Thread by @datepsych

Very interesting finding here. These are the charts from this paper.

AHPVT is the The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test as a measure of intelligence.

https://twitter.com/ChrisWillx/status/1632380450319523841

Here is a chart of other factors in this paper that predicted having sex.

Physical attractiveness interestingly doesn't predict it, nor did sport participation.

Maybe we can rule out the teen Chad hypothesis.

A few of the larger associations in this:

Teens who had sex were also less likely to live to age 35.

Had lower GPAs and were less likely to enter college.

Scored higher in impulsivity.

And were less likely to have both parents in the home.

Also - teens who had mothers who approved of teen sex were more likely to have sex.

And teens who said pregnancy was less likely to be embarrassing were more likely to have had sex.

"Even very early behaviors, such as holding hands and kissing, are inversely related to PPVT scores, suggesting that higher intelligence is associated with a generalized delay in the onset of all partnered sexual activities."

"The peak crime rate occurs in the IQ range from 75 to 90; this is approxiately the same range in which the probability of having sex is highest in the AddHealth sample."

"More intelligent adolescents do evidence a stronger attachment to conventional values and institutions, and higher expectations about goal attainment."

Factors "associated with sexual postponement and appears to play a role in the protective effect of intelligence."

A lot of people in comments have interpreted this as women picking low IQ men, but it looks more like average IQ teens are having sex with each other.

While higher IQ men and women abstain.

The other variables that do predict early sex (impulsivity, delinquency, drug use, incomplete families) are the so-called "fast life" behaviors.

Stereotypes of people who get pregnant (or get someone pregnant) as a teen come to mind.

This is why high intelligence is called "protective" in this paper. On balance, we usually don't think of teens having sex as a good thing.

It's kind of like the "gang members have more sex" observation.

There are reasons for why this is so.

You probably wouldn't want to emulate them.

You probably wouldn't want to have sex with a lot of the people they choose as partners either.

The implications of the highest IQ people not being the most fertile is worth thinking about. At the same time, I'm not sure I'd call average people pairing up with each other "dysgenic" as I have seen in some comments.

It's probably tempting for people who are very smart (or who think they are), yet struggle with relationships/sex, to think women are making a mistake by picking a midwit over them.

At the same time, if "has high IQ" is all someone has going for them then I'm not sure why they would be more desirable than an average wife guy.

"Who has sex with the most people" is also not a great metric for relationship outcomes or attractiveness.

And I'd expect a lot of these 130IQ late bloomers to end up in the adult category of highly educated people who are more likely to be married and less likely to divorce.