Why smart men make better husbands

Intelligence is one of the most important mental traits that have been studied by psychology. It has been shown that having a high level of IQ (the indicator of the level of intelligence) is related to having greater chances of enjoying a long life, with access to well-paying jobs, and in a good state of health health.

Now, what is the link between intelligence and love? Various investigations have set out to explore this fascinating relationship, and today we will see one that, specifically, focuses on analyzing the way the smartest men approach marriage.

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An advantageous trait in love

It makes sense that intelligence is something that allows us to adapt well to the environment., since by definition, this trait is the ability to find solutions to new problems. The opposite of solving a situation by resorting to routine and memorized actions through habit is intelligence.

However, it is also true that behind this famous concept there is a certain ambiguity. What, exactly, are the mental abilities that are working in a specific situation to achieve an objective? Is it the same intelligence that acts when solving a mental calculation operation as the one that intervenes when understanding a philosophy text? The answer is yes and no: intelligence is

a set of mental processes, and at each moment some are much more important than others.

Now, what does it mean to be intelligent in love relationships? In this case, it must be taken into account that currently gender roles continue to have a lot of influence. in the way in which most people behave in their relationships and in their marriages. Therefore, it is worth differentiating by sex. In this case we will focus on what happens to men, their marriages and their IQ level at through research conducted by a team of Finnish psychologists headed by Jaakko Aspara.

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Economy or affectivity?

It has long been known that smarter men are more likely to get married. However, this does not mean that intelligence is an element that improves the affective bond that unites these men with their partners; it could also be the result of a parallel effect of having a high IQ: higher income levels.

After all, if a man opts for better jobs because he is more intelligent, he will also have a greater capacity to be able to contribute resources to start a family (especially when, due to inequality, many women cannot contribute as much money to life in common).

So the researchers led by Aspara wanted to see if it was a greater capacity to affectively manage relationships, and not the family economy, which explains this greater success in marriage.

In addition, they wanted to see what kind of mental sub-abilities encompassed in the concept of intelligence make these men more successful in life with their partner. To conduct the study, Aspara took advantage of the vast amount of data the Finnish government collects: data on income, marital status, and IQ of all the men who inhabit the country (the latter data, as a result of the tests that men pass when they undergo military service mandatory).

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The results

As expected, smarter men tended to be more likely to get married and stay married 4 years later. This effect was maintained even when the influence of economic income was ruled out. In fact, although the economy was more important in predicting the chances of getting married, intelligence was more so when it came to predicting the duration of marriages.

And what mental abilities were most important to the health of the marriage? To find out, the researchers went from taking IQ into account, as a measure of general intelligence, to doing it with the scores on the parts of the tests that, taken separately, measure these specific abilities: logical reasoning, numerical reasoning, and verbal. verbal skills were clearly the ones that best explained the possibility of having long marriages.

The importance of communication in the couple

One explanation for this is that verbal skills allow for better communication in couple relationships in general and in marriage. This would be very enlightening, as it would mean that many of the couple conflicts are, in reality, a matter of communication errors. Of course, getting along better with language also makes it easier to seduce, which makes the start of a stable relationship more likely.

In short, if the most intelligent men make better husbands, it seems to be that it is no longer because of their ease of word, but because of his ease in connecting with his partners, letting them know his way of seeing things and his interests.

Bibliographic references:

• Aspara, J., Wittkowski, K., & Luo, X. (2018). Types of intelligence predict likelihood to get married and stay married: Large-scale empirical evidence for evolutionary theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 122, p. 1 - 6.