A really smart woman discusses the pleasures and pitfalls of high IQ dating.
Many people equate high IQ with “high achieving”, but they are two distinct things. Women with an above-average intelligence (IQ range of 110-130) are likely to be professionals: lawyers, nurses, dentists, mid-level civil servants, journalists, managers, teachers, pharmacists, librarians, or the like. High IQ women (those with an IQ>130) will tend toward more creative or “typically masculine” pursuits: surgery, engineering, research science, politics, philosophy, authorship, mathematics, music, art, architecture, high-level civil service, military office, or entrepreneurship. A woman would normally have to have unusually high visual-spatial scores in order to reach 130, which is why men outnumber women in that range and in those occupations.
Which is why intelligent women are so much in demand. They are rare birds compared to the number of high IQ men.
I have checked out the comments too and the vast majority are excellent. Also the blog hostess Alte chimes in frequently in the comments.
Posted by Alte on May 27, 2011 at 8:41 am
As to Chris’ comment, I thought it was relevant because of his assumption that having an “advanced degree” means that the women are high-IQ, but the majority of advanced degree holders are not high IQ. This is proven with simple statistics — there are way more advanced degree holders (6% of the adult population) than people of high IQ (2% of the adult population).
Add in the fact that most (58%) of those advanced degree holders are women but women are in the minority among those with high IQ, and that many people of high IQ don’t have advanced degrees, and it is just more proof of the fact that there is little direct correlation between advanced degrees and IQ>130. In other words, although someone of high IQ is more likely to have an advanced degree than someone chosen randomly from the general population, most people with advanced degrees are not high IQ — even those with prestigious degrees (technical schools like MIT or CalTech being the exception, as they select candidates with high v-s abilities).
You have to remember that high IQ is associated with DOE (over-excitability), which makes standardized education (i.e. college) very difficult for many of them. The women are also more likely to have highly fluctuating hormone levels, heavy and painful periods, and children with behavioral problems. All of those things mean that high IQ women who marry often fall out of the high-achievement pool rather quickly, which is one reason why homemaking is so prevalent at the very top of the income scales.
I had that problem with college sort of. I found women. Woo hoo! And I found them more exciting than the school work. Not to worry. I worked my way up to aerospace engineer completely bypassing the whole college thing.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
7 responses to “A Date With A Brainiac”
Out of curiosity, what is your aerospace engineering specialty? Back in the day, I was hoping to be an aerospace engineer myself, until I found that calculus and physics were not my friends. I switched to music instead.
I’m nominally an EE specializing in power, control (thus the name of my blog), and communications (mostly for control). The speed of light is my constant companion.
When it comes to studying I had two big problems: school used to be too easy, I could get decent results without trying so I guess I never really learned how to work. Then I got to university and the demands got harder. And then I started to get real trouble from seasonal affective disorder.
End result: I have worked for nearly 20 years as a paper carrier, and my IQ is 136. I think I probably could have gotten my masters if I hadn’t had SAD. With better work habits I would probably have been able to get that masters before the SAD became too bad. I started to notice the problems with concentrating when I was in my very early twenties, but it took until my mid twenties before it got to the point where I just couldn’t study well enough during midwinter to pass exams. When I dropped out I could get decent grades only during early fall and very late spring.
And then came the early 90’s, work was suddenly very hard to find and I was without a degree – so I ended up with a work where I work during the very late nights and very early mornings, and sleep during the day… well, I finally got the right diagnosis about a decade ago, and it’s sort of in control now when I finally know how to deal with it. By the way, big doses of vitamin D do help. I also use a very strong lamp for about an hour after getting up. And I am almost functional even during the midwinter now.
Never had much luck with men, and I even used to be relatively good looking when I was younger – my main problem when it comes to looks was weight, but I was only mildly overweight before that SAD got bad (dress sizes used to fluctuate between 6 and 8 – now I’m a size 16 to 18). But if I had been slim I might well have been considered a stunner way back then. But I always had a damn hard time getting dates. Seemed to take only one long talk to scare most guys away… well, being a dork might not be related to my IQ, I suppose.
The post you link really rings true where it comes to the ability to get someone’s jokes. I never thought about that as an indicator of IQ, though. I would hate to think that humorless people are stupid. Dull, maybe….
Another problem for intelligent women is that they typically want to date men smarter than they are (intelligent men tend not to care as much about this — this is another of those things where men are programmed to seek fertility while women generally seek status and a dominant partner) as well as higher-income, taller, stronger, etc.
My own very intelligent wife found this quite challenging in her dating travails, and tragically ended up stuck with me.
As to Chris’ comment, I thought it was relevant because of his assumption that having an “advanced degree” means that the women are high-IQ, but the majority of advanced degree holders are not high IQ. This is proven with simple statistics — there are way more advanced degree holders (6% of the adult population) than people of high IQ (2% of the adult population).
Perhaps the best example between the lack of correlation between high IQ and advanced degrees would be Master’s degrees in Education. The possession of a pulse and a heartbeat are usually sufficient criteria to pass Education courses.
Those intending to pursue graduate degrees in Education tend to have lower GRE scores than other intended fields.
The liberal meme that “all the smart people are for Obama” does not fly when looking at exit polls. Voters whose most advanced degree was a Bachelor’s tended to split about 50-50 between McCain and Obama.
That voters with Master’s degrees or better went for Obama about 58-42, which would appear to support the liberal meme that “all the smart people are for Obama.”
The fly in the ointment is that about 25-30% of Master’s degrees are in Education, a field full of dullards.
Any way you can point me at info on high IQ women having heavy periods/etc.