A study in 2000 found that Smart Teens Don’t Have Sex (that’s what they named the report). OK, that’s all well and good that smarter high school students are putting off sex until they are old enough to handle the consequences. But was that the case? Or were smarter teens just not attractive enough, or don’t have the social skills to get any?
A later study tried to pinpoint whether the I.Q. effect lasts past adolescence. Some of the data they studied came from a 2001 survey of students at Wellesley and MIT. This sentence startled me.
...only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex.
There are very few teenagers in graduate school. At MIT. By then, it’s not a matter of waiting til you are an adult. Do we know anyone up in Massachusetts? Maybe we could sponsor a mixer or something...
They also took a look at the percentage of virgins by college major.
If your daughter attended Wellesly in 2001 and majored in studio art, you may now have too much information. Otherwise, it gives a new meaning to the classic campus opening lines, Where are you from? What’s your major? “Hmm, math, uh, see ya later.” (or conversely) “Studio art? How YOU doin’?”
The study gets more depressing. Those with higher I.Q.s also had less sex within marriage, and were less likely to masturbate. What is going on here? The article ends with some speculation about testosterone levels.
But correlation is not causation. And correlation, as well as causation, can work either way. Is it possible that lack of sex makes you smarter? If that’s the case, I should be able to CLEP myself a PhD by now!
Read a far more detailed and intelligent analysis at Gene Expression. If you just want some laughs, see my post on Bad Sex at Miss Cellania.
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