In another study that hits some hard answers home, it has been found that men are less likely to date women who are smarter than them. It is also not as simplistic as that.

The report also says that when asked, men usually claim to prefer smarter women but when it comes to actually meeting the woman, they are not very keen.

As reported by the New York Post , the study will be published in the November journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin . Researchers made 105 male participants imagine a scenario with a woman who had either outperformed or under performed them in a Math or an English course. They were then asked how desirable would that woman be as a romantic partner.

Source: Carman-Ainsworth

Results here showed that “men formed favorable impressions and showed greater interest in women who displayed more (versus less) intelligence than themselves.” In the second part of the study the same men were made to take a test. They were then told that they would be meeting women who outperformed or under performed them.

It is at the prospect of meeting a woman who outperformed them that the reluctance crept in. The study revealed that men “distanced themselves more from her, tended to rate her as less attractive, and showed less desire to exchange contact information or plan a date with her”.

Source: Her Campus

Another study published in Quarterly Journal of Economics said that “men do not value women’s intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own”. Ambition being the factor that turned men off.

What the study basically puts across is that the ideal woman a man desires must be intelligent – hypothetically. But when it comes to the actual scene, men showed less attraction and less desire to date a smarter woman.

Source: Shemazing

The study also put forth a word of caution saying that more research was required to establish this as a fact, saying one’s preference could be due to many personal factors.

This study also did not take into account men who are already in a relationship with a more intelligent woman.