Does High IQ = Less Sex?

Is there a correlation between intelligence and sex drives? Are there any reasons why some of the most intelligent humans ever to live on this planet chose not to have sexual relations? 

Well, perhaps.

After some research, I was able to find a link between intelligence & sex drive. It’s actually more complicated than you might think. Let me explain.

Medical Daily states that “new research by Lovehoney, a sex toy retailer,” found a correlation between high sexual intelligence and high sexual libido.” However, this doesn’t mean that they are having more sex.

It is often the opposite.

Lauren F. Friedman explains in an article for Psychology Today why people with high intelligence are less likely to tap into their sexuality.

Friedman uses the 2011 National Survey of Family Growth to reveal that “men with college degrees” are half as likely as those with only a high-school education to have had four or more partner in the past year.

Friedman continues to explain, however, that the reasons behind this statistic are complex. Research on the topic is therefore shifted to younger subjects in order to find more information.

Carolyn Halpern, a UNC School of Public Health professor, says that “a high concentration of teenage virgins [were] on the top of intelligence scale.”

It’s important to remember that being a teenager virgin and dying as a virgin are two completely different things. Many people graduate high school virgins. They do this for many reasons other than intellect.

Some children are shy. Some children are anxious. Different priorities are different for some kids. Some kids just don’t like high school and are just plain awkward. It doesn’t matter what the reason, it can be a problem when teens start to associate sexual activity with intelligence.

It might be true that the smartest teens were the ones who had the most sex. But I wanted to see if there was a deeper connection.

It appears that intelligent people may have a link to their decision-making. Friedman points out that people who have “high executive function,” which refers to things such as general judgement and impulse control are known as “slow life-history strategy.”

The “life history theory” describes how people decide how many children they want and when to have them. Some people are naturally drawn to the idea that they can have offspring or engage in sexual encounters. Others are more interested in improving their skills.

This seems to be the compromise intelligent people make when they choose to concentrate on one aspect of themselves — whether that’s inventing like Tesla or mastering the laws of physics like Sir Isaac Newton.

Personally, I believe that famously intelligent people such as Cavendish, Newton, and Tesla were too busy with other aspects of life to worry about sex in the past.

They were not more intelligent simply because they didn’t have sex. Nor are they causally related. However, I think it’s possible to argue that less sex is better for highly intelligent people.

It is possible for the most intelligent person to find random acts of sexual activity boring or insignificant. They might be right in the grand scheme of things. If you’re working on new ways to generate electricity like Tesla, the idea that sex might seem trivial may be true.

It’s important to remember that higher IQs can also be strongly associated with social anxiety. While intelligent people might not have any trouble solving a “Good Will Hunting-sized” math equation on a chalkboard or in a bar, they may feel less comfortable around other people.