Can your IQ predict a happy marriage?
Friday, November 3, 2023.
Can intelligence help predict how long a marriage will last?
A man’s verbal intelligence is predictive of a longer marriage. The researchers suggest that they may be happier, as well, but I can also attest to the existence of longer, unhappier marriages.
Higher verbal IQ also predicts getting married earlier in the relationship. Once again, confirming my personal experience as well as my work with my clients.
Higher verbal intelligence is particularly attractive to young female humans, but I’d be interested to appreciate the effective range of verbal skills.
I suspect that the researchers focused on the demonstrable display of garrulous banter, but I also believe a high verbal IQ can be revealed when what is said has precision, economy, and empathy.
In fact, although marriage longevity is found in all kinds of high intelligence, verbal intelligence stands out — maybe because it has a higher profile than numerical or logical intelligence.
Here is a fascinating minor finding from the same study. The researchers noticed something about the male study subjects and their vehicles. Men with newer and more expensive cars were also more likely to remain married for longer.
The researchers saw a luxury vehicle as a signal of the man’s social status. In other words, once again, it is an elevated social status that is linked to a longer, and perhaps happy marriage.
But this takes me to a critical noticing. While a luxury vehicle is a talisman of attainment, a high verbal IQ in an otherwise young and unremarkable man might also function as a similar emblem of worthiness. In other words, he just be worth betting on. Women see potential in men with high verbal intelligence.
The study’s authors describe high intelligence as a powerful lure:
“In parallel to the effect of a peacock’s mysterious tail on its mating success […] human intelligence has a direct positive impact on human mating prospects in terms of marriage.”
The authors summed it up bluntly:
“…verbal intelligence, i.e. the type of intelligence that is easier to observe, was found to especially predict the likelihood of getting married, while the harder-to-observe numerical and logical intelligence were also found to predict the likelihood to stay married, to an equal extent as verbal intelligence.”
IMHO, verbal intelligence has been culturally defined as incredibly sexy, while also being potentially annoying at the same time. Other types of intelligence may not have the same erotic push-pull, but the marriages, do indeed, last as long. Under the best conditions, a high verbal IQ defies boredom, and embraces novelty and new experiences.
RESEARCH:
Jaakko Aspara, Kristina Wittkowski, Xueming Luo, Types of intelligence predict likelihood to get married and stay married: Large-scale empirical evidence for evolutionary theory, Personality and Individual Differences,Volume 122, 2018, Pages 1-6, ISSN 0191-8869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.028.(Aspara et al., 2018).
