Is physical attractiveness positively correlated with intelligence?

[Windt]

This is a study done by Satoshi Kanazawa, which states that more
attractive people are on average smarter. This might also explain why
better looking people earn more money. Now, I know everyone here might
agree on how to define intelligence(gf as measured by IQ tests) but
how can we exactly measure beauty? Anyway I'd like to read your
thoughts on this.

"Beautiful people have higher intelligence than ugly people,
especially if they are men.

In a previous post, I show, using an American sample from the National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, that physically more
attractive people are more intelligent. As I explain in a subsequent
post, the association between physical attractiveness and intelligence
may be due to one of two reasons. Genetic quality may be a common
cause for both (such that genetically healthier people are
simultaneously more beautiful and more intelligent). Alternatively,
the association may result from a cross-trait assortative mating,
where more intelligent and higher status men of greater resources
marry more beautiful women. Because both intelligence and physical
attractiveness are highly heritable, their children will be
simultaneously more beautiful and more intelligent. Regardless of the
reason for the association, the new evidence suggests that the
association between physical attractiveness and general intelligence
may be much stronger than we previously thought."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201012/beautiful-people-really-are-more-intelligent

[Pontus Granström]

I think they measure symmetry. But also the golden means and so on. This might be linked to stability during development.  Of course it's easy to become ugly by not sleeping, eating poor and not exercising.

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[dogb...@yahoo.com]

If that is so, why is paris hilton so dumb?

> >http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201...

[Pontus Granström]

I hear she scores rather high on IQ-tests. Jessica Simpson is claimed to have a 150 IQ. Which is seriously doubt.

[Pontus Granström]

This brief research note aims to estimate the magnitude of the association between general
intelligence and physical attractiveness with large nationally representative samples from two
nations. In the United Kingdom, attractive children are more intelligent by 12.4 IQ points
(r = .381), whereas in the United States, the correlation between intelligence and physical
attractiveness is somewhat smaller (r = .126). The association between intelligence and
physical attractiveness is stronger among men than among women in both nations. The
association remains significant net of a large number of control variables for social class, body
size, and health

[Windt]

Too bad dual n back can't do anything about improving facial symmetry
haha.

On Aug 19, 1:44 am, Pontus Granström <lepon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This brief research note aims to estimate the magnitude of the association
> between general
> intelligence and physical attractiveness with large nationally
> representative samples from two
> nations. In the United Kingdom, attractive children are more intelligent by
> 12.4 IQ points

> (r = .381),* whereas in the United States, the correlation between
> intelligence and physical
> attractiveness is somewhat smaller* (r = .126). The association between

> intelligence and
> physical attractiveness is stronger among men than among women in both
> nations. The
> association remains significant net of a large number of control variables
> for social class, body
> size, and health
>

> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Pontus Granström <lepon...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
> > I hear she scores rather high on IQ-tests. Jessica Simpson is claimed to
> > have a 150 IQ. Which is seriously doubt.
>

> >>http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training?hl=en.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Pontus Granström]

It's a statistical connection. A person suggesting that if you mate an intelligent person with a beautiful it must result in a beautiful and intelligent person, obviously has no understanding of genetics.

[cyberslaw]

To answer that question you need only ask another one "Do i know any
people that are smart and ugly?"
As it happens i know quite a few.I think ugly and pretty people both
have their reasons to try and become
smarter in adolescence.

> > > >>http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training?hl=en.-Hide quoted text

[nathan...@yahoo.com]

If IQ correlates with attractiveness then Hawking and Einstein would
have IQ's of -160.

> > >>http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training?hl=en.-Hide quoted text -

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

Most of the stupidest people I've ever encountered - and I do say MOST - have been above average in looks.  The ridiculous idea that the best and brightest come from couplings of so-called 'attractive' duos because of superior genetics is flat disprovable in daily life by the glaring example of dumb-shallow-but-tasty-morsel types hitching a ride up the socioeconomic ladder merely by virtue of their looks and not their brains.

I see it around me constantly.

Not only is the blather and sleight of hand used in the article to mimic scientific writing obvious - but shows a glaring lack of applied intelligence in the effort.

It's really too bad junk like that makes it to the point of being viewed as science.  It's horse hockey trying to pass itself off as science.  It's not actually junk, but JOKE science.

"...Beauty is NOT in the eye of the beholder" !?!  Get the &%@! outta here.  That misses the entire point of Psychology.

That was a waste of the 45 seconds it took to read it.

T. Lavon Lawrence
Author, NEURO-SCULPTING!© Brain Fitness System
Mental Fitness Trainer & Training Author
tra...@neuro-sculpting.com
www.neuro-sculpting.com

[Gwern Branwen]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 1:55 AM, nathan...@yahoo.com

<nathan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> If IQ correlates with attractiveness then Hawking and Einstein would
have IQ's of -160.

