Not claiming the *answers* are clear at all, but this seems a more straightforward, closer-to-what’s-actually-going-on way to talk about the issues. “Want to want to want to…” is poetic but each of those “wants” has a different meaning and there’s a massive parsing problem. Plus reminiscent of those awful “I Want You to Want Me” type song lyrics.

When you say ‘wanting to want’ you are really stating that you wish your reasoning made the final decisions not your emotions. Maybe a higher order ‘wanting to want to want’ is morality or metaethics or whatever you want to call it–the choosing of reason over instinct.

However, brilliant women gain no additional attractiveness points as they pass me in the intelligence stakes.

In summary I regard intelligence as a major contributing factor to attractiveness up to including my own level after which I am indifferent to it.

What are other peoples subjective impressions on this score?

But why wouldn’t we want intelligence? Isn’t it the most valuable human property?

Or is it more important to recall that sadly evolution has given men and women somewhat different interests in mating? Monkey society is of course ranked – let’s consider female rank and male rank, leaving aside kin rankings for the moment. These 2 seem to interact in an interesting way. The higher my ranking among females, the higher also it seems my rank with males. Boy monkeys look to see who is most attractive, and they appear to consider not only looks, health & fertility, but also social power.

This is perhaps the origin of the incentive women have to spend so much time looking good to other women in ways that often puzzle men. And alas, intelligence is not high on the list of what women like in other women, generally; other women generally care more about relationship building skills than smarts.

Boy monkeys do not care about fashion/clothes/small talk per se; but they care that girl monkeys display them as an indication of their own high female rank. This is of course because they know in monkey world offspring inherit social rank – monkey society is unfortunately “aristocratic” in this way.

So female mating strategies must include achieving high female rank to cement their attractiveness to men even as they must out-compete each member of their female cohort to stand out to men in the first place.

As many OB commenters lament, most women do not seem to seek smarts – why not? For to do so, by Robin’s own analysis, would enhance their social status and thus mating power.

Is there a hierarchy of trait appreciation, on which intelligence is relatively low? Or is it that women know that men look to their female social rank to discern their attractiveness?

In mating, Darwin observed that in many species females were more discriminating; he termed this “female choice.” And we see this point of view often here on OB – “if only women weren’t so picky!” then the strange shortage of sex would not vex everyone so.

We know you feel, Robin, that this is under-analyzed, because it considered silly and taken for granted. But we should note also that male choice is also possible, and in fact is usually seen in humans.

Male choice generally cuts against overt displays of female intelligence, as has been somewhat confirmed in studies on sexual competition – acting dumb is a more effective strategy for women than men. It’s maybe why many girls, who have equal math skills, generally stop taking math – a cultural intelligence marker – in junior high or early high school.

Perhaps I must bite an unpleasant bullet: do women have little incentive to display high
intelligence when we have it or to really value it in others? Men don’t want to see too much of it on an intersexual level, and women don’t value it themselves on an intrasexual level. Displaying much intelligence just doesn’t do anything for women in competing for boy monkeys or in getting the female rank that helps them compete for men?

Could this be one reason why we have such a difference between we wish we wanted and what we really want despite the obvious advantages of choosing intelligence?

Jerome Said:

“We also publically laud those characteristics over which people feel able to exert some degree of control. People gain public respect for exhibiting those qualities that produce positive outcomes for others. … Praising beauty by contrast is unlikely to increase the supply of beautiful people.”

This is an excellent point. Though, I might quibble with the last assertion. Certainly people can’t control their genes (at least, conventionally this is the case) and therefore beauty is not influenced by praise. But many aspects of physical beauty are closely linked to behavior, an idea the Greeks themselves were keen to. And I don’t necessarily man cosmetics or breast augmentation surgery. It’s a revelation to realize how much control you have over your own attractiveness…

Posture is a huge one… over time, we have a huge amount of say in our posture… even scoliosis can be corrected over time. Spending time outdoors and exercising in general influences not only body-fitness but makes for a prettier face (less sallowness and baggy computer-monitor eyes). Proper diet, basic hygeine, clean clothes, etc. etc. The fact that many view these as shallow improvements does not make it so. My morality holds that it is a form of human excellence (though certainly not the only, nor the highest) to be beautiful.

When considering aggregated preferences that don’t include ancient desires like sex, food, etc., there is no conflict. We can modify the individual preferences when they are combined so that that the whole is harmonious and the conscious mind is satisfied. When something like sex or food is involved, we are powerless to alter the desire, and so conflict is inevitable. We think about the aggregate and consciously assign greater priority to a harmonious aggregation of the individual preferences, and we know that some individual hardwired preferences (sexual attraction) should be modified in the larger context (e.g., dating or marriage), but there is no way to make that happen (at least in the short term).

Freud talked about this sort of conflict as one of the chief sources of human unhappiness in Civilization and its Discontents. He talked about it more in terms of conflict between individual primitive desires and the restrictions that are placed upon us living in modern society, but I think the underlying insights are relevant. The conflict is inevitable, and there is very little we can do about it, so psychological conflict and suffering are an inevitable part of life, as the Buddhists would say.