Here is the impact of a man’s intelligence on his married life
What if a stable relationship depended – in part – on a man’s level of intelligence? This question may seem surprising to you, and yet it is the question that researchers at Oakland University, in the United States, asked themselves.
In a study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, we learn that there would be a notable link between the general intelligence of men and better relational investment and to less significant aversive behaviors in a relationship. Concretely, the more intelligent men are, the less problematic their life as a couple would be. The result of the study goes even further: “general intelligence has been associated with lower divorce rates and higher chances of getting married.”
“Smart men have greater overall investment in the relationship”
To obtain this finding, researchers studied data from 202 men (aged 18 to 65) in heterosexual couples for at least six months. To assess general intelligence, researchers used theInternational Cognitive Ability Resource in 16 points, which includes tasks from four subscales. These tasks measured participants’ problem-solving and abstract reasoning abilities.
At the same time, participants completed questionnaires about marital behaviors, such as frequency of partner-directed insults, sexual coercion, and partner retention tactics. They also completed scales measuring: jealousy, psychopathy, erectile dysfunction, and investment in the relationship, including satisfaction and commitment.
Does the state of couple life depend on the intelligence of the partners?
And the result of the study came out: “researchers found that higher general intelligence was significantly associated with more positive behaviors and a reduction in negative behaviors in romantic relationships. Higher intelligence was associated with lower levels of partner-directed insults, sexual coercion, psychopathy, and use of partner retention strategies that inflict costs.”
We also learn that more intelligent men had declared “greater overall investment in the relationship.” For the moment, the same study has not been carried out on women, in order to compare behaviors, but the observation remains interesting nonetheless. To meditate…