fellow humans and therefore participate in normal society. This phenomenon may be explained by the prevalence of autism in such a sector, or it may be more mundane causes at work.
- Perhaps the sexual selection criteria that operate in our minds remain too primitive – that is, they were well suited to our evolutionary past, and were evolved during the Palaeolithic or even the period before our species arose. I can easily imagine it being the case that natural selection works very slowly on sexual selection (although I don't know for a fact), and it may be that the latter simply hasn't caught up with our highly evolved human nature and culture. This presumes that high intelligence is indeed adaptive in the modern world, which is likely but merits further investigation.
- The dynamics of sexual selection in the contemporary West have in some sense returned to the "state of nature". Marriage and other cultural institutions around the sexes and relationships have withered away. Most people appear to follow their base desires and whims, and give little thought to the positive attributes of a potential mate/partner that are only accessible to reason rather than the subconscious (or "intuition" or "vibes", if you prefer). It the past, of course we had arranged marriage (to some extent) in the great majority of cultures and civilisations – but even without that, mate choice seems to have been a much more serious and deliberative issue, for both material and cultural reasons. Aspects of modern culture and technological developments (above all the Pill and healthcare) have dispelled such an approach, and favoured one of serial monogamy (or even polygamy) and low investment in mates by both sexes.
In the case of intelligent men, the best suggestions and advice I've heard on the subject probably helps shed light on the problem (anecdotally, it is what it is). Basically the best advice is: seek in those environs where you might find people similar to you. This means leaning into your quirks and characteristics. So intelligent men are unlikely to be successful in contexts where intelligence is not the price for entry. Intelligence can also provoke negative reactions without being responsible for the response. We can apply the same reasoning to gym bros and gals. Also, intelligent people are just as prone as unintelligent people in having misaligned expectations on attraction/desire.
I think the rest of your comment intersects with two themes: 1. the breakdown of social norms promoting monogamous relationships and family formation, and 2. the erosion and disappearance of local social clubs where people meet in person regularly (except for elites) combined with the illusion of infinite choice through social media. This latter point is particularly important because familiarity creates opportunity for considering mates who wouldn't fit into our preconceived idea of what constitutes an attractive potential mate on a very superficial level.
A good way of looking at this is in the pre internet era, countries, cities, towns, were composed of many seas, lakes, ponds. So it was possible to be a distinguished fish in a small pond and stand out. Today it's much harder. Social media combined with beauty standards have created a big ocean. Niches exist, but members are constantly exposed to the ocean and its larger than life appearance. So suddenly the illusion of infinite choice works against settling on what's actually available and making the relationship work.
Most definitely, looking for potential partners via circles that contain lots of similar-minded (or at least similar-interested) people as you is a vastly more efficient method compared to simply casting out your net and seeing what it catches, i.e., the dating app way! It took me a while to learn this, but it's really a lesson we should all be taught as teens.
Your second point expands on much of what I was referring to, indeed. The enormous homogenous dating pool (to paraphrase) and the online medium is especially unhelpful to men for finding mates, though it can evidently also hurt women by encouraging obsession over appearance (a "mental health crisis" if you like) and creating false expectations that come back to bite in the long run. Still, the more immediate and strongest effects fall on men, as I see it.
However, my point goes beyond just the structure and connectedness of human societies and the dating pool. It's also crucially about the intricate cultural norms we used to have around dating, and the preconceptions (some overly rigid and unhelpful but most reflecting genuine societal wisdom) that we were instilled with from youth. Those have all but evaporated, thanks to the totalitarianism of emancipated individualism.
Women do appreciate intelligence but not as nearly much as good looks or height. The other two are gating factors, she won’t notice your IQ unless the other two criteria have been met
Interesting essay, although personally I think the issue is more complicated.
The dark triad traits deserve more than just a passing reference, as do flaunting signifiers of success and wealth as status.
Another curiosity not mentioned in the essay, which could greatly influence our understanding on the subject, is the world before/after dating apps and before/after the rise of Instagram as social media (compared to say Facebook and Myspace early days). So for instance, anecdotally my impression is that compared to the periods of 2007-2012 and 2012-2018, today a much greater emphasis is placed on physical attraction and status signifiers.
The way I view the Dark Triad traits enhancing male reproductive success – and something that I believe is somewhat supported by literature – is that it's men "gaming the system" of sexual selection. There's no doubt that dark triad traits usually decrease fitness in an absolute sense, largely thanks to decreased sociability (they'll generally do less well with other men) – but the high confidence, assertiveness, dominance that is largely correlated with the Dark Triad traits look appealing to women when considered by themselves. And the record shows that women (people in general) are typically not very good at distinguishing between the healthy and the unhealthy versions of these traits. One would expect natural selection to catch up in time, and modify sexual selection in women accordingly, but since this seems to work very slowly...
Good points! I would completely agree with you based on my own observation of the "online" space on the subject of "gaming the system" (I personally use the word "charlatans" and group it with the negative side of the player/game frame). I had no idea this has emerged in the literature. Good to know. 👍🏼
I suspect, combining what we both wrote, by way of analogy, we're observing the consequences of a "fast food" culture vs home cooked wholesome meals. And the more "ignorant" (for lack of a better word) we are of what baseline nutrition and health is, the less likely we are to appreciate how our own meals (actions) become habits and create self reinforcing loops. So we blame what we see (external) while we're woefully blind to how we're not seeing what we don't know (and so can't recognize). I say this because it always surprises me how we all (myself included) have blind spots and (unfortunately in this case) a majority of women (imo) seem to have both unreal expectations and are unable or unwilling to change themselves, both in terms of said expectations (if we try something and it doesn't work, try a different approach? etc) and in terms of inner work to meet expectations of others (which can seem counterintuitive, but it's up to each one of us to become attractive to what we desire).
That's the thing: there's no reason to expect we should be able to figure this all out by ourselves without received wisdom and norms, even the most intelligent of us or those blessed with excellent intuitions. And as I wrote in my other comment, these have atrophied to such an extent that it takes a very long time to build up one's own judgement to a decent level, if we even manage at all. This problem can be generalised quite readily to societal morality or etiquette.
My guess would be that women find intelligent men attractive, all else equal. And especially, that women find *stupid* men *unattractive*. But also, that intelligence is correlated with other characteristics that are considered unattractive or otherwise interfere with mating success. For example, I understand that intelligence and autism are correlated. A highly intelligent man might become obsessed with mathematics, and this crowds out time and effort which would otherwise be spent going to parties, applying gel to his hair, learning to play sick electric guitar solos, and so forth. https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
I believe high-functioning autists ("on the spectrum") are overrepresented among the high-IQ set. Low-functioning autists probably won't be part of the population for the relevant studies.
I have always been skeptical of studies that claim that women pick mates for intelligence. It is obvious that most women pick mates for superficial reasons, i.e., height and looks, but this is also the case for most men, i.e, looks. Possible exceptions are intelligent men and women who consider an intelligent mate.
>Women swoon over athletes, actors and musicians — not Nobel Prize winners or Math Olympiad finalists
this is probably becuase our hierarchy of power is more based on popularity? Famous influencer has bigger influence on election cycle than a random millionare.
Americans, including myself, have a poor opinion of the Indian families choosing spouses for their children, but I'm starting to see the value of the practice.
To be clear, "women don't care about intelligence" would be the wrong conclusion. Intelligent women tend to pair with intelligent men, and the women that promiscuous unintelligent men get with are largely unintelligent themselves. It seems like the data just show ordinary women aren't particularly motivated to seek the most intelligent men they can; it would be prosocial if ordinary men too preferred to seek the most intelligent women they could, but they don't. Apparently men and women alike tend to prefer to mate assortatively on this axis.
Fair point — men place even less emphasis on intelligence than women do.
