

Beautiful men, women have higher IQs - mikecane
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/01/16/2011-01-16_beautiful_men_women_have_high_iqs_too_study.html#ixzz1BOSV0FCc

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gjm11
Dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115403> (URL differs only in
that this one has a random-looking fragment ID appended; (1) isn't HN supposed
to check for that, and (2) why did you do that, mikecane?).

What I said there:

Actual article is at <http://personal.lse.ac.uk/KANAZAWA/pdfs/I2011.pdf>.

They used two populations with different measurements of attractiveness and of
intelligence, and analysed them separately.

In the first population they got results that suggest on the order of 11-14 IQ
points per standard deviation in attractiveness.

In the second, 2 IQ points per standard deviation.

The first population was of children in the UK. Their measure of
"attractiveness": the children were assessed at ages 7 and 11, by their
teachers, as one of "attractive", "unattractive", "underfed or
undernourished", "abnormal feature", and "scruffy or slovenly & dirty". I kid
you not. You may, if your own intelligence happens to be reasonable, be able
to think of one or two problems with assessing "attractiveness" in this way
when you're looking for correlations with intelligence.

(One more detail: attractiveness was treated as a binary variable in
Kanazawa's study, with a child being reckoned "attractive" if put into the
"attractive" category both at age 7 and at age 11. More than 60% of children
were reckoned "attractive" by this criterion. Draw your own conclusions.)

The second population was of US high school pupils. They were reassessed about
7-8 years later, at age 18-28. (How were any of them 28 at that point? I don't
know.)

The NY Daily News story says:

> The study indicated attractive men have IQs that are 13.6 points above the
> average, while beautiful women are 11.4 points higher than average.

which is simply rubbish: those figures are from the first population only (and
the second gives much, much weaker results), they concern children of age 7 or
11 and not "men" or "women", and they're really measuring all kinds of things
other than attractiveness.

~~~
mikecane
>>>why did you do that, mikecane?

It wasn't on purpose! I count on the filter here to save me from posting
things already up. The NYDN must take the blame here for giving me the URL
that it did.

~~~
sorbus
> The NYDN must take the blame here for giving me the URL that it did.

Nope, you get the blame for not editing the junk out of the URL; the filter
here isn't especially smart, and merely adding a # to the end of a URL makes
it think it's different. Know the limitations of the technology you use, and
change your behaviors appropriately (or change the technology).

EDIT: I see that at least five people disagree with me. My reasoning is mostly
related to the fact that, when I submit articles, I get the URLs from an RSS
reader, which invariably means that there's a huge amount of junk at the end.
So I edit it down to the smallest URL that works (sometimes stopping several
times to make sure that the URL still works), because that's the polite thing
to do (both to people opening the article and to the filter). Shifting the
blame for not doing so to the entity provide you with the URL isn't, in my
mind, the correct thing to do. Others may disagree with me.

~~~
mikecane
I've seen RSS-extracted URLs like that here. But this was not one of them. The
headline came up on a news site and I simply clicked through. I never expected
extraneous stuff in the URL because that's never happened before using the
news site. I usually get clean URLs.

------
john_horton
1) I'd take these findings with a big grain of salt:

[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/kana...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/kanazawa.pdf)

2) I'd be very cautious about interpreting causality, even if the results are
true. Beauty is influenced by environmental factors (diet, exercise, health
care etc.) that are correlated with parental and own-income. Some of these
same factors also influence intelligence. There's a decent chance this
research boils down to "being poor sucks."

~~~
mauriciob
I won't believe in those findings until I see a correlation of beauty/IQ and
family income.

I've never seen a person that grew in a rich family be downright ugly.

~~~
pygy_
Cross-breeding in European nobles can produce people that are, by birth, both
atrocious and rich.

Otherwise, you'right, for obvious evolutionary reasons.

------
maxklein
Is this not blazingly obvious? There is no such thing as inherent beauty in
the world - there is just the human perception of beauty. And we find other
humans beautiful, not for some random reason, but because they will make
better and fitter mates. That's what beauty in human beings is.

And being more intelligent is indeed a part of being better and fitter.

Beauty is a way for your body to broadcast its fitness. And there is no reason
to think that it would broadcast only physical fitness, and totally ignore any
form of mental fitness, even though it's mental fitness that has been
responsible for most societal advances in recent years, AND personal advances.

