Wonder what’s scarier and undesirable for a man than a monster who’s trying to underestimate or overcome their manhood? Science answered the question: An intelligent woman.

Apparently, science announced something we suspected since always: Men are terrified to death of an intelligent woman. However, that’s not everything. Studies also discovered that when a woman is more successful than a man or earns more money, his sense of masculinity is reduced. Allegedly, a recent study lead by Lora E. Park, Paul W. Eastwick, and Ariana F. Young, found that although men prefer to date smarter women when it comes to reality, they avoid them.

Aside from this, when a woman fulfills an assignment better than them, they feel like less of a man because of it. Even 86% of men answered that they don’t have a problem with dating someone more intelligent than them. However, experiments have proven that their statements were untrue and opposite of their real opinion when it comes to dating a smarter woman.

In order to achieve relevant results and compare them, the study was divided into six similar versions. The first part of the study was consist of 105 male students who were given a supposed scenario to read. The scenario included a woman who would have a higher score on a test than them. After, they were asked to answer how lovey-dovey the woman seemed.

As for the second version, 151 male students were given an intelligence test. After, they were asked if they had an interest in meeting the woman who had solved the test either with higher or lower grade than them. At the end of the day, both studies concluded that imagining to date a woman with a higher IQ seems as an easy task for men to do, and the chances they meet her would go out with her are big. However, although an intelligent woman is imaginable in theory, men find it hard to realize it in practice.

Other two parts of the study included male participants who were supposed to have contact with a female who solved an IQ  test with higher or lower score than the males did. After they took the test, sitting next to the woman who was actually associated with the study, and heard the results, the participants were supposed to sit against the woman and talk about their impression. Specifically, they needed to answer, are they attracted to each other.

According to the results of these versions, men who have a female partner with a higher score on the test than theirs wanted to keep a distance from the woman when moving the chairs across from her. Aside from this, they also found the woman who scored higher than them as less beautiful than the participants who collaborated with a woman who scored lower than them.

As for the final two versions of the study, it was concluded that men were less interested in going out with a smarter woman when they had an eye contact with them. Anyway, in the fifth version, when the woman was physically distant, for example, in another room, men found less important the question whether they would date a woman who showed a higher IQ on the intelligence test.

The conclusions of the examinations were summed up like this: ‘Six studies discovered that men showed greater attraction toward psychologically distant targets who displayed more or less intelligence than they did on the test. However, if the targets are near, men showed less attraction against the woman who scored the intelligence test better than them.’

Reference: Your Tango

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