—NC
I disagree that it would be prosocial if ordinary men sought out the most intelligent women. In fact, there would be no benefit to society in that scenario. Intelligent women generally have no interest in dating lower-status men; and even if they did, it would be a net loss for society, as it would exhaust their limited reproductive capacity on suboptimal men.
The impact is asymmetric. If ordinary women shifted their preference toward more intelligent men, the prosocial upside would be massive. Unlike women, whose reproductive output is biologically constrained, a single intelligent man can father an almost unlimited number of children. In a world of scarce reproductive resources, leveraging the male line is simply a more efficient way to increase the population's intelligence.
We're assuming K-selection with monogamy and paternal investment. If men didn't select for intelligence, then the most intelligent men would mostly be with women of ordinary intelligence, and who would the most intelligent women be with, if women don't date down? Thank goodness that in the real world, the most intelligent men do in fact want to be with women who are above average too.
What about serial monogamy with paternal investment -- a common recourse of wealthy and/or high-status men?
I agree that intelligence is an important factor in monogamous mating (whether serial or once-only) but not that high intelligence in a mate is universally desired. See my comments in that regard in a message posted earlier today in response to one from Alex Regueiro.
Yes, and I think this is simply assortative mating, and still not the most relevant/important associative factor. I mean, I don't see any evidence of women viewing intelligence as a status marker even in the slightest, so certainly hypergamy doesn't come into play.
If you've seen no evidence that sexually-attractive women prefer to mate with men who are wealthy, have high social status, and/or credentials (e.g. a law or medical degree from an elite university) conferring high potential for enjoying high-status, lucrative careers you are blind.
Caveat: I think it's also true, however, that both men and women tend to prefer mating with others of roughly similar intelligence. Having a spouse who's clearly less intelligent than oneself is likely to result in frequent frustration, and marrying someone who's clearly less intelligent than most of one's friends and close relatives would be courting frequent embarrassment. Having a spouse who's clearly smarter than oneself, on the other hand, is likely to result in frequent humiliation. Another unscientific hunch grounded in common sense: I daresay more men than women are amenable to mating with someone slightly less intelligent than themselves.
My point is much more specific. As I implied above, it's that intelligence isn't directly selected for by woman. It's not a status marker per se. It may have _indirect_ bearing on success in career and other social status, but only indirect. And in any case, it appears that once someone exceeds a certain intelligence threshold (roughly over 140 IQ, though I'm reluctant to take a one-dimensional approach here) the correlation between both career and social success and intelligence actually reverses and becomes negative – so I recall reading, and it doesn't surprise me! In the more common range of intelligence, no doubt there is a moderate correlation of intelligence with status, but even then... I mean, I'd wager that from 110 IQ above, there are considerably more important factors in success and social status (like personality traits) than intelligence.
We do seem to roughly agree on the point of assortative mating re intelligence, however. I very seldom observed a gulf in intelligence when it comes to long-term relationships. The bias towards the man being more intelligent is likely simply due to men placing great emphasis on physical appearance, plus the aforesaid moderate correlation between intelligence and social status – though I repeat, the latter is what women select for, not the former.
My opening remark was triggered by misunderstanding of your preceding comment re hypergamy not coming into play -- which, on hasty reading, I took to mean that you were skeptical of the premise that hypergamy is a prime determinant of female mating preferences.
Ah right, no worries. Yes, the evidence for hypergamy and its role is extensive and conclusive.
I think women still don't understand that what men select and what men get can be a narrow intersection, if not entirely disjointed.
Most men read the signals in the room before choosing to act. Maybe he has a preference amongst the three or four giving him eyes, but that's about it.
This is completely false and pseudoscience. Absolutely everyone cares about intelligence. They simply can't identify it or allow it to identify itself.
So is your theory (Im wondering) that proxies for intelligence have been muddled/rooted out due to credentialism rather than meritocracy, pop culture promoting other traits, IQ being castigated as a metric, etc? And that this means that social benefits accrue to those who are less intelligent, thus skewing women’s mate selection??
