As women in the U.S. are becoming more educated than men, earning more degrees than men, and landing the same jobs as their male counterparts, men think they want a girlfriend who’s smarter than them. After all, being around smart people makes you smarter! When looking for a relationship, many people dream of finding someone that will challenge their mindsets and help them think outside of the box.
But while this might be what men think they want, recent research finds that they change their minds when it comes to real life, the Cut reports. While men are turned on by the idea of a smarter woman, having one in front of them tends to make them less interested.
In a recent study published in November’s Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers from the University of Buffalo, California Lutheran University, and University of Texas at Austin looked at how men really felt about dating smart women. They looked at a group of 105 men placed in two different scenarios. First, researchers read the subjects a scenario in which a women did better or worse than the man in an English or math class. After hearing the scenario, most of the men said they would rather date the woman who did better than them, according to Complex. This would make you think that men are more romantically attracted to a woman who might be smarter than they are.
Not so fast. In the second scenario, men took an intelligence test, then met face to face with a women who they were told did better on the test. In this scenario, men were much less interested in the smarter woman and were less likely to wish to go on a second date. Researchers say that this means that although men think they like smart women, they are actually pretty turned off by them in real life—apparently because these super-smart women give men “feelings of diminshed masculinity,” Complex says.
Of course, this study was only 105 men, which is a very small sample size. But it does bear out what women have known for a long time—that men are fragile and easily threatened by smart, powerful ladies. If you ever date a guy who can’t handle your intelligence, say, “Boy, bye.” Nobody has time for that.