THAT'S MEN:If I'm like most men, I probably think I'm smarter than I really am so if I took an IQ test, it would contradict my fine opinion of myself, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
HOW INTELLIGENT would you say you are? I’m talking about intelligence as measured by IQ, a questionable measure in my view of the potential of a human being.
I have known people with very big IQs whom I wouldn’t put in charge of the cat. And I’ve known people with IQs below average who would have made a better fist of running the banks than the million dollar men who got us into the mess we’re in now.
By the way, if you’re bored by this topic already you should know that there’s a bit at the end of this article about chimpanzees, meat and sex, so read on.
It turns out that men tend to rate themselves having high IQs relative to how women rate themselves. In other words, the IQ ratings men give to themselves if you ask them to guess are higher than the IQ ratings women give to themselves.
A piece of research published in the British Journal of Psychology looked at how men and women rated their own IQ levels in 12 countries – not including Ireland, alas.
What was especially interesting to me was the finding that French men tend to give themselves a rating about 15 points higher than French women give themselves. That was the biggest gender gap of any country in the survey.
The French result surprised me because I have always seen French women as rather fearsome and self-assured to the point of arrogant. Consequently, I have looked on French men as having a cross to bear in their womenfolk.
Now it looks as though I’ve been getting it all wrong. French men are bursting with self-esteem while it turns out that the French female is a modest creature.
The second-largest difference was in Britain where the men gave themselves a rating about 10 points higher than the women gave themselves. Well, English women strike me as a pretty assertive bunch too so could this all mean that having assertive women around somehow boosts self-esteem in men?
Maybe women do this by letting us think we are more clever than we really are.
What, I wonder, would happen if we did such an exercise in Ireland? Would breakfast roll man (lately reduced to home-made jam sandwiches to save money) boost up his IQ like the English and the French? Would our latté ladies mark themselves down?
Let’s get our priorities right and devote some money out of the education budget to this vital topic.
The researchers measured only what people thought of their own IQ levels. They did not go on to do an IQ test to find out what the reality was. Just as well for the lads whose egos might have been deflated along with their scores.
I have never had an IQ test and I’m in no hurry to take one. If I’m like most men I probably think I’m smarter than I really am so if I took the test and if it contradicted my fine opinion of myself, I would be downcast and crestfallen.
But what about chimps and sex? The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig observed chimpanzees in the wild and found that female chimps had sex more often with male chimps who shared meat with them than they did with cheapskates who brought them nothing.
According to the researchers, this enabled the females to increase their intake of calories “without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting”.
I don’t know how highly female chimpanzees rate their own IQs but they’re certainly no fools.
“Similar studies on humans will determine if the direct nutritional benefits that women receive from hunters in foraging societies could also be driving the relationship between reproductive success and good hunting skills,” the researchers state.
And, no, there are no vacancies left on the research team.
On his Mind Blog, scientist Deric Bownds wonders if the chimpanzee meat-for-sex scandal might be the evolutionary origin of guys taking women out to dinner to impress them?
Female readers please note: that was Deric asking that question and not me. My IQ is way too high for speculation on such matters.
pomorain@ireland.com
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas