“Not another Intelligence!” We don’t blame you if this is how you reacted when you saw the title. There seems to be intelligence for everything — general intelligence (eg. IQ), emotional intelligence, social intelligence, spiritual intelligence, executive intelligence, ad infinitum.
Some types of intelligence, such as general intelligence, is supported by a wealth of peer-reviewed articles, others linguistic inventions that capture the popular eye but aren’t grounded in reality. We believe that mating intelligence falls into the former category. Sufficient findings from evolutionary psychologists have culminated on human sexuality and intimate relationships to reach an important threshold. This threshold marks the need for the field of intelligence to pay more attention to the work of evolutionary psychologists, for evolutionary psychologists to pay more attention to the work of intelligence researchers, and for everyone else (including you, the reader!) to pay attention to both.
The scientific importance of mating
Why should intelligence researchers care about human mating? To the general reader who isn’t locked up in the ivory tower, the answer to this is obvious. Nonetheless, we’ll provide two answers.
1. From an evolutionary point of view, the domain of human mating is arguably the single most important behavioral domain of human functioning. Every single one of you reading this comes from a long line of mating-successful individuals. Well done.
2. Mating success is important for most humans. Research on happiness shows that the quality of intimate relationships (especially sexual relationships) is a major predictor of overall life satisfaction — often more important than education, income, or occupational status! Although intelligence researchers have gleaned important insights into human intelligence by looking at people’s performance at solving abstract puzzles, we suggest that they may have neglected how intelligence operates in a domain that has a lot of importance.
We hope that talk of a sexy brain is a refreshing topic in a society that is constantly bombarded with images and products relating to the more superficial aspects of sexual attraction, such as body type of facial structure. Yes, humans have deeper qualities as well, and they are immensely attractive.
For more on the science behind romantic relationships, read Mating Intelligence Unleashed, by Glenn Geher, PhD and Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD.
Next: Take the mating intelligence test!
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