~~~
bad_user
Except beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I like women with nice boobs / ass and don't mind them having a couple of
pounds extra; but the media / teens today prefer anorexics. I also know a
couple of women that prefer skinny / waxed males (metrosexuals), although the
stereotype for attractive males has included for centuries muscles and a
reasonable amount of body hair.

~~~
Tarski
I agree with your first line.

I'm sceptical as to how scientific this study can be, when as you say "beauty
is in the eye of the beholder". A measure of beauty changes over time and from
culture to culture. I'm sure, if you selected a different data set of
beautiful people you could prove the exact opposite.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_if you selected a different data set of beautiful people you could prove the
exact opposite._

Sure, but if you _selected_ your data set, it wouldn't be the least bit valid.

------
trebor
The original intent of the IQ test, as stated by the inventor of it:

    
    
        Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual
        capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to
        know whether he is normal or retarded. ... We do not
        attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we
        leave unanswered the question of whether this
        retardation is curable, or even improveable. We shall
        limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard
        to his present mental state. 
     
        — Alfred Binet
     
        *Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon (1873-1961, French
        psychologist) 'New Methods for the Diagnosis of the
        Intellectual Level of Subnormals' (1905), in The
        Development of Intelligence in Children, trans.
        Elizabeth Kite (1916), 37.*
    

That attractive people are "more likely to be normal than abnormal" isn't a
huge surprise, and yet isn't hugely significant. Especially when those
attractive "intelligent" people do some very retarded things with their lives.

------
stonemetal
Is it just me or does that title not parse at all. It should be something like
"Beautiful men and women are more likely to have higher IQs"

~~~
petercooper
Yeah, though the unterminated list is a frequent pattern in headlines
(especially in newspapers or other very "journalisty" areas). Say, something
like: _"Ruby, Python, C All On The Up"_ I find it a bit archaic now - it has a
certain early 20th century air to it.

Two real examples:

"Apple, Microsoft Are Megabrand Kingpins in Social Radar Index" -
<http://adage.com/article?article_id=139386>

"Twitter, Facebook are victims of 'single, massively coordinated attack'" -
[http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/06/twitter-facebook-
victims-o...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/06/twitter-facebook-victims-of-
single-massively-coordinated-attack/)

~~~
stonemetal
Actually it looks like they wrote the title twice then dropped both copies in
the blender to come up with something unique. "Beautiful men, women are more
likely to have higher IQs" or "Beautiful men, women are smarter too" either of
those I might have misinterpreted but understood, but the resulting title
smoothie is just not coherent.

Now on about the actual topic. Could this be an instance of correlation and
not causation? Exercise is good for the brain. Exercise makes you look better.
Therefore people who exercise both look better and are smarter on average.

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TomOfTTB
Two thoughts popped into my head after reading this.

1\. Beautiful people tend to have more confidence. If you recall from grade
school there's an old rule about multiple choice tests which says "if you
don't know for sure go with your first instinct". People with an abundance of
confidence do this naturally while those without confidence will often talk
themselves out of the right answer.

2\. Beautiful people get more attention. For better or worse a beautiful
person probably drew the attention of their instructors since it's human
nature to be drawn to attractiveness. This means a more personalized education
which in turn should translate into a slightly higher IQ.

Given the difference recorded here is only between 5% and 6% I could see small
factors (like the ones listed above) being the cause of such a phenomenon

~~~
JoachimSchipper
There's also a link between IQ and diet, and, obviously, diet and beauty
(healthy people look better; eating too many Big Macs will make you fat, and
thereby less attractive to most.)

------
dansingerman
That's as may be, but (anecodatal unscientific opinion coming up) I think
there is a correlation between being attractive, and not being very
interesting; beautiful people don't usually have to try so hard in life, so
they may not develop the more interesting personality traits those who have to
try harder acquire)

I like to think that anyway. Makes the World seem fairer.

------
thrill
We're amazingly modest too.

------
CallMeV
Unfortunately, the title also infers the converse: that, by the standards set
by those conducting the experiment, ugly men and women have lower IQs.

This raises the question of what people call "beautiful," "attractive," "ugly"
and "unattractive" respectively: purely subjective measures which do not take
into account the fact that some of the wealthiest, most successful and
smartest people in the world look physically ugly, scrawny, geeky or otherwise
"unattractive" by the standards the experimenters seem to have set.

Consider Bill Gates, Gandhi, Einstein, Steve Buscemi, Mick Jagger and Donald
Trump. Each a genius in their respective fields, yet hardly the most perfect-
looking physical specimens.

Enough evidence exists of the existence of physically unattractive, socially
intelligent people with high IQs to provide sufficient data to refute the
argument above.

Those conducting the experiment simply appear to have begun with an assumption
and then selected only evidence which confirms the assumption, ignoring
counterindicative data.

I really would not take the findings of this experiment seriously without some
form of verification - for instance, a repetition of the experiment by another
team in another part of the US, perhaps repetition of the experiment with
other nationalities and so on.

------
grammaton
I'm surprised no one has pointed out how subjective the term "beauty" is. How,
exactly, did they measure this?

Or, is it just possible that smart really is sexy? :)

~~~
haploid
Here's an unpopular, but scientifically verified thought:

Beauty isn't all that subjective.

Things like waist/hip ratio( 0.7 for females, 0.95 for males ), facial
symmetry, skin smoothness, have all been subjects of bias-controlled studies
in which the overwhelming evidence is that human beings have biologically
predetermined ideas of attractiveness.

That's not to say there are not significant subjective aspects, but the
research is rather clear on at least some aspects.

------
bugsy
"Given that both intelligence and physical attractiveness are highly
heritable"

Larry Summers, and others, have gotten into trouble when he said there was a
genetic component to intellectual capability and interest.

I guess as long as the claim is very generic, our culture will let it slide.

------
tokenadult
Yet another news story for which it's good to point to Peter Norvig's article
on interpreting research findings.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

The finding in the submitted link needs a lot more definition and replication
to be credible.

For readers who are interested in IQ research, I've found a bibliography on
Wikipedia

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

that links to a lot of high-quality reliable secondary sources on the latest
issues in intelligence research.

------
Tycho
Well, surely if you accept the evolutionary premises that a) women seek men
who are successful

    
    
        b) men seek women who are beautiful
    
        c) intelligence leads to greater success
    
        d) intelligence is genetic/hereditary (to some extent)
    

then this is an inevitable outcome. That more physically beautiful people tend
to be more naturally intelligent, due to sexual selection / natural selection
/ evolution.

(I didn't come up with this myself, I read a psychology paper that pointed
this out some years ago. Can't find citation though)

------
phillco
I don't know why this is such a surprise. This was all explained in the first
chapter of Brave New World.

------
cafard
Anyone else find the publication odd?

------
smoyer
Looking for a cofounder ... please send photo?

------
ggordan
Isn't attraction relative?

~~~
byrneseyeview
No. There are differences of opinion, but if you show people a group of e.g.
8's on Hotornot, and a group of 2's on Hotornot, I doubt that anyone will have
trouble figuring out which is which.

------
zitstif
One other consideration: I recall a 20/20 special years ago that showed how
superficial society can be. They did a test where they had one 'unattractive'
person on the side of the road who had no gas and needed help. Needless to
say, they never received any help in comparison to the 'attractive' person who
was put in the same situation.

The point that I'm making is that, maybe the reason why 'attractive' people
may have a higher IQ, is that they are more likely to receive help from others
based solely on their appearance.

Another point I would like to add: Maybe 'attractive' people feel the need to
increase their intelligence, due to the stereotype that 'attractive' people
don't need to have intelligence and can just rely upon their looks to get them
through life.

~~~
byrneseyeview
You don't need to put 'attractive' in quotes, here. Attractiveness is a real
thing; assessments of beauty strongly correlate with one another. And you're
talking about an example where one group of people _literally attracted_ other
people. So there's no sense in which they weren't attractive.

IQ is pretty stable over a lifetime. It would be extraordinary for "help from
others" to have a long-term influence; only diet and head injuries seem to
affect IQ in a permanent way.

~~~
zitstif
I would need to put the term in quotes if I'm planning on using the term in an
unusual manner.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Quotation_mar...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Quotation_mark#Signaling_unusual_usage)

I put the term in single quotes due to the fact that 'attractive' can be an
ambiguous and subjective term.

I'm aware that 'Attractiveness is a real thing'.

