I was pleased to discover that a group of social scientists have come up with the formula for a perfect wife. According to a study published in the European Journal of Operational Research, a man should marry a woman who’s five years younger than him, from the same cultural background and 27 per cent more intelligent.
It’s that last characteristic that jumps out. I can understand why it’s essential that a wife should be more intelligent -- someone has to know how to operate the DVD player, after all -- but why 27 per cent? Is the idea that if the gap was any smaller, husbands wouldn’t be able to tolerate their wives and if the gap was any bigger wives wouldn’t be able to tolerate their husbands? Or is it that women think they’re 13.5 per cent less intelligent than they really are, whereas men over-estimate their intelligence by 13.5 per cent, so a wife needs to be exactly 27 per cent more intelligent than her husband in order for the two of them to imagine that they’re intellectual equals? (I realize that the degree of deflation for women would have to be less than 13.5 per cent and the degree of inflation for men greater than 13.5 per cent, but I haven’t got a high enough IQ to work out the correct percentages. Perhaps I should ask my wife.) (To read more, click here.)
