We can’t all be Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, but what we lack in looks we make up for in brains, right? Apparently not. Researchers in London have found that attractive people are smarter too, dammit.
This has to be some sort of joke, right? I’ve seen the best minds of my generation, and the faces attached to them aren’t winning any prizes. What gives?
Researchers at the London School of Economics studied 52,000 people from the United Kingdom and the United States, and their results were conclusive: Attractive men have IQs 13.6 points above average, while pretty women score 11.4 points higher.
“Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence,” said LSE lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa, in the latest issue of the journal Intelligence.
Why is this the case? The study theorises that intelligent men are more successful than men of lesser intelligent. Beautiful women are attracted to successful men. Therefore, by breeding with attractive women, these successful, intelligent men produce more attractive, more intelligent offspring.
Of course those are all broad generalizations. I’d like to think that women are more attracted to intelligent men in general, not just because of their successes. I’d rather not paint women with such a broad brush, and not just because it’s depressing to me as a homely smart guy.
At least Kanazawa keeps everyone grounded, letting us know that we shouldn’t use the results of this study as a basis to judge others.
“Our contention that beautiful people are more intelligent is purely scientific,” he said. “It is not a prescription for how to treat or judge others.”
That’s right, boys and girls. This is just cold, hard, scientific evidence. No need to treat people uglier than you as inferior just because science says they are.
What I’ve read about the study leaves many questions unanswered, the most important being how it was determined that the 52,000 people involved in the study were of above average attractiveness. It’s a value I feel is hard to quantify scientifically, as it differs with every person. Hell, someone found me attractive enough to want to marry me. That fact alone makes me want to toss these results out the window.
I’d check out the full article at ScienceDirect, but they want me to pay $US31.50 for it. I may be ugly, but I’m not any more stupid than science says I should be.
Beautiful men, women are more likely to be smarter with high IQs, too: study [NYDailyNews.com]
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