That’s actually quite smart
Teen groups are notorious for making smart nerds outcasts. Teenagers select boyfriends and girlfriends aiming for the most popular people as decided by the group. Thus teenagers are not the best group to use as a model for female preferences here. You have to give the kids time to mature socially before you can measure their mature adult choices.
Teenage boys don’t really care about a girl’s popularity when deciding whether to date her; it comes down to whether she’s hot or not. Social maturity is largely irrelevant to the raw, instinctive mechanics of sexual attraction. Teenagers offer a much clearer example of what that looks like than adults do, simply because they haven't learned to filter their instincts yet. With adulthood comes greater impulse control, making adults less inclined to act on their primal instincts. This shift is particularly evident in intelligent women, who often begin to prioritize traits such as educational attainment, income, and socioeconomic status in men over more 'sexy' traits like physical strength and social dominance.
Some of this is cultural- watch Asian dramas, and the preferred archetypes are fairly different. And it plays out in the real world as well
Great article. I'll surely bring it up next time I have an argument with my wife. Not.
In re: “Women swoon over athletes, actors and musicians“
It has been observed that athletes, actors and singers are the heroes of all declining societies. This female preference may be an effect of how status hierarchies become skewed in decadent ages, as my favorite author wrote here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-160354954
Agreed, a bread-and-circuses effect.
If good looking people live longer than average ... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027795362400529X?via%3Dihub
then "good looks" may be a more reasonable thing to select for than first imagined.
Interesting point
—NC
There's no such thing as human "good looks" in a vacuum.
The common conception is that physical attractiveness is somehow comparable to art design in a car -- looks pleasing, but doesn't contribute much to performance or practicality.
The truth is human beauty is more comparable to a a jet aircraft looking cool, although every element of its design serves entirely pragmatic purposes.
Human looks are only a way to advertise our genetic quality to prospective mates. Since we're such heavily visual creatures, I'd go so far as to say that every visually attractive phenotipic trait may be linked to an advantageous characteristic that can't otherwise be evident at first sight.
In this sense, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there's no beauty that's only skin deep.
It annoys me how many people can't or won't grasp this simple, intuitive, fact.
Very interesting and well written article.
The only point of contention I could find was in the assertion that there was a mismatch between wanting a man with money and not wanting one wearing spectacles. Wanting a man with money is obviously eugenic but so is not wanting one with glasses as wearing these codes for a prehistoric genetic weakness that results in being unable to hunt and fight with the rest of the men in the tribe.
I don't believe that poor eyesight represents a prehistoric genetic weakness in most cases, since it results from the interaction between certain genes and modern childhood environments (such as reading and writing).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09286586.2021.1958350
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/opo.13206
—NC
It doesn't have to for the rule to be true as a generality.
Yeah, it's hard to believe for the reason that it would signal genetic lack of fitness. What's much more likely is that spectacles just detract from aesthetic appeal in most cases.
It's not clear to me that a positive female mating preference for wealthy men is antithetical with aversion to those wearing glasses. To the contrary, I surmise that the latter is a corollary of the former. I daresay that a high proportion of men who wear glasses nowadays in settings where mating overtures tend to occur have nerdy personality traits -- particularly shyness, which, I'm guessing, has a strongly inverse correlation with high-status career success. (That's not necessarily to say there's a strong correlation between shyness and weak eyesight, which those more socially adept may prefer to correct by wearing contact lenses in mixed-sex gatherings.)
"Wanting a man with money is obviously eugenic but so is not wanting one with glasses as wearing these codes for a prehistoric genetic weakness that results in being unable to hunt and fight with the rest of the men in the tribe."
I get your point, but hunting and fighting are rather useless in modern society.
Consideration of a man's ability to defend his family and property remains in women's social biology tho.
Probably so, but a glasses-wearing nerd exercising the privilege conferred by a concealed-carry permit might be better able to deal with predatory criminals than an unarmed hunk with 20/20 vision.
Very true but the hellenic virtue of the strong arm and handed hunk would open more legs.
... unless the nerd has a clear advantage in socioeconomic status.
