Wednesday, November 21, 2018

"She's Smarter Than Me" -- Emasculation





I have known many, many intelligent women. Not only in my personal life but also in my professional career – I taught high school for nearly 30 years – I have been around ladies who exude success with a combination of brains, beauty, and personality.

Often I marveled at how some of these most outstanding individuals handled all the trappings of being female while maintaining academic excellence. It had to be very difficult juggling busy days with the added pressures of femininity. I thought, surely a young man would love to date such a smart girl.

Well, what do I know?

According to six studies conducted by Lora Park, associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo (2015), the closer intelligent females get to men, the less attractive they look.

According to the research:

When men expected to interact with a woman who was spatially distant (e.g., in another room), they expressed greater desire to interact with her when she outperformed versus under performed them (in intelligence) ...

However, when men interacted with a real woman who was spatially near (e.g., in a face-to-face interaction), men showed less romantic interest and desire to interact with her when she outperformed versus under performed them.”

Professor Park suggested that men, when interacting with a woman who is smarter than them, can feel a “momentary shift in their self-evaluation” (such as feeling of being emasculated i.e. deprived of their male identity), which leads them to feel less attracted to smarter woman. She said ...

There is a disconnect between what people appear to like in the abstract when someone is unknown and when that same person is with them in some immediate social context.”

The studies also found that this disconnect between abstract and the reality of meeting a woman, only occurred when the 'domain', (in this case intelligence), mattered to the man. Park continued:

The domain matters. If you don’t care about the domain, you might not be threatened. Yet, if you care a lot about the domain, then you might prefer that quality in somebody who is distant, then feel threatened when that person gets close to you.”

Consider all of this, and ...

A later study reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology led by Park (2016) found that female preference for a male partner who was more intelligent than they were, was preventing the women from advancing in STEM industries (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).


Time to recap. Of course, these findings do not apply to all males and females; however ...

Men prefer smarter women at a distance (in abstract = “in thought” and “unknown”), but up close and personal (in reality = “actually exist”), men do not prefer smarter women. And, women who seek smarter men are hampered from advancing in certain jobs.

Advice? Intelligent women are the best. That is what I maintain and that is what I told young men and young women during my teaching career. The more intelligent the individual, the more success that person is likely to encounter … that includes success with life, love, and society. Never apologize for being intelligent. A man who feels less of a man in a relationship with a smart woman needs to evaluate his own shortcomings.

I say this: most men would say they wanted a smart, independent, successful, beautiful woman (yada yada). However, when one of these men looks for reasons to discount a date (a reason perhaps expressed as “she thinks she's so smart”), he may go rogue and hide his intimidation by distancing himself.

Psychologists call this the “Love Gap.” – the reason men don’t always pursue the women they claim to want. The Love Gap is “a modern phenomenon that now exists between the sexes. The dynamics are unique to 21st-century men and women with evolved desires for a relationship, who also have to get around generations and generations of the ingrained male provider/female nurturer framework.”

Ladies, never dumb yourself down to attract a man. Journalist, researcher, adviser and CEO Jenna Birch says men should seek what she calls the “End Goal” ...

“End goal, n. (1) a smart, successful, “full-package” woman whom men admire, date, and deem aspirational; she contains the sort of substance and carries the type of connection they want to lock down — someday; (2) a modern woman who knows what she wants in love and in life; she has an ultimate objective in mind for her future, and she is unwilling to settle in getting there. “

I agree with Jenna. The reality of finding an End Goal may cause a young man to question his own intelligence and compare it with this potential mate. And, if he finds himself in that domain looking up a few rungs at his smarter partner, he should not be intimidated, he should be inspired to reach ever higher. Smarter females are better in every way. Just ask older, wiser men who deal in reality, not in the unknown. They know … and how.

Sources:

Lora E. Park. “Desirable but not smart: preference for smarter romantic partners impairs women's STEM outcomes.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology. October 2015.

Joe Vesey-Byrne. “Study reveals what men really think about smart women, and it's disgusting.” The Independent. 2017.




No comments: