Women say there's no such thing as 'too good looking' – but it doesn't do for men to be too clever

It's the age-old question - whether looks or brains are more important. 

And now one study has concluded that while it's not possible for them to be too physically attractive, men can be too clever for their own good. 

Figures from a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology show that women want men to be smart - but not too smart. 

The data shows that a man who is more intelligent than 90 per cent of the population is the most desirable, beating out a rival who is more intelligent than 99 per cent of others. 

A sample of 214 young adults were asked to rate the desirability of hypothetical partners based on different levels of kindness, intelligence, physical attractiveness and how easygoing they were. 

The study asked them how attracted they would be in a potential partners who were kinder than 1 per cent of the population, and then asked the same with the level set at 10 per cent, 25 per cent, 50 per cent, 75 per cent, 90 per cent and 99 per cent.

At each level women and men were asked to rate the desirability of a hypothetical partner on a scale from one to six, where one is extremely undesirable and six is extremely desirable. 

Respondents of both genders said their ideal partner was near the top of the scale on all attributes. 

But women's interest peaked at men who were smarter than 90 per cent of others, with an average rating of 4.7 and then fell again for the very smartest men, to below 4.5. 

The same pattern was seen when women were asked how easygoing they would like a male partner to be. 

Men who were more easygoing than 90 per cent of others scored an average of around 4.3, while the most easygoing of all scored 4. 

Asked about looks, women rated the most physically attractive men as equally desirable to those who were more attractive than 90 per cent of others, and the same pattern was seen for kindness. 

The paper's author Gilles Gignac, of the University of Western Australia said: "It is well established that several mate characteristics are valued highly in a prospective partner. 

"But the sort of continuous measurement used in our research is making it clear that several of these characteristics are associated with a threshold effect – in other words, you can have too much of a good thing."

The academics argue that stereotypes around extremely smart people could be off-putting. 

"It may be speculated that the typical person believes that very elevated levels of IQ are associated with negative characteristics e.g. social competence difficulties," the paper says. 

"If elevated IQ levels are, in fact, associated with negative biological and/or psycho-social characteristics, then it is possible that, as a group, the participants in this investigation were influenced by such considerations."

The authors added that highly intelligent men might not be getting a fair deal. 

Based on one recent study, it said, Mensa members were shown to be several times more likely to be diagnosed with a variety of conditions including obsessive–compulsive disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and asthma.

However, other recent studies "have tended to find very intellectually abled people to be well-adjusted and healthy".