Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 9 | September 2018 | Seite 7

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campusreview.com.au
Too smart for love
Super-intelligent people more likely
to be lovelorn, study says.
S
ingle Mensa society members may reconsider bragging
about it. A new University of Western Australia study has
shown that although people prioritise intelligence in a mate,
there is such a thing as being too intelligent.
The same logic applied to easygoingness, another generally
lauded trait.
For kindness and attractiveness, however, ‘too much of a good
thing’ didn’t apply.
Lead researcher, UWA senior lecturer Gilles Gignac, surveyed
nearly 400 young adults in Perth about the four primary appealing
Call for more
funding freedom
Current funding model stifles innovation
and research, peak body says.
T
he Innovative Research Universities (IRU) group wants
universities to have more say in how they spend their
funding dollars. It says universities only get to fully
determine how a fifth of their endowment is spent.
Raising the issue at the House of Representatives’ Inquiry into
Funding Australia’s Research, IRU executive director Conor King
noted that in 2016, for instance, universities received $5.3 billion,
yet only $1.5 billion of this could be spent without restriction.
The government reserved most of the remainder for specific
research streams.
characteristics in a romantic partner: intelligence, easygoingness,
kindness and physical attractiveness.
He asked them how attracted they would be to a person who
was, in varying increments, more intelligent/kind/easygoing/
attractive than average.
From the 90th to the 99th percentile, intelligence and
easygoingness dropped sharply, while the other traits remained
stable from the 90th percentile onward.
Conjecturing about the reasons for this, he said: “Previously
published research suggests that elevated levels of intelligence
may incite feelings of insecurity in some people, which may
reduce desirability.
“Correspondingly, exceptional easygoingness may be viewed as
an indication of a lack of confidence or ambition.”
Explaining the kindness and attractiveness results, Gignac said
being exceptional in either of these domains appears irrelevant to
one’s romantic prospects.
DEEPER INTELLIGENCE
The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, also
analysed why some people prized intelligence more than
others. It found that a person’s (real or perceived) intelligence had
no bearing on how attractive they found intelligence in another.
This surprised the researchers, as it is known that people
tend to choose partners with similar intelligence levels to
themselves.
For attraction, then, the saying ‘trust your gut’ may have deeper
resonance.  ■
This matters, the IRU contends, because ‘closed’ (directed)
funding hinders the ability of universities to coordinate research,
and also limits their capacity for innovation.
How does it stymie these pursuits? Bradley Smith, manager of
research strategy and special projects at James Cook University (an
IRU member), says it’s mostly an issue of timing.
“The more discretionary funding is reduced as a share (and
diverted to prop up systemically underfunded direct grants), the
harder it is to sustain strategic program investment,” Smith said. This
also applies to infrastructure funding.
“It is university-wide funding [not directed grants] that keeps
academic researchers paid and allows them to support the whole
research theme,” an IRU spokesperson added. An example of this is
JCU’s aquaculture facility. Although it receives government funding,
to initially attract that, as well as to keep it operational, the university
has to invest significant sums of its own.
Also, because there are “gaps in grants”, smooth career pathways
for new researchers are not ensured. Hence, they have neither the
capacity nor the security to undertake ‘riskier’ projects.
Lastly, grant conferrals, in general, simply discourage risk.
The IRU claims closed funding is an ever-growing issue. Between
2006 and 2016, the proportion of open funding decreased by
6 per cent.
“The IRU argues that block funding should be the next target for
a real increase, to give universities a greater say over which research
issues are supported and which are not,” King said.
“Universities are best placed to know which research is most
likely to have the biggest impact while delivering the best value
for money.”  ■
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