Men want cleverer, more successful and taller wives- The Clooney Effect

It's called the Clooney effect!

The majority of men want to settle down with a woman who is cleverer than them after being inspired by George Clooney, a study has found.

Modern men want to follow the example of the actor, 53, who married his wife Amal, 37, a world renowned human rights lawyer, last September.

The research said that 87 per cent of males would be happy with a woman who is more intellectual than them and earns more money.

Nearly half actively seek out an ‘independent, career-driven woman’ as a potential life partner.

And some 58 per cent would even be happy with a woman who is ‘considerably taller’ than they are, the study found.

Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher said that the days of men wanting a dependent partner were over.

She said: ‘We’re shedding 10,000 years of our farming past and moving forward to the kind of relationships we had a millions years ago.

‘Then women were just as educated, just as economically competent.’

She added that the trend had been noticeable for the last few years but was ‘so dramatic now, it hit a tipping point’.

The researchers identified the phenomenon as 'The Clooney effect, but it seems to apply as much to Mrs Clooney as it does to Mr Clooney.

The couple were gently mocked at the Golden Globes for the fact that she is arguably more successful than he is.

Host Tina Fey said: ‘Amal is a human rights lawyer, who worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected for a three-person UN commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip.

‘So tonight her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.’

The Match.com study of 5,600 people was the largest such research ever carried out in the US.

It found that women are now the ‘picky sex’ and that men are more romantic than they are.

Men also fall in love faster and want to move in faster than women, the study showed. 

George and the London-based lawyer were first spotted together in October 2013, before embarking on a series of romantic getaways. They applied for a marriage license in August and were wed less than a year after first meeting.