"But more and more research reveals that though the thought of a smart woman is appealing to men..."

"... a real, live smart woman standing in front of them is actually a turnoff."

Abstractions are more appealing than particularities. It's easy to think of "smart" as a positive characteristic, but any given smart person is likely to have used that smartness to arrive at other characteristics that are going to complicate the good. But the study in question never confronts the men with women who actually are smart, so my theory wasn't tested. The men were just told that the women had done better on a test, so the study only looked at the abstraction and what effect it had on the minds of men when they were not confronted with meeting a woman and when they were. In real life, you meet people and you don't know how smart they are. You become aware as you get to know the person as an individual, with all their characteristics, and if they are smart, you only figure that out as you're also seeing what they do with their intelligence, whether they show off, condescend, and seek advantage or whether they're modest, ethical, and interested in other people.