Why smart men date less intelligent women

Women usually want their perfect man to be smart and brainy, but the same can't be said in the opposite case -- in fact, smart men seem to want to date less intelligent women, but why?

Jennifer Wright at TheGloss.com recently asked CNBC financial reporter John Carney, and nine other "smart men," why so many studies indicate that men prefer dating women who are less intelligent than they are.
Carney believes the reason is today's "knowledge economy."

Because they aren't given much importance as far as staying in school or working is considered, less intelligent women tend to have more leisure time.

So they seek out a smart partner as a means of "economic advancement," reports The Atlantic Wire.
"Dumb chicks have both greater opportunities and greater incentives to try harder to date smart men than smart women do," he said.

He added that successful men date less successful women not because they want "women to be dumb" but rather because they want "someone who prioritizes their life in a way that's compatible with how you prioritize yours."

Is this a trend then?

CNBCs Nicole Lapin thinks smart women have the same incentives as less intelligent women to date smart men.
"First, if there is indeed more competition for [smart men] ... we all know that we ''Type A'' working women love a good fight. Second, smart women don't shut their brains off on the weekend," she said.

Lapin also dismissed the idea that men are interested in less intelligent women.

"You guys think you want that, until you're bored to tears and melt her plastic bits. Until you need to take her to a State dinner and she can't smile her way out of it. Until you lose your Wall Street job and she still doesn't understand what you do enough to help you through it, as a partner, an equal, much less stand by a poor guy," she said.

Carney retorted, saying, If smart women indeed only want to marry smart men and if smart men "are willing to date outside of their IQ cohort," then it follows that smart men are more open-minded than smart women, and that less intelligent men are at a disadvantage when it comes to marriage.

In the "knowledge economy," Carney says, intelligent people, unlike less intelligent people, have a "call option" on their relationships in that they can end them to focus on their careers. In a rational dating world, he continues, smart men discount smart women because of their call options.

"Whatever the answer is," Carney concludes, "it is creating an unmet arbitrage opportunity--an overabundance of intelligent, single women and an over-abundance of less intelligent, single men."