But what if the unarmed hunk with perfect vision is also carrying? If the hunk has a Glock, but the nerd has an AR-15, does the nerd still get the girl?
Now I know why so many AR-15s are sold!
I claim no expertise in the field of feminine psychology and will venture no opinion as to how "the girl" might see it, but IMO the protective capability of a guy carrying a loaded Glock is essentially the same, whether he's a hunk with unaided 20/20 vision or a glasses-wearing nerd. And, at least as regards protection from run-of-the-mill street criminals, I don't think there's any advantage to be had from upgrading the carried weapon to a semi-auto rifle.
There is, if one is attacked by a gang
But then, defending is usually a social phenomenon, so status plays an important role.
Not if you have to engage in real life urban combat as in Ukraine or Gaza.
That is a sad relic from the past. The percent involved in that is, thankfully, very small.
I don't think it is a sad relic from the past. It looks like it will be the future in Europe too. Maybe US also? No one really knows. If the US people were polled in the 1850, no-one would have predicted the US Civil War in 1861.
In your scenario, very little will be individuals fighting. Modern warfare involves high tech.
It's hybrid. If it were just high tech, Ukrainians wouldn't have such a hard time. They do however, despite access to all the high tech produced by the 1 Billion+ West.
With Israel, one can also see how anxious they are to make as many men as possible have updated real-life combat experience. Because next time they maybe facing 10-30x more hostile combatants (Turks, Egyptians, Pakistanis, make your choice).
Bad eyesight might be a weakness that makes a man less attractive for mating, but eyeglasses didn’t exist in the ancestral environment so it isn’t clear that women would be primed to associate them with a weakness. It’s like saying bad knees are a weakness, so a woman would find a man with a scar from knee surgery less attractive. Not being able to throw well is a weakness, but I doubt mentioning you’ve had rotator cuff surgery has much effect on attraction. (I don’t actually know if rotator cuff injuries and surgery affect throwing but you get my drift. Evolutionary signals aren’t necessarily sophisticated.)
True but if a gurl observed you throwing like one she'd run a mile.
My physical attributes are quite modest. My future wife kindly told me, during courting, that she believed an intelligent man (like me) would be adept at both achieving his ambitions and avoiding the slings and arrows of misfortune. Decades later she laments sometimes that she ought to have chosen a luckier more ambitious guy.
My wife repeatedly has told me that she always imagined she’d marry a tall man (6+ feet) like her father and brother. Not sure if my academic success (PhD) potential wooed her, but I really don’t care. She married “down”, I “up”, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the result. ;-)
Grim
Entirely too serious, indeed.
I am 6’2”, 200lbs with a washboard stomach. Women (and men) have been known to faint at my extraordinary handsomeness. I have a very high IQ - 91, which I presume is out of 100. I am in no way sexually dimorphous, which is in any case illegal in my country. My wife, who is very rich, often tells me I am both stupid and lucky, albeit endowed with dark cunning. Your excellent theory confirms to me that since it is she who pays for all aspects of my life, including my unaccountably high turnover in puppies, it is me who is the smartest one in our relationship. Probably.
Really interesting piece, and almost certainly correct in its core claims.
I would propose the following possible explanations as to why intelligent men don't typically have high success when it comes to finding mates. Most likely a combination of them.
- The simple statistical fact that being close to any distribution tail is unhelpful whenever an assortative effect is at play. This seems to be corroborated by the low success of both highly unintelligent and highly intelligent men, but doesn't explain the lower relative success of highly intelligent men, of course.
- Perhaps intelligence just isn't a good measure of genetic fitness, even in the historic (versus prehistoric) era. Perhaps its correlation with neuroticism (or indeed mental illness proper), which is certainly present, outweighs any direct benefits that intelligence confers in terms of survival. I can imagine this being especially true for the highest tier of intelligence (roughly speaking, IQ > ~140), for which studies clearly indicate that it decreases the ability to relate to most fellow humans and therefore participate in normal society. This phenomenon may be explained by the prevalence of autism in such a sector, or it may be more mundane causes at work.
