…and let's not even get started on girls who wear glasses!

Good old boys may remember the one about the transexual who complained about the most painful part of becoming a woman: the part where they remove half your brain. Not so fast, fellas! A new British study, sent to us by superhero The Tick, suggests women (or at least, women looking to get hitched) may be getting short shrift because of their high IQs:

The study found the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 percent for boys for each 16-point increase in IQ.

But for girls, there is a 40-percent drop for each 16-point rise, according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The study is based on the IQs of 900 men and women between their 10th and 40th birthdays.

"Women in their late 30s who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation are finding that men are just not interesting enough," said psychologist and professor at Nottingham University Paul Brown in The Sunday Times.

Claire Rayner, writer and broadcaster, said in the article that intelligent men often prefered a less brainy partner.

"A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time. In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way."

I say AP buried the lead on this one: "Englishmen think their mothers are stupid."

Comments

[DJ]

Isn't this about the thirtieth such study explaining that men with money tend to go for hawtness, yet women won't hardly tolerate men who are less successful? Sounds like the authors of the study somehow correlated monetary success (of both sexes) with intelligence. Brilliant!

[D Anghelone]

C'mon, where's the part about Western civilization being in a state of terminal decadence? Can't take the heat, eh?

[linguist]

Speaking as a former wife of a Brit, I can vouch that in general, they are about 25 years behind the US in terms of sexism/gender roles. This study isn't surprising at all, really, but I think it may be specific to that society.

[joe]

It's odd to hear you say that, linguist, I'd have thought the opposite. They had a female Commander in Chief first, and I've often noticed that British movies have a lot more strong, powerful, non-cheescake female characters than American movies.

[linguist]

In fact, I'll add that my explanation for the results of that study falls in with my general theory about Britain: as a former power, now overshadowed by other countries (say, the US), the national morale is one of having been emasculated. A typical defense against this is, of course, to reinforce old-fashioned gender roles.

[linguist]

Ah, joe, of course the fact that those women are in the movies (therefore fantasy) and the fact that Margaret Thatcher (and Elizabeth, Victoria) were exceptions to the rule, actually reinforces my theory.

[gaius marius]

British civilization has been in a steady decline ever since they put a woman in charge of James Bond.

[Ron Hardin]

The sexes divide over interests, not intelligence or ability.

Redo the study with that in mind, and not intelligence, and see what it discovers.

Vicki Hearne's observations (_Bandit_) http://home.att.net/~rhhardin9/vickihearne.womenmath.txt

[Jennifer]

Concerning the British women's status, one of the analysts where I work is British, and said that Britain lost so many men in World War I that there was a serious man-shortage afterwards, so while it was a golden age for even the homeliest of males it was a terrible time for women (especially considering that in those days a woman HAD to get married lest she be considered a failure). He also said this is when teaching school over there switched from a traditionally male to a traditionally female job; England created a spinster-schoolteacher class to absorb the huge number of females who had no chance of marrying.

Of course the man who told me this has never been known to let facts get in the way of an entertaining story, so take this one with the necessary amount of salt.

[Thomas Paine's Goiter]

"Women in their late 30s who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation are finding that men are just not interesting enough," said psychologist and professor at Nottingham University Paul Brown in The Sunday Times.

Can IQ be correlated successfully to willingness to participate in a relationship at all?

One thing I've noticed with career-minded women is that they are less likely to engage in a traditional relationship that will develop a family. That means that the women will need to put work and career second, which many aren't willing to do. By the way, I'm not criticizing this as men can and do enter into these relationships and ignore the family dumping everything on the mothers.

BUT, having said that, how many men really want to enter into a relationship where they know that any prospects of a family are in the rearview mirror?

[joe]

"Ah, joe, of course the fact that those women are in the movies (therefore fantasy)"

See, it's tough to picture the aunts in "The Crays" as anyone's fantasy. That's the "non-cheesecake" part I was talking about. In an American movie, they would have been extremely minor characters, like Vito Corleone's wife, whereas they played a much larger role in the British gangster genre, with one being given the most interesting, demanding monologue in the entire film (about the Thames being filled with babies, if you've seen the movie).

Had the strong, powerful women in British movies resembled Catwomen, I wouldn't have made the point.

[drf]

while it's not necessarily the IQ argument, we were out to dinner with someone who introduced us to a book "he's just not in to you" or something like that, and our friend took it seriously, and seemed to think that there is a universal "male code" of playing women. disgusting thought, that.

but she self describes as being very intelligent, but also has an image of herself that is only compatible with "Bart the human chin, trader with a BMW" image. so she is in an endless loop of hooking up with players and then complaining. meanwhile, the smart guy who is interested in her and would give the emotional part of the relationship she wants gets ignored due to the powerful "bart image".

there are countless examples using both genders, with the common thread being self-deception (falsely called "self esteem" where these people are never wrong, etc. these are the "competitive" people who don't want to sweat but get real obnoxious over rules of monopoly)

we need to ask Bat Manuel about this... 🙂

[gaius marius]

Can't take the heat, eh?

this is something older than the west, i suspect... 🙂

British civilization has been in a steady decline ever since they put a woman in charge of James Bond.

USURPER! UNETHICAL! UNETHICAL!! 🙂

[Josh]

They had a female Commander in Chief first

I think this has more to do with the parliamentary system than enlightened gender attitudes. I like the direct election of the executive in the US, but in selecting for the most non-offensive option, it doesn't have a lot of room for women or minorities.

[Captain Awesome]

It's a male tradition; http://www.fastseduction.com
Also a matter of free-(meat)market principles, especially in terms of advertising.

[Ken Shultz]

I say AP buried the lead on this one: "Englishmen think their mothers are stupid."

I read a study once that claimed that the genetic material responsible for IQ only exists on the X chromosome--if that's true, because men always get the Y chromosome from their father, it follows that, genetically speaking, no man can be smarter than his mother.

...does it not?

[c]

drf, that "smart guy who is interested in her and would give the emotional part of the relationship she wants but gets ignored" is you, isn't it? : )

[Ayatollah Usoe]

I think this has less to do with preference than with demographics.

While male and female IQ are on average the same, that's an average. Female IQ is more clustered towards the norm, while males have a longer, flatter bell curve. Who's doing quantum physics? Who's doing 15 to life? Males.

There are not enough females at the tails to marry similarly intelligent males. The males at one tail are dumber than their wives, the males at the other are smarter than their wives. But I bet it makes a big difference which tail you want to choose from.

[dhex]

"But I bet it makes a big difference which tail you want to choose from."

according to those against gay marriage, yes it does.

[joe]

Well, c, he does seem to have heard a lot about here problems...

Sympathies, drf, been there.

AU, that's a very interesting hypothesis. Are you just speculating, or have you seen any studies?

[Swamp Justice]

Correlation is not causation. Maybe men do not necessarily want stupid wives. Maybe women with lower IQs are (for some accidental genetical reason) are hotter.

[Ken Shultz]

"While male and female IQ are on average the same, that's an average. Female IQ is more clustered towards the norm, while males have a longer, flatter bell curve."

Once again, that's a function of the IQ gene, for want of a better term, only being on the X chromosome. The egg is always an X; sperm carries either an X or a Y.

...This means that a female gets an average of the IQ gene on two X chromosomes; hence, they tend to be weighted toward the middle. In the case of men, who only gets the X from their mother, they get whatever is on the X without compromise...

...Whether they get a high IQ X or a low IQ X, that's what they're stuck with. So the extremely high and low IQs belong to males disproportionately.

It also means that a man cannot be genetically dumber than his mother--there may be evolutionary reasons for that.

[Eryk Boston]

Has anyone considered that many intelligent women go to elite colleges where they spend four years soaking in misandrist propaganda? Perhaps smart men just aren't interested in marrying a woman who went to UMASS - Amherst unless they are seriously masochistic.

[Ken Shultz]

It also means that males can only pass their intelligence to their offspring if they have a daughter.

...Queen Elizabeth was much more like Henry VIII than any son ever could have been.

[Ken Shultz]

"It also means that a man cannot be genetically dumber than his mother--there may be evolutionary reasons for that."

Rather, that means that a man cannot be genetically smarter than his mother---there may be evolutionary reasons for that.

[Eryk Boston]

Actually, if your facts are correct then the mother's IQ is the result of the averaging of two X genes. A son will get one of them which could be much higher or lower then the average of the two. E.g. A woman has a 150 IQ gene on one X and a 100 IQ gene one her other X causing her IQ to be 125. Her son will have either a 150 IQ from one of the two or a 100 IQ from the other. In both cases he will skew far from the mother's IQ. Mind you, all this is based upon shaky assumptions of hereditary IQ.

[c]

Ken,

I'm all for idle intellectual exploration, but I've got to wonder if you know how far out on a limb you are. You're writing as if it was a settled scientific question that 1) IQ is a meaningful indication of intelligence, 2) that there's one gene responsible for IQ, to the exclusion of experience, and 3) that the aforesaid gene is on the X chromasome. By way of evidence, you've cited the personality similarity of two historical figures you've never personally met, and you've compared their relationship to Queen Elizabeth's male sibling, who didn't exist.

I hope you understand that you are free-climbing Mount Speculation.

[linguist]

Wow, I'm digging the genetic component of all of this. It makes sense. I think it was in the book "Genome" I read about the age-old battle between X and Y, which included something about the X giving the baby the higher brain functions (specifically the frontal cortex) and the Y giving the midbrain. So in other words, we all have our mother's thinking process and our father's emotions. (!)

Cool.

[linguist]

Err, uh,

"we all" meaning "you all" actually, since I don't have a Y and obviously have my mother's emotions.

[Eryk Boston]

Hold on c,
I'm a member of Mensa so, as long as I'm on this line, IQ will be considered a valid measure of intelligence lest you damage my poor ego.

[Eryk Boston]

No, wait....I got into Mensa based on my my LSAT score, not my IQ. Feel free to attack the IQ but the LSAT is hereafter the gold standard.

[Captain Awesome]

c,

also 4) no issues of dominance, female IQ based on strict average of two X chromasomes.

[c]

And now it looks like you've picked up a stoner disciple! You have tenure, don't you?

Also please let the record show that drf never came clean about pining for Miss Shallow.

[Ken Shultz]

Okay, here's what I'm sayin...

I think I was careful enough to stipulate that we were just talking about the genetic components of intelligence--that's all. There are all kinds of factors that go into intelligence, there are questions about the accuracy of tests to gauge intelligence--I accept that.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb by suggesting that, relatively speaking, the Y chromosome has little influence. Indeed, the Y chromosome hardly changes from generation to generation. That's why, for instance, researchers were able to make the statements they did about Sally Hemming's descendants. The Y chromosome, typically, takes what's already on the X chromosome and makes it "masculine", for want of a better term. The Y chromosome between Jefferson and the decedents of Sally Hemming's male offspring weren't just similar--they were identical.

An analogy might be to food. X chromosomes tend to determine things like whether it's ice cream or candy. Y chromosomes tend to determine things like whether it's chocolate or mint. I don't think there's anything particularly controversial about that.

Once again, I'm talking about the extremes here: the highest tiny percentage of the top one percent of scores on IQ tests, and the lowest tiny percentage of the bottom one percent of scores on IQ tests (excluding people with other issues like downs syndrome) are disproportionately male. This explains that.

[drf]

c: LOL!

no as a gay engineer in the french marines, i'm married to a jewish lass of fine pedigree.

actually, seriously, no i was in a disaster, aka "relationship" for most of my 20s, so those are actually anecdotes lived, alas, by others. plus, going on my track record from college, even in the happy end of the john hughes movie, i would have found a way to blow it and strike out 🙂

plus, ask around, the discription "intelligent..." etc certainly ain't me. i'm a chicago guy who likes a beer and a brat and a shot of burbon. 🙂

and the record is duely noted!

[Ken Shultz]

...No one is suggesting that, because of this, women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

If we prohibit women from voting, it should be strictly because of their stubborn refusal to stop harassing me while I'm watching football.

[Stevo Darkly]

Ayatollah: While male and female IQ are on average the same, that's an average. Female IQ is more clustered towards the norm, while males have a longer, flatter bell curve. Who's doing quantum physics? Who's doing 15 to life? Males.

That is very interesting. I had never heard that about the male/female distribution pattern for IQs. It could explain a lot.

Possibly including my recollection that in elementary (especially) and high school, girls in general seemed to be smarter than boys. Maybe it's because the girls would tend to clump more along the "normal intelligence" level at which the learning material is aimed. There would be some boy "brains," but they would tend to be in the minority. And compared to girls, there would be a larger proportion of boys who were "academically challenged."

Although I guess some might argue a hypothesis that females might just tend to be more temperamentally suited to sitting still in school and learning stuff.

[koinkidink or wot???]

GG

Shit, a few years ago when I was running around Little Round Top, I wasn't imagining myself to be part of the 15th Alabama (my home state), but the 20th Maine (commanded by the courageous Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain).

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2004/12/her_only_dance.shtml

JB

I was able to run up little round-top like the men from the 20th Maine

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2004/03/the_myth_of_the.shtml

[Mike H.]

Which part of the bell curve do you guys think this fellow ^ is on? 🙂

[Ayatollah Usoe]

There was some study a few years back, I think it may have been reported in Forbes or Fortune, that suggested males from better schools get better jobs and hotter women. That the offspring is better looking and perhaps better provided for because of this observed outcome. Too bad my day never finished college.

[Mikiel]

Ken, are you seriously suggesting that there is a single gene for intelligence? Or are you just having a little fun with us?

[thoreau]

I don't want to debate whether and/or how and/or how best intelligence can be measured. And to the extent that nature matters at least somewhat in the "nature vs. nurture" debate, is there actually any evidence to suggest that the X chromosome plays the dominant role in shaping the brain?

And that's a very interesting observation about two posters who thought about the 20th Maine while running around Little Round Top. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Move along, folks, ain't no dual identity to see here!

[B.P.]

I was kinda hoping this thread would be a bit more sexist and condescending. But nooooo, H&R gets bogged down with genetic speculation.

[drf]

BP:

for that level of discourse, check out command post or anything that glorifies U2 or REM.

thoreau: little round top and the 20th maine are basic facts that anybody who dabbles in history knows 🙂

still, i had thought that you and he were the same, too. 🙂

[Ken Shultz]

Mikeil,

There are probably thousands of genes responsible for intelligence--both directly and indirectly.

My understanding is that there are things on the X that aren't on the Y. I've heard it said that stretches of the Y chromosome are a wasteland or "blank", for want of a better term.

...I've used that frequently.

It's hard to talk about the effect of two X chromosomes on a person or indeed the interaction of thousands of genes without using words like "average" for want of a better term, etc. It's easier to talk about chromosomes, and that's what we should be talking about in a discussion about variations in IQ test scores between sexes, is it not?

P.S. You already caught the bit about genetics playing only a part in what we're talking about when we talk about intelligence, right?

[thoreau]

FWIW, my understanding is that the Y chromosome certainly contains some useful information, but not nearly as much as the other chromosomes. Really, all you need is an on-off switch. In principle, the other chromosomes (even the X) could carry all the information needed to build a male reproductive system, and the Y could just have a single gene that determines whether that info is actually used. In practice it apparently carries some useful info and has some subtle aspects, but it still doesn't carry as much info as the X.

drf-

Little Round Top and 20th Maine may indeed be commonly known things, but how many posters on this forum have gone there and fantasized about being in the 20th Maine?

