Scientists from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland have found that men don’t fancy clever women unless they’re very attractive.
To arrive at this conclusion, the scientists studied the results of more than 4,000 speed-dates where around 560 people had four minutes to get to know potential partners.
According to the study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, while women were impressed by men who were either good-looking or clever, men would only fancy a clever woman if she’s very attractive.
The cleverer a woman becomes according to the study, the more men tend to get turned off unless she is better looking.
“While seeking partners, women do not exclude men who are perceived as less physically attractive. Even those men who are not perceived by women as physically attractive may receive positive speed-dating decisions if only those men seem intelligent,” the researchers wrote.
“Males demonstrate a clearly different approach to mate selection. In men’s perception, for relatively high values of women’s perceived intelligence, this personal trait turns out to be an economic bad.
“Increases in already high levels of women’s intelligence have to be compensated for by increases in women’s perceived physical attractiveness to keep the probability of being chosen by men the same.”
Phil