It seems that, for some, looks and personality really don’t matter.
Nearly one in ten people find intelligence to be the most attractive feature in a partner – a trait known as sapiosexuality.
This is according to a new study which also found men are just as likely as women to identify as sapiosexual, and an IQ of 120 was found to be the ideal level of intelligence.
A study has found that one in ten people could be sapiosexuals. George Clooney married international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney in 2014 and said ‘it’s good to surround yourself with anyone who is smarter than you’
Researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) looked at the romantic and sexual preferences of 383 people, aged between 18 and 35.
While most people showed no significant sexual inkling towards intelligence, a small group of people responded strongly to the trait.
The author of the study, Dr Gilles Gignac from the school of Psychological Science at UWA, believes this suggests sapiosexualism is a genuine sexual orientation that exists in a small subset of the population.
Dr Gignac said in the study: ‘The emergence of the popular culture notion of a sapiosexual, an individual who finds high levels of intelligence (IQ) the most sexually attractive characteristic in a person, suggests that a high IQ may be a genuinely sexually attractive trait, at least for some people.’
Participants were asked to rate, on a scale of one to five, how sexually arousing they found certain statements.
‘Listening to someone speak very intelligently arouses me sexually’ and ‘It would excite me sexually to have an intellectually stimulating conversation with a potential partner’ were two of the statements.
The term ‘sapiosexual’ has recently received widespread media attention and speculation as it grows in popularity.
There is now a dedicated dating app, called Sapio, which aims to help sapiosexuals meet one another.
The study also suggests that intelligence is important to most people, as it implies an improved ability to find work and a greater competence in other areas of life.
For the majority of the population, intelligence was the second most sought after ‘non-physical property’.
Eighteen year-old Modern Family star, Nolan Gould (left) has been a member of Mensa since he was four. He is pictured on the left with model girlfriend Hannah Glasby. Conan O’Brien, pictured here (right) with actress wife Liza, is a successful comedian and also has an IQ of 160
Kindness and understand was the most desirable, with ‘exciting’ and ‘easygoing’ coming in as the third and fourth most attractive personality traits.
Whilst just over eight per cent of people scored highly for sapiosexual traits, it turns out there is such a thing as too intelligent.
The study found that the ideal IQ was found to be 120 – that’s the 90th percentile of the population – but an IQ score of 135 or over was considered too much.
An average IQ score is around 100, with a score of 120 considered ‘above average’.
Mensa membership is restricted to the top two per cent of the population, with an IQ of over 140.
The research was published in the journal Intelligence.