Can intelligence help predict how long a marriage will last?
A man’s verbal intelligence helps to predict a longer marriage, suggesting it is also happier, research finds.
Higher verbal IQ also predicts getting married earlier in the relationship.
Higher verbal intelligence is particularly attractive to younger women, the study found.
Perhaps in the long haul of a marriage it’s most important to have someone who can make good conversation.
Longer marriage
In fact, all aspects of intelligence helped to predict length of marriage, it was just verbal intelligence that stood out — maybe because it is easier to spot than numerical or logical intelligence.
Another important factor in the marital equation the researchers developed was the man’s car.
Men with newer and more expensive cars were also more likely to remain married for longer.
The psychologists used the car as a signal of the man’s social status.
In other words, it is really higher social status that is linked to a longer marriage.
The study’s authors write:
“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 conclude that:
“…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.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Aspara et al., 2018).
