The Link Between Real Mensans and Real Housewives

Source: Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash, used with permission

This is Part 3 in a four-part series. To read from the start of the series, see Part 1.

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at the appeal that The Real Housewives of Orange County (RHOC) holds for high-IQ individuals such as Mensans, who score in the world’s top 98th percentile for IQ. In Part I, we explored how the show does this by engaging our love for cognitive challenge and complex problem-solving, and in Part II, we explored how it gives us the novelty we crave, as well as content for intellectual exploration and pondering life’s big questions. Here, we’ll look at more reasons the intellectually advanced often enjoy the show.

Narrative Complexity and Novelty

Even though my bright daughter is only 15, she has picked up the bad habit I modeled for her, watching television and movies, whispering, “That character is going to forget her keys—otherwise the camera wouldn’t have lingered on them this long.” “Those two are obviously going to fall in love, otherwise they wouldn’t have made that character so good-looking.” “This silly misunderstanding arose only so we can see those two come together later in a dramatic run through the rain.” Gifted minds tend to have superior pattern recognition, so common narrative devices are easy to spot and predict. After a lifetime of consuming entertainment on screens, bright minds are tired of the same formulas. RHOC, conversely, can surprise us with twists we never saw coming. When the show's Vicki Gunvalson lied about her boyfriend having cancer, who could have imagined someone as successful as her would choose that route? Or when Braunwyn Windham-Burke came out as lesbian (not bisexual) yet remained married to her husband, living with him and their seven children as she always had, we couldn’t have seen that coming, either (even soap opera writers would deem that too far a stretch to pen). Watching Real Housewives, the minds that are quicker than 98 percent of the population actually get to enjoy the jaw-dropping joy of utter surprise that is so often denied us.

Brainiacs also crave narratives with the nuanced feelings, values, layered stories, ambiguity, and moral complexity that make us rethink assumptions (Anglim and colleagues, 2022; Smillie and colleagues, 2021). Simple good guys versus bad guys entertainment just doesn’t cut it for us; we prefer more complex “gray characters” who don’t fit neatly within a simple good-versus-evil dichotomy, giving us multifaceted moral layers to dissect and analyze. Living human beings are, by nature, more gray than traditional fictional characters, and the housewives embody this complexity. Perhaps we can credit the franchise's success to such abstruseness, noting that we relate to and cheer on the characters we hate at the outset.

The show's narrative complexity rewards the discerning eye, weaving intricate storylines that rival the multi-layered intrigues of Balzac's La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). High-IQ viewers appreciate the contradictions, as our OC heroes perform “reality” while courting fame. For example, some of the housewives—many of them successful professionals and not “housewives” at all in the traditional sense—embody the contradictions of late capitalism: women who wield influence through wealth and visibility, yet remain ensnared in patriarchal norms, trying to fit their bodies and their ambitions into the mold of the ideal wife. But we also get to follow many a phoenix-like rise from the ashes of such relationships, with cast members finding success and happiness outside the confines of traditional gender roles, echoing a common women’s liberation theme of our time. For example, we watched Shannon Beador grow stronger in the aftermath of men who mistreated her, and—despite financial woes, humiliation in the social media arena, tearful heartbreaks, accusations of alcoholism, and a DUI—we get to view her reinvention as a case study in resilience and invincibility, echoing broader trends in gender dynamics and modern feminism.

Dark humor and sophisticated satire often land better with higher-IQ audiences, as the comprehension and appreciation of dark comedy are positively associated with both verbal and nonverbal intelligence (and with education), consistent with the higher cognitive load of processing incongruities (such as taboos) (Willinger and colleagues, 2017). One of Bravo’s favorite satirical go-to scenes seems to be those where the ladies attend a classy function, in a classy place, in classy clothes, and promptly dissolve into profanity-dense screaming matches. Editing heightens the absurdity, flashing back and forth between the glitzy perfection and the trashy chaos. The social critique is punctuated by the shocked faces of bystanders (waiters and waitresses fearfully hesitating to replate when wine glasses are being thrown, or other visitors unable to hear their fellow diners over the shrieks emanating from the housewives’ opulent table). The production offers astute minds the chance to dissect class and behavior—a kind of car-crash voyeurism where we see the ultra-wealthy unravel despite their financial privilege, complicated by our empathy for the very real and valid fears driving them. I find myself relating to the housewives who strive to steer their friends toward resolution amid the clamor, puzzling out how I would approach this difficult riddle.

That watching-from-a-distance quality is especially appealing to some. All of us with an IQ over 130 have overexcitabilities that can make us quirky, lots of us experienced asynchronous growth as children that opened us up to increased bullying, and many of us are twice-exceptional, which means we are neurodivergent in two ways: 1) gifted and 2) with a neurodiverse challenge (like dyslexia, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and so on). In fact, anywhere between 2.5 percent to 36 percent of the intellectually gifted population is twice exceptional (Cheek and colleagues, 2023; Rankin, 2016; Wormald and Vialle, 2011); the percentage is hard to pin down because giftedness can mask learning challenges, and learning challenges can mask giftedness (Rankin, 2016). While lacking social skills is a stereotype of autism spectrum disorder, it is common for gifted individuals (whether on the autism spectrum or not) to feel uncomfortable in social settings and prefer, instead, to study human behavior from a safe distance. While not every genius fits this profile (many Mensans are the life of the party), Real Housewives provides the chance for the socially uncomfortable among us to learn about social norms and responses in a variety of contexts from the safety of one's couch.

Read Part 4 here.