Health and Science : A beautiful mind: Study finds good-looking men and women have higher IQs
As if looks weren’t enough, beautiful people are smarter than less attractive people, too, according to a study from researchers at the London School of Economics.
Physically attractive individuals are likely to be more intelligent than less physically attractive individuals, according to the article ‘Intelligence and physical attractiveness’ published in the January-February issue of the journal Intelligence.
On his blog post titled ‘Beautiful People Really ARE More Intelligent,’ lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa said intelligent males with a higher status are more likely to marry more beautiful women.
‘Given that both intelligence and physical attractiveness are highly heritable, there should be a positive correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness in the children’s generation,’ he told the New York Daily News in an article published Jan 16.
Kanazawa based his article on a National Child Development Study that judged the attractiveness and intelligence of all babies born during March 3-9, 1958, in Great Britain. The children were judged on attractiveness at ages 7, 11 and 16 in the study and given 11 different cognitive tests at the same ages to measure their intelligence levels.
Children were rated on attractiveness based on a list of five adjectives teachers used to describe the children, according to the study. Up to three of the following could be used: ‘attractive,’ ‘unattractive or not attractive,’ ‘looks underfed or undernourished,’ ‘abnormal feature’ and ‘scruffy or slovenly and dirty.’
The experiment revealed attractive children had an average IQ of 104.23, significantly higher than the unattractive children with an average IQ of 91.81. Kanazawa said in his article that this showed a reasonably strong correlation between attractiveness and intelligence.
‘I think that’s probably true,’ said Kial Croteau, a sophomore marketing and nutrition dual major. ‘I think I’m pretty intelligent, and I think people who are smarter will choose to go to the gym to exercise and keep healthy over staying at home watching TV.’
Anumeet Gulati, a graduate student in exercise science, said she agreed with Croteau.
‘So many people are pretty and intelligent,’ said Gulati. ‘If you’re blessed by God with beauty, it’s up to your intelligence to keep yourself beautiful and exercise. On the flip side, if you’re intelligent, you know how to look good.’
But Alejandro Garcia, a professor in the College of Human Ecology’s School of Social Work, said correlating physical attractiveness with intelligence is ‘hogwash.’
‘Beauty is subjective and based on ethnocentric biases. If, indeed, you use western criteria for judging beauty, you’ll think people with specific western features are beautiful,’ Garcia said. ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.’
Niall Harding, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said a girl is pretty if she is physically fit, has a pretty face and a striking personality, takes care of herself and carries herself well.
‘What’s beautiful to you depends on where you come from, what you’re brought up on and what you think is beautiful,’ he said. ‘Society sets the stage for what is beautiful, but every person makes that decision for his or herself.’
Published on January 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm
