Intelligence and Attraction

SSM asks if women are attracted to intelligence?

My answer is probably, to a degree. Women are likely to be attracted to someone as smart or moderately smarter (about 15 IQ points or less) than themselves, as smarts are an indicator of superiority, triggering hypergamic impulses.

She also asks if so, why do STEM guys have such problems? The reason is that as the male’s superiority grows beyond a difference of about 15 (or so) IQ points, greater increases in the gap are counter-productive.

High intelligence differences make it hard for people to connect. At 30 IQ points difference it becomes very difficult for true communication to occur. The intelligent person of 130 IQ is as far removed intellectually from the average person as the average person is from the mentally handicapped. If you’ve talked with the mentally impaired, you know a true relationship is difficult, because you have to constantly dumb down your speaking; the same goes for the exceptionally intelligent and the average person.

The problem for STEM nerds arises in the differing distribution of intelligence between the sexes. While average intelligence is more or less similar, men are more variable than women: women tend to cluster around the mean of 100, while men are more likely to deviate from the mean and be exceptionally smart or exceptionally stupid. I discussed this a bit before here.

STEM people, with an average incoming IQ of about 110 are significantly more likely to be among the exceptionally intelligent.

So what happens is that your 145-point wunderkind can not communicate effectively with anyone below  115 (ie. the vast majority of woman), and would probably be most comfortable with a women with 130+. But, for every woman above 130, there are, say, 2 men above 130 because men are more highly represented at the extremes. So, not only is he completely cut off from the vast majority of women, he’s also competing against another man for a woman who he would be able to comfortably communicate with, and only one of them can get her.

From this, we can conclude that the ideal for a man on the dating market is to be in the 115-130 range. Bright, but not awkwardly so. A man in that range would be intelligent enough that most women would look up to him and respect him, but not so intelligent that he would be incapable of communicating with the majority of women. He would still likely be ‘awkward’ with many women below the average.

Once a passes beyond the 130 threshold he’s effectively cut off from half the female population and will be noticeably ‘awkward’ with the majority who are left.

After 115 IQ, increased intelligence begins to have diminishing returns. Somewhere within the 115-145 range there’s a point where intelligence actively detracts from your attractiveness with women as the increasing ‘awkwardness’ of being highly intelligent becomes more detrimental than the hypergamous benefits intelligence.

Conclusion: Intelligence is attractive to women, but past a certain point it becomes detrimental.

If you go to Roissy’s test, you will notice that he gives the range of 110-130 as being +1, 130-145 as being a 0, and 145+ as being a -1.

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I would theorize from this that game is primarily the attempts of 120+ IQ men who are either in or approaching the ‘awkward’ range of intelligence and find themselves incapable of or impaired in communicating effectively with many, if not most women. By learning to mimic the relational habits of those with average intelligence, they can become successful with the average intelligence women who they would ordinarily be ‘awkward’ with. But, in the long run, they would find the average women they are now successful with to be dull, as she is either below or on the edges of his range of people he can effectively communicate with.

24 comments

  1. A lot of us touched on the specifics of communication being impaired with people below you but it’s good to have some evidence in the form of statistics backing that up.

    Good analysis with examples.

    I tend to think of it more along the lines of a self fulfilling prophecy. The person with the higher intelligence knows the conversation is probably going to be awkward because they cannot communicate effectively, and thus their frame will affect the discomfort thus leading to a loss of confidence. You know you’re somewhat isolated, your body language reflects it, the conversation reflects it, and then you just confirm it to be true… and the cycle repeats.

    As Dr Illusion has stated, those with high IQ and psychopathy (although extending to the dark triad as well) where they don’t really feel any of the approach anxiety or awkwardness typically have very good success with women.

  2. Define intelligence. Seriously.

    Women are attracted to the man they describe as “there’s just something about him”

    Get the body language and a lot of other factors corrected, and the fastest way to be that man that appears more intelligent and more attractive to a woman… is simple. Follow this: http://www.lifegivingshow.com

    Vic knows his stuff. If you’re not following this too http://bit.ly/13SNNNO it might be time to give up since you’re wasting your time. If you’re a man, however, you want to improve. Forget this intelligence talk, just focus on mastering what leads you to the fast-track to your real dreams.

    If it’s me, I’m going to get http://www.lifegivingshow.com you’ll be thankful you did. Best inexpensive, advanced, fast to implement advice for men on the planet.

  3. Most talk from women is babble anyway…which is why it’s hard for guys who score high on the logical scale to relate.

    You literally have to dumb yourself down to things that make sense to women to communicate with them. This mostly relates to Disney movies, clothing, looking pretty, or any other variety of worldly things. Things that most guys wouldn’t bother to spend time digging into.

    However if you do a little digging into the behind the scenes stuff…you can hook women in and then lift them up to a higher level. One of my favorites was starting a conversation with hair color that led to talking about wisdom.

    I call it the parable of Jesus method of communication.

  4. Few points:

    I think the game part of the manosphere’s readership is made up predominantly of people who above average in intelligence, but few (especially when compared to something like the reactionary stuff) exceptionally bright people, bordering on genius. If your IQ is low, yous are going to be able to function more socially/not going to be able to comprehend the concepts of game. If your IQ is high, we’re into Sheldon Cooper asexual territory with a much steeper learning curve that takes enormous willpower to overcome.

    Having said that, I checked out that link and it’s full of people going on about how their IQs are three standard deviations above the norm, how smart they are, and it’s not me, it’s them, all them dumbos kind of mentality.

    It’s a tough learning curve lads, but take a look around the sphere for example. Krauser, Dr Illusion, Vox Day have talked about having genius level IQs, more than likely much higher than yours and they are hardly aspergery fucktards are they? Deal with it. And of course, you can cry outlier , or yous can actually get off your arse to read stuff, like game, like How to Make Friends and Influence People, psychology papers and how politicians talk and become more socially functional. Find someone who is adept. Try and learn from him. I could barely function when I was a teenager and was diagnosed with mild fucken aspeys en aw. These days I’m far from charming en aw but I can function quite well and I’m getting better.

    You have to want it though, yous really do.

  5. TL DR; the act of thinking yous are screwed because you are much more intelligent than others and not being able to communicate (and that is partially correct, don’t get me wrong) with normal people as a result, subsequently tying up your intelligence with your ego, does far more damage to your social skills than the intrinsic fact that you have a very high IQ.

  6. Most (all?) women only care about IQ so much as it is a proxy for $$$$. Lolzlzlozo

  7. That’s not true…I tell women my elaborate plan to rob banks that would work. The only thing I need is them to be my Bonnie.

    None of them ever accept. Their loss.

  8. @ Francis Begbie

    I didn’t see anyone in that thread (and I read the whole thing) lamenting that high IQ doomed them to be anti-social. Nor did I see anyone imply that they weren’t doing anything about it.

    We were just discussing why high IQ people tend to have a harder time socializing and interacting with women in general. Like I said, kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.

    I personally work in a health care field so I’m forced to talk with people all day. I don’t think anyone who has seriously been in the manosphere a while doesn’t want to self improve what they are bad at… but I could be wrong.

  9. Sociopaths run an IQ of around 127, which is the point of diminishing returns for success in most fields (other than physics).

  10. If you want to know how much women value intelligence [outside of $$$ lzozlzoz] and it’s related institutions (like the university) – look how they fare under the rule of women. The following is a masterpiece by GBFM detailing what has happened.

    **************

    lzlzozozlzzozozllzzlozozol

    yes all the wall streeteetetet nitwit proetestors

    are forgetting to

    protest

    the right people

    the neoconc warmonhgering, debt-creating, honor-hating federal reserver private bankers who create moneyz
    out of thin air by placing everyone in debt
    who
    privatievze protssics and socialize risk
    who
    fund
    feminism and war (as feminism is war)
    who fund
    asscocking in spirit and in literal cockckass in assess zlzozolz
    who finance
    tucker max rhyme sitwh goldman sax secretive tapers of butthex (with your future wife who they need to desoul to make her loyal to the fita doallr and not god man family) to get the world used to being butthexed as once you are butthexed by the neoocn cockas you are more servile obedienet will die in tehir wars
    who fund
    the phahameecuatical companies who drug up all our boys
    who funed fund the fmeinsit movement
    to deconstruct the great books and classics on all our campuses
    hollow them out and get rid of homer and dante and shakespeare an dthe bible
    leave them with noting but femlit classes on entitlement and welath transfer lzozlzl

    the federal resvere private banksters

    implementing the ten planks of ths e communist manifesto

    who created
    the welath transferirng dot com bubble
    the welath transferirng dot com bubble real estate bubble marriage bubble college studnet loan bubble funding professors who agree with the fiat dolalrz and degreess until the fiat degreees only funcion is to put the studnet in debt while dumbing them down teahcing them to obery horrid ugly evil dsoulles harpy womenz zlzozl
    the welath transferirng dot com bubble

    detsorying the family
    butteheinxnxin

    llzozozlzlzlzl

    how the fatassed in the beltway neocon jonah goldber william benenetes operate lzozllzlzlzlzlzozo:

    1. deconstruct the great books on univeristy campuses
    2. tell men they need to man up
    3. dumb down the entire schools system
    4. tell men they need to man up
    5. assrape men in divorce court
    6. tell men they need to man up
    7. send men to die on foreign shores in foreign neoocn wars
    8. tell men they need to man up
    9. drug boys with ritalin/adderoll for being boys
    10. tell men they need to man up
    11. encourage woem to giver thie aholes and ginaholes early and often to douchebags
    12. tell men they need to man up
    13. destroy the classical, heroic character in their neocon movies, replacing them with asscocking gay cowboys
    14. tell men they need to man up
    15. print money from thin air and inflate and dlate bubbes to seize a man’s home and property
    16. tell men they need to man up
    17. enocurage women to become fat, whiney bitches
    18. tell men they need to man up
    19. publish, promote, fund, and finance asscokers licke tucker max who film secrtive tap9ng of assockinhg session without the girl’s consent, tucker ma rhymes with goldam sax, repeating tucker’s lies that he is six fet tall inthe neocon weekly standadth .
    20. tell men they need to man up
    21. transofrm the church from an instititution where a man coul once go to meet a virginal, exalted wife, into a front for the divorce industry, where single mothers with three children from three asscockers go to rope in a betabmale to pay for the assocker’s spawn
    22. tell men they need to man up
    23. castigate, attack, and impugn men for acting like men
    24. tell men they need to man up
    25. transform the noble, exalted university into a nursery, ruled by neocon women exalting asscockers, asscokcing, and good grammar, exiling and deconstructing the great book and men, and rewading the servile future nannies of teh nanny state with fiat dollars delivered fresh from ben beranke’s helicopter
    26. tell men they need to man up
    27. remove all men from the publishing industry, so that priscialla painton of simon and schuster sodom and scheister can publish tucker max rhymes iwth godlman sax’s stories on how he asscoked a girl (somone’s future wife who will asscock her future huspband in divorce coutrt as revenge for having been assocked by a neocns) and taped it secrtly without her conthent lzozozlzoo. remove all men form the publishing industry and repalce deep, prodoufn real great books for men with twilight vampire asscocking female rape fanasty rape fanatsatsy “roamance” novels
    28. tell men they need to man up
    29. conceive of a hundred government programs to criminalzize men and force them o hand over their assetts to women
    30. tell men they need to man up
    31. financially incentivizee womem to file for divorce, promising them that their former husdband will have to pay for all their futrue assocking sessions, and that they get the kids/house/car/assetts
    32. tell men they need to ma up
    33. fill the law schools with fatm, embittered, burned-out, nasty (in looks an spirit) post-asscoked lawyeresses, an replace Moses’ and Zeus’s law with bernake’s banker laws whichexlats theft via the inflation tax
    34. tell men they need to man up.

    lzozoozozo

    what aalalz am i mizssing here:???

    feel free to addodoon ti oit! lzozlzl

  11. The bankers are nothing more than the Wizard of Oz.

    What do you mean lozozozolzo?

    The bankers fund the whole fiat matrix!

  12. All their money and power is nothing more than tricks.

    They are little men behind the curtain.

    They’ll be surprised that they were nothing more than pawns in Satan’s chess game.

  13. How smart can you be if you cannot communicate your ideas in a clear, simple to understand manner?

    I think there is something else going on besides a failure to communicate. Besides th a feels way to oprah-ish to carry weight.

  14. “How smart can you be if you cannot communicate your ideas in a clear, simple to understand manner?”

    Depends on what your audience thinks is a clear, simple understanding of your idea.

    Men it’s short and concise.
    Women it’s a story full of shiny objects with a lesson that makes them feel something…and even a few men will understand it too.

    Would it be in the best interest of bankers tell everyone what is up from a bullhorn…or plant symbols everywhere?

  15. Another problem with high intelligence, is that although it often leads to high paying careers, the path to those careers often require long hours and put people in social groups that are heavily male. Think engineering PhD candidate.

  16. @ DS: It can often be self-reinforcing. Negative experiences tend lead to downward spirals.

    @ LF: Intelligence is defined as the ability to mentally compute and calculate as measured by IQ.

    @ FB: Like most things, if you’re not good at it you have to work at it, but before you can work at it, you need to understand it.

    @ Ton: It is not about communicating an idea clearly; it’s about communicating over extended periods of time in ways that build a mutually enjoyable relationship. Cracked actually wrote it up well:

    “Want to know what it’s like to live life as a genius? All you have to do is go hang around with the stupidest, most incompetent people you know. Cringe at their stupid jokes, feel the frustration as they fumble even the easiest tasks and fail to grasp the simplest concepts. Being a genius must be like that, only everyday. Everyone is an idiot compared to them. They’re living Idiocracy.

    We can’t imagine what it’s like to make friends in that world. Genuine connections will be rare indeed when every honest expressions of thought or feelings on your end is met with a look of dull Keanu Reeves-esque befuddlement.

    http://www.cracked.com/article_17061_reminder-5-things-you-think-will-make-you-happy-but-wont_p2.html#ixzz2XiwcjocB

  17. “Want to know what it’s like to live life as a genius? All you have to do is go hang around with the stupidest, most incompetent people you know. Cringe at their stupid jokes, feel the frustration as they fumble even the easiest tasks and fail to grasp the simplest concepts. Being a genius must be like that, only everyday. Everyone is an idiot compared to them. They’re living Idiocracy.”

    So in other words how the left side of my brain feels about the right side.

  18. A mutually enjoyable relationship with a woman means she puts out, does as I request, follows my leadership and doesn’t shit test to often.

    That’s hard enough to come by

    Expecting more then that is setting yourself up for failure

  19. @earl: Hehe

    @Ton: Depends on what you’re looking for I guess. For a few months that would be sufficient, but for something longer I think it would get rather tiring dealing with an incompetent, no?

  20. I’d make a few concessions for Eastern European women who are educated, manage to function at a higher level intellectually, yet who still seem to retain their femininity. All of this points to what the values of the society are.

    It wasn’t all that long ago when you had American women who knew a thing or two about the arts, music, history, etc. without being brazen and confrontational.

  21. Deep Strength

    As Dr Illusion has stated, those with high IQ and psychopathy (although extending to the dark triad as well) where they don’t really feel any of the approach anxiety or awkwardness typically have very good success with women.

    My husband is fairly high IQ and has a lot of dark triad personality traits that he has really tried to tone down. But basically, he thinks girls are cute but kind of dumb, which is why he has never felt nervous about approaching them and which is probably why he had an easy time generating female interest. He literally does not understand what the guys on my blog are talking about. He can’t seem to understand why anyone would be nervous or awkward around a girl, and at first he thought guys were just making it up to be whiny.

    High intelligence differences make it hard for people to connect. At 30 IQ points difference it becomes very difficult for true communication to occur. The intelligent person of 130 IQ is as far removed intellectually from the average person as the average person is from the mentally handicapped. If you’ve talked with the mentally impaired, you know a true relationship is difficult, because you have to constantly dumb down your speaking; the same goes for the exceptionally intelligent and the average person.

    Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And since there are so many more extreme high IQ males than females, I can see why it’s a problem. But if he’s going to get a girl only to end up bored to tears with her, one wonders if he should even bother. Or if he should give up on the romantic illusions of marriage and just marry for easy sexual access and to have children.

  22. Intelligence differences between men and women, or whites and blacks are a delusion. I have an IQ of 145. I meet intelligent people all the time, often with educational backgrounds that make success at IQ tests limited. EQ is a vital part of intelligence; think about socially important basics such as empathy. Intelligence is also manifested physically such as the link between dexterity and spatial awareness. If we widen our view of intelligence, it’s easy to see why some high IQ people lack the ability to engage socially and emotionally.

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