Beautiful people are smarter

[Rogue]

As reported by the NY Daily News and TIME magazine, a new scientific study has been released which finds beautiful people are more likely to be smarter than their aesthetically challenged rivals. The study led by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics found handsome men averaged 13.6 points higher and beautiful women average 11.4 points higher on IQ tests. Yes, true intelligence encompasses more than analytical skills (there's also emotional, social, linguistic, and creative intelligence), but nonetheless beautiful people are better equipped at intellectualisms than ugly ducklings.

The Daily News reported there were 50,000 participants. I pulled up the abstract of the paper, the contents are behind a paywall, but United Press International reports:

[the] longitudinal study tracked 17,419 British babies all born during one week in 1958. The study subjects were interviewed in 1965, in 1969, in 1974, in 1981, in 1991, in 1999 to 2000 and in 2004 to 2005. Several intelligence tests are taken. At ages 7 and 11, the teacher of each study subject is asked to describe the child's physical appearance.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health involves 20,745 U.S. students who were personally interviewed at home in 1994 to 1995, 1996 and 2001 to 2002. They were also given intelligence tests. The interviewer rated the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point ordinal scale.

The British sample has one of the best measures of general intelligence in all survey data, but a comparatively weak measure of physical attractiveness. In contrast, the American sample has a stronger measure of physical attractiveness, but a comparatively weak measure of general intelligence, Kanazawa says.

In other words, this was not some quickie Internet poll and general intelligence was evaluated. In searching for a possible explanation of the beautiful intelligence factor, I found a previous abstract by Satoshi Kanazawa from 2004:

Empirical studies demonstrate that individuals perceive physically attractive others to be more intelligent than physically unattractive others. While most researchers dismiss this perception as a “bias” or “stereotype,” we contend that individuals have this perception because beautiful people indeed are more intelligent. The conclusion that beautiful people are more intelligent follows from four assumptions. (1) Men who are more intelligent are more likely to attain higher status than men who are less intelligent. (2) Higher-status men are more likely to mate with more beautiful women than lower-status men. (3) Intelligence is heritable. (4) Beauty is heritable. If all four assumptions are empirically true, then the conclusion that beautiful people are more intelligent is logically true, making it a proven theorem. We present empirical evidence for each of the four assumptions. While we concentrate on the relationship between beauty and intelligence in this paper, our evolutionary psychological explanation can account for a correlation between physical attractiveness and any other heritable trait that helps men attain higher status (such as aggression and social skills).

 

[Bible_Belt]

beautiful people are more likely to be smarter


Ok, true, but that still does not mean that smart and beautiful are the same thing. Beautiful people might be a little smarter, but the smartest girls are by no means the most attractive. Twelve points above the median IQ is nothing that special. 112 is about the median IQ for graduates of 4-year colleges, versus 100 for the general population. I don't know what the median IQ of law school grads is, but I do know that almost all the girls in my law school were not especially that attractive.

 

[Rogue]

Yes, the difference is modest. It's not the difference between middle of the road intelligence and geniuses, but from middle of the road to bright. To illustrate how much 10 points can make, if we go the other direction on the curve, an IQ below 90 is dullness.

In terms of lawyer chicks, it may be that smart beautiful women are more drawn to aesthetically and sensory more rewarding fields like interior design, fashion, and entertainment. Other brainy fields like engineering and computer science very rarely have beautiful women.

There also appears to be an alpha effect of high intelligence on femininity; the higher the smarts, the more masculine the features.

David Quinn: Women may be intelligent, but they have no soul. By that I mean they have no connection at all with the highest wisdom. The idea of trying to comprehend the nature of Reality with their own minds would never occur to them. They have no appreciation of the concept of Ultimate Truth. It doesn’t excite them. They are totally dead in this regard. All the female intelligence and energy in the world cannot mask this fact. For all her prettiness and energy, woman is fundamentally unconscious and aimless.

[...]

Some of the factors which have led me to my current views on women include: (a) my understanding of Reality, which I know to be wholly beyond the grasp of women, (b) the sheer lack of female philosophers of any note in history, (d) the virtual lack of any female scientists and artists of any note in human history, and (d) the sheer lack of interest in philosophy by almost all women on the planet.

Martin Dudaniec: I did meet a woman once who I regard as living an elevated and spiritual/logical life, but that is one in a large number. Incidentally, none of her features were very feminine (face, figure, style of movement) and she was not very interested in pursuing sexual relationships. Nothing about her that I saw could be characterised as female in the general sense of the term. In my opinion, her ideas on issues were highly advanced and there was a lot to be learnt from her.