- Perhaps the sexual selection criteria that operate in our minds remain too primitive – that is, they were well suited to our evolutionary past, and were evolved during the Palaeolithic or even the period before our species arose. I can easily imagine it being the case that natural selection works very slowly on sexual selection (although I don't know for a fact), and it may be that the latter simply hasn't caught up with our highly evolved human nature and culture. This presumes that high intelligence is indeed adaptive in the modern world, which is likely but merits further investigation.
- The dynamics of sexual selection in the contemporary West have in some sense returned to the "state of nature". Marriage and other cultural institutions around the sexes and relationships have withered away. Most people appear to follow their base desires and whims, and give little thought to the positive attributes of a potential mate/partner that are only accessible to reason rather than the subconscious (or "intuition" or "vibes", if you prefer). It the past, of course we had arranged marriage (to some extent) in the great majority of cultures and civilisations – but even without that, mate choice seems to have been a much more serious and deliberative issue, for both material and cultural reasons. Aspects of modern culture and technological developments (above all the Pill and healthcare) have dispelled such an approach, and favoured one of serial monogamy (or even polygamy) and low investment in mates by both sexes.
Lol ;-)
In the case of intelligent men, the best suggestions and advice I've heard on the subject probably helps shed light on the problem (anecdotally, it is what it is). Basically the best advice is: seek in those environs where you might find people similar to you. This means leaning into your quirks and characteristics. So intelligent men are unlikely to be successful in contexts where intelligence is not the price for entry. Intelligence can also provoke negative reactions without being responsible for the response. We can apply the same reasoning to gym bros and gals. Also, intelligent people are just as prone as unintelligent people in having misaligned expectations on attraction/desire.
I think the rest of your comment intersects with two themes: 1. the breakdown of social norms promoting monogamous relationships and family formation, and 2. the erosion and disappearance of local social clubs where people meet in person regularly (except for elites) combined with the illusion of infinite choice through social media. This latter point is particularly important because familiarity creates opportunity for considering mates who wouldn't fit into our preconceived idea of what constitutes an attractive potential mate on a very superficial level.
A good way of looking at this is in the pre internet era, countries, cities, towns, were composed of many seas, lakes, ponds. So it was possible to be a distinguished fish in a small pond and stand out. Today it's much harder. Social media combined with beauty standards have created a big ocean. Niches exist, but members are constantly exposed to the ocean and its larger than life appearance. So suddenly the illusion of infinite choice works against settling on what's actually available and making the relationship work.
Sorry, I somehow missed your reply originally.
Most definitely, looking for potential partners via circles that contain lots of similar-minded (or at least similar-interested) people as you is a vastly more efficient method compared to simply casting out your net and seeing what it catches, i.e., the dating app way! It took me a while to learn this, but it's really a lesson we should all be taught as teens.
Your second point expands on much of what I was referring to, indeed. The enormous homogenous dating pool (to paraphrase) and the online medium is especially unhelpful to men for finding mates, though it can evidently also hurt women by encouraging obsession over appearance (a "mental health crisis" if you like) and creating false expectations that come back to bite in the long run. Still, the more immediate and strongest effects fall on men, as I see it.
However, my point goes beyond just the structure and connectedness of human societies and the dating pool. It's also crucially about the intricate cultural norms we used to have around dating, and the preconceptions (some overly rigid and unhelpful but most reflecting genuine societal wisdom) that we were instilled with from youth. Those have all but evaporated, thanks to the totalitarianism of emancipated individualism.
Women do appreciate intelligence but not as nearly much as good looks or height. The other two are gating factors, she won’t notice your IQ unless the other two criteria have been met
Interesting essay, although personally I think the issue is more complicated.
The dark triad traits deserve more than just a passing reference, as do flaunting signifiers of success and wealth as status.
Another curiosity not mentioned in the essay, which could greatly influence our understanding on the subject, is the world before/after dating apps and before/after the rise of Instagram as social media (compared to say Facebook and Myspace early days). So for instance, anecdotally my impression is that compared to the periods of 2007-2012 and 2012-2018, today a much greater emphasis is placed on physical attraction and status signifiers.