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:57 AM, T. Lavon Lawrence
<dynamicmen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of the stupidest people I've ever encountered - and I do say MOST -
> have been above average in looks.  The ridiculous idea that the best and
> brightest come from couplings of so-called 'attractive' duos because of
> superior genetics is flat disprovable in daily life by the glaring example
> of dumb-shallow-but-tasty-morsel types hitching a ride up the socioeconomic
> ladder merely by virtue of their looks and not their brains.

If you guys cannot make an intelligent comment, please have the
courtesy to remain silent.

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

You'll not be giving out commands for me to remain silent merely because you don't like the deliver method, accusing me or anyone else here of an inability to make intelligent commentary.  

My points are valid, and I stand by what I said.

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[Gwern Branwen]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 10:45 AM, T. Lavon Lawrence
<dynamicmen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You'll not be giving out commands for me to remain silent merely because you
> don't like the deliver method, accusing me or anyone else here of an
> inability to make intelligent commentary.
> My points are valid, and I stand by what I said.

No, your points are not valid, any more than a 'your mom' is valid;
such a reaction is not even wrong. Someone offers a weak statistical
correlation in the .1 to .3 range and your point is... you remember
meeting stupid attractive people?

Give me a break. Even at face value, discounting confabulation, lying,
confirmation bias, and anything else one might want to consider, your
'point' is not refuting of the study. In fact, no anecdote will be
unless the claimed correlation is -1 or 1! Statistics isn't the weak
syllogism where a universal claim is refuted by a single
counter-example. A statistical argument is not met with anecdotes, it
is met with statistics.

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

Gwern, You didn't demonstrate anything resembling 'intelligent commentary' by telling us to remain silent merely because our manner of expressing doesn't fit your egotistic concepts of how everyone else should operate .

The world doesn't lend itself to being like you.

If you wanted to debate, you should have debated.

Nothing else you say on the subject matters once you attempt to shut people down.

Again, you don't have command over how others express themselves, so if you don't like it, take your own advice.

gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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[marleydelupa]

Whoa guys take it easy. Attractiveness is just another aspect of our
humanity. It doesn't necessarily mean it equates to intelligence. It's
said that a healthy person is more attractive, and with healthiness
may come with greater intelligence, but it depends on your upbringing.
Plus a good personality always beats looks in the long run :)

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

The great news is that all the top scientists, economists, engineers, philosophers, and captains of industry on the planet have side jobs as supermodels.

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[Gwern Branwen]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 11:46 AM, T. Lavon Lawrence
<dynamicmen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gwern, You didn't demonstrate anything resembling 'intelligent commentary'
> by telling us to remain silent merely because our manner of expressing
> doesn't fit your egotistic concepts of how everyone else should operate .
> The world doesn't lend itself to being like you.
> If you wanted to debate, you should have debated.

I can't debate. You have offered nothing that is not innumerate and
irrelevant; you are 'not even wrong', to quote Pauli.

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 12:09 PM, T. Lavon Lawrence
<dynamicmen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The great news is that all the top scientists, economists, engineers,
> philosophers, and captains of industry on the planet have side jobs as
> supermodels.

And I rest whatever case I have. Because obviously that is exactly
what Kanazawa is claiming...

(Sad thing is, there is serious criticism of Kanazawa's work, and
instead we're doing this stupid line of thought 'do anecdotes say
anything about weak correlational results'.)

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

Give and you shall receive.

Don't tell people in this community to shut up who haven't done a thing in the world to wrong you personally.

I liked Nathaniel's comment - it was FUNNY, and it has a POINT that anybody with intelligence can perceive.  The same with my own comments.

People in this community have the right to banter back and forth however unseemly it might impress itself upon your personal standards, and nobody here is required to initiate their own scientific study merely to express themselves and their opinion.

You are certainly welcome to express your own insights into the subject itself to inspire the kind of dialog you want to see, but there's nobody here who's going to hush up just cuz you command it.

gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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[Clinton Reed]

You take away Paris' makeup and she's fugly (to me)

[KD Jones]

There is another simple possibility, which might occur to anyone who's
spent any serious time observing mixed groups of children, and mixed
groips of children and adults. In the case of kids with adults, the
adults give more "face time" to more attractive children, respond to
them more often, tend to have more positive approach to thrir
interactions with them, and remember / consider / repeat / respond to
a greater degree / with greater frequency. Even adults aware of this
bias who attempt to counter it seem to have problems doing it... it's
difficult not to stray (even just a little) toward the "shining
child." This is likely to extend to the classroom. And a similar
(but often more severe) dynamic occurs between chidren.

How that kind of variation would NOT affect development is beyond me.
Even at a very early age, adults will cluster (more or less given
their awareness of the nature of their actions) toward the most
attractive infant, and that infant will, as a result, be likely to get
just a little more adult interaction, with just a little more (at
least) variation in expression, tone, overall variety.

In terms of development, I kinda wonder how that WOULDN'T add up to a
statistical edge.

And I have to agree that in my experience and at high levels of
achievement (either in beauty / performance / display or
intelligence / academia / science where some have managed to avoid the
expected pronouncements of the statistical gods) this just flat
doesn't appear to hold, one way or the other.

> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201...

[StephenK]

I completely agree with this. Not only is this applicable to children,
but to adults as well. I remember watching a documentary that was made
in the 70's in which 2 groups of adults, one with blue eyes and the
other with brown eyes, were placed in the same room. Over the course
of an hour or two, the women heading the social experiment
deliberately fed the two groups false information, such as "Blue eyed
people over estimate their abilities, are arrogant, etc", and "Brown
eyed people are more humble and accepting of others." These sentiments
were fed to the two groups and eventually the two groups become openly
hostile to each other. They then subjected both groups to IQ tests,
and the blue eyed group (the group that was subjected to negative
feedback during the experiment) on average, dropped something like
10-15 IQ points.

They did this same experiment with children, and depending on whether
the experimenters decided to give positive or negative feedback to the
kids, they could deliberately manipulate their academic performance.
Will look to see if I can find the documentary online (I remember
watching it on some website last year).

[T. Lavon Lawrence]

Don't be rippin' on Paris - I'm still sore that she and I broke up.

Make-up, fancy clothes, lighting, and other sundry trickery wasn't part of the study.  

They argue that beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder, then proceed to use data based on subjective opinions asked of an uncontrolled segment of beholders.  Strangely, the 'children' were judged on their attractiveness by these beholders - but the beholders themselves were not vetted (neither versed in nor required to apply any "objective or quantifiable traits" standards of measure) as a basis for supposedly scientific assumptions, this coupled to a questionable argument that physical attraction is reliably quantifiable (the author literally denies the obvious relevance of subjectivity, bias, conditioning, shifting cultural, societal, and social standards, etc.)  Wow.

Did anybody check to see if any of the ugly kids blossomed into something pretty in their teen and adult years?  I've seen many a gruesome youngster turn out not half bad, and plenty of cute one's turn out butt ugly.

Hollywood should be full of geniuses, and we should turn our most vital research over to runway models.

[The.Fourth.Deviation.]

i've seen two different studies that claimed this. there is also a
study that links height to intelligence, and finally, waist to hip
ratio, in women, to intelligence.

In conclusion, the human body has several ways of expressing fitness
to reproduce. It seems that individuals that are more attractive also
have higher intellectual function on average.
This only makes sense, because physical attractiveness is an
expression of fertility, and therefore a proxy for overall
reproductive fitness. It would only make sense that these individuals
would also be internally fit, i.e. in terms of brain function as well.
As a closing thought, obviously some here have met a seemingly
unintelligent attractive person. But, based on their attractiveness,
we might guess that if they had actually been given the chance to
improve their intelligence, through music training, language, travel,
etc, they might have more potential for intelligence than a person who
is less attractive.

On Aug 19, 7:18 pm, "T. Lavon Lawrence"

<dynamicmentalfitn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't be rippin' on Paris - I'm still sore that she and I broke up.
>
> Make-up, fancy clothes, lighting, and other sundry trickery wasn't part of
> the study.
>
> They argue that beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder, then proceed to use
> data based on subjective opinions asked of an uncontrolled segment of
> beholders.  Strangely, the 'children' were judged on their attractiveness by
> these beholders - but the beholders themselves were not vetted (neither
> versed in nor required to apply any "objective or quantifiable traits"
> standards of measure) as a basis for supposedly scientific assumptions, this
> coupled to a questionable argument that physical attraction is reliably

> quantifiable (the author literally *denies* the obvious relevance of

> subjectivity, bias, conditioning, shifting cultural, societal, and social
> standards, etc.)  Wow.
>
> Did anybody check to see if any of the ugly kids blossomed into something
> pretty in their teen and adult years?  I've seen many a gruesome youngster
> turn out not half bad, and plenty of cute one's turn out butt ugly.
>
> Hollywood should be full of geniuses, and we should turn our most vital
> research over to runway models.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 4:18 PM, Clinton Reed <clintr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You take away Paris' makeup and she's fugly (to me)
>

> trai...@neuro-sculpting.comwww.neuro-sculpting.com

[J.]

A lot of attractiveness is health. As was already said, why is it a
surprise that healthy people are more intelligent on average?

I'd assume that this would be a result of nutrition and genes that are
being expressed body wide, but not by genes that are only being
expressed in the nervous system. Maybe these body-wide genes would be
mitochondrial genes, glucose transporters, hormone receptors,
angiogenic genes etc. My guess is that nervous system specific genes
aren't a part of this correlation and may make even larger
contributions to intelligence.

The extremely intelligent probably have nervous system specific gene
adaptations that controlled their early brain developmental. That
kind of thing probably wouldn't affect attractiveness.



On Aug 27, 9:22 am, "The.Fourth.Deviation." <davidsky...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Pontus Granström]

When I sit exams I often have the opportunity to see hundreds of people. I often reflect over how good looking they are in general. However I haven't done any "ratio measurements of them". Of course
things like clothing, hair cuts, nice clothes also contributes to the perceived impression.