So the point is, I have absolutely nothing against someone happening to be of a different gender to me, because I take everyone as they are, on their own terms. Gender is certainly not always indicative of character, and to discriminate against someone on that basis alone is pathetic bigotry. The point is that the women who don’t fit the general mold aren’t very womanly in the first place - and they are extremely rare.

 

[vagrant]

I work in a hospital and while the nurses are hot and beautiful, the doctors are just too painful to look at. Strip clubs are also full of chicks made from heaven and most of them never finished highschool. Heck, I don't know anyone in today's politics, from governors to senators who I can personally say that are attractive.

Show me a handsome man or a beautiful woman and I will tell you that they never did sh!t for this world.

Firsr of all there are far far far far more ugly men and women in this world. Ugly people always use education as a weapon to compensate for what they are lacking. For what? For the most obvious reason. To attract a partner. This is all basic stuff. I don't know why I'm giving a sh!t about this.

 

[vagrant]

I work in a hospital and while the nurses are hot and beautiful, the doctors are just too painful to look at. Strip clubs are also full of chicks made from heaven and most of them never finished highschool. Heck, I don't know anyone in today's politics, from governors to senators who I can personally say that are attractive.

Show me a handsome man or a beautiful woman and I will tell you that they never did sh!t for this world.

Firsr of all there are far far far far more ugly men and women in this world. Ugly people always use education as a weapon to compensate for what they are lacking. For what? For the most obvious reason. To attract a partner. This is all basic stuff. I don't know why I'm giving a sh!t about this.

 

[Nygard]

In the software engineering major here, at Eafit (This is the university with the highest number of hot chicks), the men/woman ratio is 20/1.
However, in this major, there's one hot woman for every 6 or so. So the men/hot woman ratio is 120/1. However the 1st semester skews it, and the real ratio after 1st year is more like 50/1 ( therefore, 300/1).

This smells like bad science, really.Maybe they were testing emotional intelligence, which makes more sense.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Maybe smarter people are more beautiful? Because they know how?

It doesn't really say how they measured "beauty".

 

[ArcBound]

Breaking News: The same group of scientists responsible for this study, conducted another study revealing scientists on average have larger penises than the general population

 

[Rogue]

vagrant:
I work in a hospital and while the nurses are hot and beautiful, the doctors are just too painful to look at. Strip clubs are also full of chicks made from heaven and most of them never finished high school. Heck, I don't know anyone in today's politics, from governors to senators who I can personally say that are attractive.

The point being made was not formal education but the confluence of two forms of high social status. Most people resist the idea that humans inherently form social hierarchies of pecking orders. As much as people don't like the existence of a beauty hierarchy, even more so they doth protest much over the idea the intelligence hierarchy shares a bed with beauty. We can all think of individual exceptions to the rule but exceptions don't invalidate a rule.

Men do not care about a woman's occupation as a form of social status, we only care if she's hot (anything else is a nice perk). A cute brainy chick working as a barista in a Starbucks is more appealing than, say, a humdrum paramedic. Politicians are old, beyond their physical prime as they reach their occupational prime, explaining why Washington DC is the "Hollywood for ugly people." Same for girly doctors.

ArcBound:
Maybe smarter people are more beautiful? Because they know how? It doesn't really say how they measured "beauty".

"The interviewer rated the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point ordinal scale," I'm sure the details were explained in the full content of the paper. Not to get into a discussion of beauty, but beauty has both subjective and objective properties. The measuring stick of beauty is our own eyes, but the subjective variances between different individual tastes are eliminated by aggregate statistics.

 

[Warrior74]

LOL. SO! Who cares? Do you.

 

[Quiksilver]

Physical attractiveness =/= Genetic beauty

You can take a below average looking person and with the right grooming, dress sense, and 'work' make them have an attractive physical appearance.

I would make the connection of Higher Self-Esteem = More Physically Attractive.

Someone with a slightly higher intelligence may be more self-confident and have a higher self-esteem than a less intelligent individual. When you have a high self-esteem you are more likely to take care of yourself and make yourself look as best you can.

One should not discount the behavioral side of physical attractiveness, using not just strict genetic beauty, which I doubt this study was accounting for.

 

[ArcBound]

Hey Rogue I'm pretty sure you quoted me with saying what Alle Gory said

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

This would explain my stunning good looks AND my superior intellect.

 

[Rogue]

Hey Rogue I'm pretty sure you quoted me with saying what Alle Gory said

My bad. My brain has occasional farts.