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.
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