There appears to be some truth in the saying 'I'm more than just a pretty face' as studies carried out in Britain and America reveal that good looking men and women have an IQ almost 14 points above the norm.
The findings were based on the National Child Development Study and recorded the academic intelligence and physical appearance of 17,419 people throughout their childhood and up to early adulthood. A similar study was conducted using 35,000 Americans.
‘Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence, both with and without controls for social class, body size and health,’ says Satoshi Kanazawa, a researcher at the London School of Economics.‘The association between attractiveness and general intelligence is also stronger among men than women.’
The study found that in Britain, women who are physically attractive have IQ’s 11.4 points higher than the average, while handsome men have an increased IQ of 13.6 points.
Support for the juxtaposition of beauty and brains is apparent in supermodel Lily Cole and actress Kate Beckinsale both Oxbridge graduates. But Kanazawa insists: ‘Our contention that beautiful people are more intelligent is purely scientific. It is not a prescription for how to treat and judge others.’
I share the FuturePundit's sentiment: "Since I want the future human race to be more beautiful and much smarter it is great to hear that these goals are very compatible."
Unfortunately, in the current culture, attractive women who can earn degrees from substantial universities often fail to develop themselves further. Consider: Danica McKellar (bachelor's in mathematics from UCLA); Lisa Kudrow (bachelor's in biology from Vassar); Natalie Portman (bachelor's in psychology from Harvard). Mayim Bialik never impressed me as attractive by gentile standards, though she reminds me of Jewish coeds I knew at Washington University in St. Louis whom I could have dated under better circumstances; but she did have some success as a child actress in the early 1990's, and she reportedly earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Instead of doing something productive with that educational investment, however, she apparently considers it more important now to act in a TV series.
I suppose economic incentives have something to do with this waste of human potential. On-camera work for attractive people in the entertainment industry currently pays "stupid money" compared with the wages available for cognitive work which produces more value for society, despite the trend towards the economy of the mind.
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