[drf]

ummmm. no thoreau. never fantasized about [i]that[/i]

or would a tommy boy quote be better: "why?"

🙂

[jbk]

The Y chromosome is not exactly a wasteland, it's just a lot smaller than the X. This karyotype shows the relative size difference between the Y and the other chromsomes.

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/karyotyp.html

And there are people with chromosomal abnormalities, such as having exactly one X chromosome, or combinations such as XXY, XYY, XXX, etc. Basically, even one Y generally tunrs you into a male, with rare exceptions, of course, but having no Xs always makes you a woman.

[Stevo Darkly]

Coincidence: When I was a lad, at 20th & Main Streets I saw a fetching lass with little round things on top. I fantasized about her. Today, that girl is my Jewish wife. More coincidence: Her maiden name was Maureen French, that ingenue. She is both gay and bisexual.

[Ira Weatheral]

Isn't the 20th Maine the ones in the "Lost Regiment" series by William Forstchen?

[Ken Shultz]

So it's "Stevo 20th & Main" now, is it?

[thoreau]

At the corner of 20th and Maine you can find a law school attended by bisexual men who served as engineers in the French Marines. They're all married to American Jewish women.

[Sir Mixalot]

Ayatollah Usoe:

I swear that the next time a woman in my vicinity asks "why do men do ?", I'm answering "fat tails". ROTFLMAO.

[Stevo Darkly]

Ken, she took my name: Maureen Darkly (formerly Maureen French, ingenue).

[Wannabe House Husband]

"BUT, having said that, how many men really want to enter into a relationship where they know that any prospects of a family are in the rearview mirror?"

Because marrying a women who's career comes first increases the chances of the family having a lot of money, increasing my chances of being able to quit my job, adopt kids, drive a BMW, hire a nanny to take care of said kids, and spend my time writing and drinking.

[Jared]

Intelligence is the sum of events in your life time, and "hot" girls always have things done for them by would be suitors, meaning they won't have as high intelligence. Does this factor in?

[Jacob]

"Maybe women with lower IQs are (for some accidental genetical reason) are hotter."

Or, which is the same thing, women with high IQs are ... um... homelier ?

The reason is simple: women who have high IQ AND good looks, learn fast that you can get farther on the good looks than on the IQ ?

[Jadagul]

Thoreau et al.: I know I've read that IQ is quite heritable. A little googling turns up this article:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n09/print/coyn01_.html

The author seems uncomfortable with the idea that IQ is heritable, but suggests that the data seem to support it anyway (I've read that several other places, too). I also recall, from a big fuss on Marginal Revolution, that IQ correlates significantly with earnings later in life, if nothing else, and that it's fairly stable over lifetime.

But the best link (though not particularly detailed) may be this one:

http://www.greenwood.com/books/bookdetail.asp?sku=C5903

I suspect if I wanted a lot of detail I'd need to buy the book, but this looks like a summary of what we've been saying here.

[TWC]

I dunno, the ideal wife is probably a rich old lady in a wheel chair with bad brakes (who owns a chain of liquor stores).

On another note...I can hire a maid I don't need to marry one.

And BTW, the women aren't getting short shrift because of their IQ's they "are finding that men are just not interesting enough" which is pretty much the opposite of what is implied.

[Ayatollah Usoe]

TWC, I guess we just jumped over a few small steps. With female IQ nearer the norm, and male IQ distributed wider, the average female has a 50/50 change of being smarter or dumber than her mate. It means she can choose from half the population if she wants a smart guy.

An above average IQ female will find most males dumber than she. And yes, Nascar, wrestling and bass fishing are just not interesting enough.

[Neil]

A man needs a maid.

[Nike Dunk High]

thanks