The way I view the Dark Triad traits enhancing male reproductive success – and something that I believe is somewhat supported by literature – is that it's men "gaming the system" of sexual selection. There's no doubt that dark triad traits usually decrease fitness in an absolute sense, largely thanks to decreased sociability (they'll generally do less well with other men) – but the high confidence, assertiveness, dominance that is largely correlated with the Dark Triad traits look appealing to women when considered by themselves. And the record shows that women (people in general) are typically not very good at distinguishing between the healthy and the unhealthy versions of these traits. One would expect natural selection to catch up in time, and modify sexual selection in women accordingly, but since this seems to work very slowly...
Good points! I would completely agree with you based on my own observation of the "online" space on the subject of "gaming the system" (I personally use the word "charlatans" and group it with the negative side of the player/game frame). I had no idea this has emerged in the literature. Good to know. 👍🏼
I suspect, combining what we both wrote, by way of analogy, we're observing the consequences of a "fast food" culture vs home cooked wholesome meals. And the more "ignorant" (for lack of a better word) we are of what baseline nutrition and health is, the less likely we are to appreciate how our own meals (actions) become habits and create self reinforcing loops. So we blame what we see (external) while we're woefully blind to how we're not seeing what we don't know (and so can't recognize). I say this because it always surprises me how we all (myself included) have blind spots and (unfortunately in this case) a majority of women (imo) seem to have both unreal expectations and are unable or unwilling to change themselves, both in terms of said expectations (if we try something and it doesn't work, try a different approach? etc) and in terms of inner work to meet expectations of others (which can seem counterintuitive, but it's up to each one of us to become attractive to what we desire).
That's the thing: there's no reason to expect we should be able to figure this all out by ourselves without received wisdom and norms, even the most intelligent of us or those blessed with excellent intuitions. And as I wrote in my other comment, these have atrophied to such an extent that it takes a very long time to build up one's own judgement to a decent level, if we even manage at all. This problem can be generalised quite readily to societal morality or etiquette.
True. We're more likely to live through the consequences of things falling before being able to course correct.
My guess would be that women find intelligent men attractive, all else equal. And especially, that women find *stupid* men *unattractive*. But also, that intelligence is correlated with other characteristics that are considered unattractive or otherwise interfere with mating success. For example, I understand that intelligence and autism are correlated. A highly intelligent man might become obsessed with mathematics, and this crowds out time and effort which would otherwise be spent going to parties, applying gel to his hair, learning to play sick electric guitar solos, and so forth. https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Good point — highly intelligent people are often obsessive.
—NC
Autism is not correlated with intelligence outside of Hollywood, on the contrary, autistic people are often intellectually disabled.
I believe high-functioning autists ("on the spectrum") are overrepresented among the high-IQ set. Low-functioning autists probably won't be part of the population for the relevant studies.
I suspect that's more of a statistic artifact due to low IQ autists being categorized as low functioning.
Ebenezer - high-functioning autists (almost all of them) do not fulfill Leo Kanner's original description. They are at best Aspies.
Yes, women's choices are often superficial.
Excellent article, with many interesting points.
I have always been skeptical of studies that claim that women pick mates for intelligence. It is obvious that most women pick mates for superficial reasons, i.e., height and looks, but this is also the case for most men, i.e, looks. Possible exceptions are intelligent men and women who consider an intelligent mate.
>Women swoon over athletes, actors and musicians — not Nobel Prize winners or Math Olympiad finalists
this is probably becuase our hierarchy of power is more based on popularity? Famous influencer has bigger influence on election cycle than a random millionare.
Zuckerberg, Gates, Brin and others had a big influence on the 2020 election. And Musk and Thiel on the one in 2024.
thank you this was an excellent article
Americans, including myself, have a poor opinion of the Indian families choosing spouses for their children, but I'm starting to see the value of the practice.