Brainy men found more appealing to women

By William Atkins
Saturday, 04 October 2008 20:17

Science - Biology

The library and the research laboratory may become the preferred places to find your mate in the 21st century if the study by University of California researchers is correct: women choose men based on intelligence and creativity.


The article “Intelligence and mate choice: intelligent men are always appealing” has been published online (September 27, 2008) in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Its authors—Mark D. Prokosch, Richard G. Coss, Joanna E. Scheib, and Shelley A. Blozis, from the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis—state in the abstract to their paper that, “Selecting a more intelligent mate often provides women with better access to resources and parental investment for offspring.”

However, humans may have also evolved so that women look for intelligence in men in order to produce children that are physically superior—and, thus, use intelligence as a way to unconsciously determine the overall quality of her mate.

The California researchers studied the role of male intelligence with respect to the short-term and long-term preferences of women.

They used the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) as a general test of intelligence, or IQ, in men. In addition, the researchers also used subjective ratings by women to predict their preferences in men, especially concerning women’s perception of creativity in men.

Finally, the researchers also evaluated women’s likelihood of selecting a mate based on intelligence and creativity when confronted with her “conception risk.”

In all, the researchers used 204 women in their study. They were assessed, both in mate appeal for the short-term (“one-night stands”) and the long-term (“marriage”), with the use of videos of fifteen college men performing various tasks such as reading a news report, discussing important topics, and performing athletic events.

The male participants also took a quantitative test of verbal intelligence.

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