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Love is not only blind — it could also be dumb, according to science.
People with higher levels of intelligence are more likely to remain single for longer, according to a dumbfounding study out of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
“Our results demonstrate that both socio-demographic factors, such as education, and psychological characteristics, such as current well–being, help predict who will enter into a romantic relationship and who won’t,” co–lead author Michael Krämer said regarding the study, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
This comes amid a nationwide relationship recession. Over the past 50 years, the proportion of Americans aged 25-34 who are living without a spouse or partner has doubled to 50% for men and 41% for women, according to the Economist.
To determine what factors potentially heightened the risk of flying solo for longer, the researchers recruited more than 17,000 people from the UK and Germany.
They selected sixteen-year-olds with no prior relationship experience, and then surveyed them until age 29, asking them questions that captured their characteristics and demographic factors.
They found some surprising risk factors for long-term singledom, including being a young male adult with “lower well-being, higher education and living alone or with parents.”
Meanwhile, the University of Zurich study suggested that living with friends or flatmates potentially increased the chances of landing a romantic partner, the Daily Mail reported.
The authors didn’t reveal why smarter people are more likely to fly solo, but it contrasts with a prior study from 2018, which found that the more intelligent the person, the more likely they are to get and stay married.
For the next experiment, the team probed how life satisfaction, loneliness and levels of depression developed among the unattached versus participants with a paramour.
They found that people who stayed single for longer experienced declines in life satisfaction and increasing levels of loneliness.
“Well-being deficits became more pronounced in the later 20s,” coinciding with increased levels of depression, said the researchers, who noted that the phenomenon appeared to affect both men and women equally.
However, young people’s well-being improved substantially upon entering their first relationship.
In accordance, Dr. Krämer concluded that “remaining single for a prolonged period in young adulthood is associated with moderate risks to well–being.”
In general, the longer one remained single, the more pronounced the negative effects with the study suggesting that entering one’s first relationship becomes more difficult the deeper singletons get into their 20s.
