Smarter people are less athletic

People in the two highest IQ categories (based on the 10 item Wordsum vocabulary test of the General Social Survey) report being less athletic.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		ATHLETIC
		1 a very good description	2 a good description or a fair description	3 not a very good decription or not a good description at all	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	1: 2 to 4	12.4 18	49.5 74	38.1 57	100.0 149
	2: 5 to 7	13.1 84	49.7 321	37.3 241	100.0 646
	3: 8	10.3 15	51.6 76	38.1 56	100.0 148
	4: 9	3.8 4	45.0 44	51.2 50	100.0 98
	5: 10	3.3 2	45.2 27	51.5 31	100.0 60
	COL TOTAL	11.3 124	49.2 542	39.5 435	100.0 1,101

It turns out the smart nerd/dumb jock stereotype has some truth to it!

I previously pointed out that smart people have less sex and unathletic men have less sex. Maybe part of the reason is that a larger percentage of intelligent men have unathletic bodies which turn off women?

I previously noted that the most intelligent men are more likely to have paid for sex. 9.2% of men (N=131) who said they are very athletic ever paid for sex, compared to 14.1% of the rest of the sample (N=754). This confirms my theory that men who are getting sex for free are less likely to pay a prostitute.

ENVIRONMENTAL THEORIES

(1) Unathletic people have more time to read so they develop better vocabularies.

(2) Smart people have other intellectual interests so they have less time for athletic activities.

GENETIC THEORIES

Jason Malloy left a comment in which he pointed me to an article by Satoshi Kanazawa arguing that smart people should be better looking because of cross-assortative mating, which is the tendency for desirable genetic characteristics to clump together in the upper class. (For example, a smart rich man attracts a pretty wife, so they have children who are both smarter and better looking than average.)

So based on Satoshi’s theory, intelligent people should be more athletic and not less athletic, because athleticism is a desirable trait. But this would only hold true if the genes controlling the two traits are independent of each other.

From the evidence in the chart above, I think it’s likely that there exist genes which simultaneously cause higher intelligence and lower athleticism. This demonstrates that during the course of evolution, mankind faced strong selection pressures in favor of higher intelligence, even to the detriment of other useful attributes.

Comments

[The Superfluous Man]

C'mon, quit being sloppy.
"mankind faced strong selection pressures in favor of higher intelligence, even to the detriment of other useful attributes."
Environments differ, selecting at varying proportions for each trait (if you are correct in asserting that they are mutually exclusive to some extent), so some peoples will be dull and agile and others smart and bumbling.

[superdestroyer]

I think that you could argue that the selection pressure was more for health and wealth than intelligence.

If you look at what most cultures thought was the ideal of female beauty in the past, it is very different from today since what was considered healthy (having body mass and wide hips) is very different than today.

[rob]

From looking at art and such, it seems that most cultures had an ideal of female beauty that wasn't that much heavier than playboy models.

Love of morbid obesity seems pretty rare.

[michael vassar]

An attractive appearance is not a useful trait. Rather, organisms are selected to consider an appearance that indicates the presence of useful traits to be attractive.

Likewise, the "environmental theories" you suggested *Are* genetic theories, specifically theories about genetic predispositions towards different classes of activity, with varying effect. Another example of this sort of error, in a form in which no-one would make it, is "small dogs eat less than mastiffs, which is why they weigh so much less". This is strictly true, as calories in - calories expended = calories of potential energy stored which sharply bounds weight, but in the reductio case the genetic predispositions to eat particular amounts are very strong, and violating them will not lead to equality but rather to poor health or death.

[Jason Malloy]

I also linked to a study in that comment showing that smarter people had less fluctuating asymmetry, which could possibly be a more important predictor of sexual opportunity than athletic cues (BMI, etc), since it is more "honest". (i.e. harder to conceal environmentally)

Interesting is that Kanazawa's theory has been contradicted by past research. (Thomas Bouchard has summarized this lit elsewhere b/c it has implications for twin studies) In reality there appears to be no relation whatever between intelligence and beauty. I think we can bring all these facts together by guessing that smart people are more attractive in some ways and less in others, so the outcome is a wash.

[Half Sigma]

Jason: "fluctuating asymmetry, which could possibly be a more important predictor of sexual opportunity than athletic cues (BMI, etc), since it is more 'honest'. (i.e. harder to conceal environmentally)"

Only modern man, using modern health equipment and methods, is able to make his body look different than his otherwise genetically predetermined look given his level of physical activity.

A century ago, a muscular look was seen as a sign of a lower class manual laborer job and was not even desirable.

That has changed today. Muscles are now like a peacock's feathers, a demonstration of fitness that a man can waste lots of time (and time equals resources) in the gym in order to be more attractive to women.

[Superdestroyer]

HS,

At the turn of the last century rich people were fatter than poor people and were pale. Women used to spend lots of time and effort trying not to tan since having a tan was a sign of being lower class (and still is in much of the world). At the Breakers Mansion in Rhode Island, the Vanderbilts kept a scales to see how much they could eat during a meal.

Before modern medicine came along being thin meant you probably were not going to survive your next bout of flu or GI infection.

Now to be extremely thing and tanned is a sign of wealth in women and being muscular and symmetric are seen as positive for men.

[spungen]

I've noticed that a disproportionate number of guys who bodybuild tend to be gay, and many of the rest are screwed up (extremely insecure, etc.). The guys who tend to be popular with women are *active*, which doesn't have to mean weightlifting at the gym.

I'm surprised that so far, no one has brought up the issue of worse sexual performance/lowered desire by men who are in bad condition, especially overweight. Most women are aware of this. Fitness is not just about useless "peacock's feathers" to attract the opposite (or same) sex. No one wants to be that chick who needs the paramedics to roll the dead naked fat guy off of her.

[spungen]

P.S., if it is true smarter men are less athletic, and that this is part of why they allegedly get less sex from women: How do we reconcile that with the tendency of poor people to be fatter (since the poor tend to have lower IQs)? I would think the most unattractive aspect of being out of shape is being overweight. Smarter men may be less athletic, but they should also be less overweight.

[michael vassar]

Spungen: One way to reconcile this is to think that you might be wrong about the most unattractive aspect of being out of shape being excess weight. Alternatively, remember the modest size of income IQ correlations. Finally, smarter men associate with smarter women. Might they have less sex? If so, any ideas about why?

[spungen]

Michael Vassar, I lack HS's skills with the GSS so I can't crunch the numbers only for women. So far HS has not focused on how smart women play into these theories of smart men seeking and not finding (or wanting less, or having to pay). I am still resisting all the contentions re smart people having less sex (including married couples) until I see it's not skewed somehow due to the smart people being older (for instance, smart people get married later).

It's been contended elsewhere that there are fewer high-IQ women than men (DK about WORDSUM scores). Assuming smart women do like having sex with smart men and vice-versa, this would leave some leftover smart men forced to compete with not-smart men.

If smart women do have less sex, perhaps it's linked to our culture more readily labeling smart females, rather than males, as unattractive and asexual. This could be a deserved label. Or, smart males could simply buy into it, choosing instead to compete for the not-smart women. I haven't seen evidence of the first, and only vague anecdotal evidence of the second.

[The Superfluous Man]

From the Economist: Women with bigger breasts and thinner waists conceive more easily.

"In the case of progesterone, both groups of narrow-waisted women had high hormone levels. In that of 17-b-oestrodiol, those with narrow waists and large breasts had elevated levels—and that level was particularly high at the time of ovulation. Indeed, it was so high that Dr Jasienska estimates such women are three times as likely as the others to become pregnant on any given occasion. In evolutionary terms that makes them very desirable mates indeed. "

From Grazyna Jasienska and her colleagues at Harvard University in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

[spungen]

Superfluous, that could help explain why exercise/lack thereof doesn't seem to affect women's sexual activity. Exercise doesn't change a woman's natural proportions.

Oddly, when I think of the really good female athletes I know, most of them are somewhat chunky. You'd think it would be the opposite.

[Peter]

I've noticed that a disproportionate number of guys who bodybuild tend to be gay, and many of the rest are screwed up (extremely insecure, etc.). The guys who tend to be popular with women are *active*, which doesn't have to mean weightlifting at the gym.

Gay men seem to be more into the "buff" or "ripped" look, in which a man with only moderate muscle development can end up looking quite muscular thanks to very low bodyfat. Achieving this look often this involves lifting only moderately heavy weights. Serious iron pumping with heavy weights doesn't seem to be an especially gay activity. If anything, the hard-core muscleheads seem to be toward the low end of that Wordsum spectrum, if you catch my drift.

[Jack]

Smart people less athletic? I would tend to disagree. I have a high IQ, I'm 28, and pretty athletic. One thing I don't see is a lot of very bright people who are very fat. Only about 3 to 4 percent of smarter people describe athetic as a very good description? Maybe we need to get our ass to the gym more often!

About the less sex for smart people, I don't think it's about smart people being less desirable. It could be about higher standards or the fact that there are many more average people to hook up with than there are smart people. And smart people tend to look for smart people. A bright guy like myself has to dumb it down when talking to most women, and if she's hot, then it's worth it, but otherwise, why bother? On the other hand, in college, it seemed like the brightest guys I knew were getting the most action. You need social skills too.

[AG]

Athletic men and smart men belong to `two different species', they occupy different positions in society, different sexual pattern, different life expectancy, married to different type of women. Bill Gate is one perfect example.

In civilization of long history with arranged marriage or domesticated mating, geeky smart men win. In wild African style mating, muscular dominant men win.

[michael vassar]

Jack; although I find it very a-priori surprising, the psychometric literature shows little if any g-loading for social skills, e.g. smarter people appearently don't have superior social skills, which is especially odd given that one might expect them to come from environments which would provide superior social skills. Physical skills often do seem to have significant g loading, however, implying that smarter men are more athletic, not less.