One reason we might guess that smarter people in high school, or in more challenging colleges or majors, delay their sexual debuts is because they are delaying gratification in expectation of future reward. Sexual behavior (or at least the investment needed to procure a partner or sustain one) may compete with time/resources required for other goals, and intelligent people may have more demanding goals. James Watson even hinted at this in a recent Esquire magazine piece:
If I had been married earlier in life, I wouldn't have seen the double helix. I would have been taking care of the kids on Saturday. On the other hand, I was lonely a lot of the time.
While sex may not be marriage, it may still require effort that intelligent people prefer to invest elsewhere. This would fit Aldus Huxley's alleged definition of an intellectual as a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.
Another idea is that smarter people are more risk averse, and delaying these activities is a byproduct of enhanced concerns about unwanted pregnancy and disease. While not avoiding sexual behaviors, per se, they are just less likely to seek it out or consent to it for fear of the potential consequences.
Another idea is that smarter people are more religious or more ethically conservative, and are trying harder to wait for marriage to have sex.
Another idea, consistent with popular media portrayals of geeks and nerds (males at least), is that intelligent people actually want to have sex, but are simply less likely or unable to obtain willing partners because they are disproportionately viewed as unattractive or undesirable as partners.
Another idea is that intelligent people have lower general sex drives. This shouldn't be confused with the first theory, where their sex drives would be normal and they have greater self-restraint.
Not only do intelligent people have a delayed onset of sexual behavior, Half Sigma found that they also have a lower number of premarital sex partners throughout adulthood (18-39). While this is consistent with the above theory that high IQ people are more religious and conservative, this is, of course, not true. Religiousness correlates with lower IQ, and as HS shows in the same post, intelligent people were also more likely to say that premarital sex was not immoral. (Leaving those who did think it was immoral to participate in the bulk of it!) Most of the other theories are still consistent with this finding though.
Perhaps more revealing, HS, also showed that intelligence correlates with less sex within marriage for the same age range. While still consistent with pregnancy fears and competing interests, lower sex drive seems like a better fit. In fact another revealing finding from the Counterpoint survey was that while 95% of US men and 70% of women masturbate, this number is only 68% of men and 20% of women at MIT!
Also the idea that more intelligent people are too busy for the opposite sex not just in 7th grade to college, but throughout adulthood and for their own spouse, seems unrealistic. In fact the GSS also shows (PDF) that smarter people spend more time socializing with their friends, indicating their hours aren't spent as uniquely isolated and narrowly channeled as the theory would require.
But lower sex drive and anxiety about sex's consequences can't be the whole story either. Half Sigma also showed that the smartest men in the GSS (approx. IQ >120) were also more likely to visit a prostitute. (Hardly indicative of cautiousness) This may suggest intelligent men are less able to find willing sex partners. Are smart men less attractive to women? Perhaps in some ways. For instance HS found that smart men were less likely to be athletic, and this paper shows, unathletic men and women have fewer sex partners. Athletic men, with more willing sexual partners are also less likely to visit a prostitute. Athletic activity gives men more masculine bodies, which are more attractive to women. A more masculine physique correlates with (PDF) an increased number of sex partners.
So intelligent people have lower libidos and less masculine physiques. What hormone is responsible for both sex drive and masculine builds? That's right: testosterone.
And two new papers suggest that testosterone may depress IQ. One team found that salivary testosterone levels were lower for preadolescent boys with IQs above 130 and below 70. (the same two groups most likely to be virgins in adolescence)
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