Why beautiful people are more intelligent
September 4, 2006
This paper breaks down the theorem “beautiful people are more intelligent” into 4 assumptions. These assumptions are short and sweet and evidence is provided in the actual paper.
- Men who are more intelligent are more likely to attain higher status
- Higher status men are more likely to mate with more beautiful women
- Intelligence is heritable
- Beauty is heritable
Hence, it logically follows that beautiful people are more intelligent.
QED.
Note that while the correlation between beauty and intelligence is statistically significant (p < .05), the strength of the relationship is fairly weak (d = .07), compared to for example, beauty and popularity (d = .65).
Kanazawa, S. & Kovar, J. L. (2002). Why beautiful people are more intelligent. Intelligence, 32(3), 227-243. [PDF]
Entry Filed under: Beauty, Intelligence, Sociology. .
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1.
wtf | September 4, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Einstein is handsome if thats the case. Intelligent people are usually people who are hadicap in one area or the other. Mentally, physically, a handicap lifestyle, etc Einstein brain had one part which we all have but he doesn’t or almost non existent. Thus giving him more power to other part of his brain. Some people spend more time in something than people who lead a normal life thus making them work their brain more and more intelligent, example, scientist. A blind person i heard of was capable of using sound to see his surrounding. Thats achieved becuz of his eye doesn’t work anymore and he was trained to sense better. Look doesn’t contribute (and I believe not inherited becuz i see the opposite so many times) and I think your theory is totally untrue.
2.
JP | August 24, 2009 at 5:12 am
We all need to fill our niche in the world. If you are unattractive or can not perform all that well physically, you will make up for it mentally.
Evolution is also another factor.
In our distant past we did not have the easy life that we have today. We needed to hunt to survive. if you can perform physically, less thought needs to put in to achieve the result. But the intelligent people achieved the desired result using their minds (setting up staps etc.)
The traits have been passed down. More intelligent people are less like machines. Practical biology happens to look attractive.
3.
Zigurana | September 7, 2006 at 6:54 am
Well,
1-The correlation might be there, but does not necessarilly need to be a causality.
2-To be intelligent is an ill-defined expression, it can be the result of mere IQ, social capabilities (SQ?), mere luck etc. It really is nothing more then a narrow definition of succes.
2a- Succes IS herited, of course, but that is a much much broader sense of succes. Lets call it Darwinian Succes or better, fitness!
Which brings us to:
3-Beauty, is just another ill defined word actually describing attractiveness.
4-Attractiveness is the result of a myriad of influences (including IQ :-) ).
5-But basically, attractiveness is another form of succes, fitness.
So what does this tell us? A relationship with strength 0.6 between beauty and intelligence. Seems to me that the influence of “beauty” and “intelligence” in overall fitness are somehow in a ratio of 0.6:1 (hmm need to reread my maths).
Concluding: Fitness is the result of load and loads of parameters, including looks and wits.
Nice research though!
4.
anon | September 13, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Einstein WAS handsome. Look at his younger pictures. Don’t hate b/c you’re smart but ugly.
5.
anon2 | September 22, 2006 at 12:43 am
Damn it! Why did I have to be one of the ugly, dumb ones?
6.
audrey | September 22, 2006 at 8:59 pm
funny, anon2 :)
7.
andreasskog | September 25, 2006 at 3:02 am
Fine!
8.
brian | September 28, 2006 at 2:01 am
This stuff is pretty messed up.
Intelligence _doesn’t_ correspond to high societal status. In fact, high intelligence practically precludes high societal status, unless the person’s area of interest is politics or business.
Secondly, intelligent people are less likely to choose a mate based on appearance.
Thirdly, intelligent, well-educated, wealthy people have fewer children than do the uneducated poor.
Fourthly, good-looking people are a dime a dozen and intelligent people are hard to find.
9.
Fuck Yeah. | May 11, 2009 at 11:29 am
The only true statement you made was that dumb people have more kids. (and even that I’m not sure of).
Intelligence doesn’t negatively correlate with societal status. Life is not high school. You’re thinking of your general Asperger’s syndrome sufferer; the “nerd”. There are plenty of intelligent people who are socially adept (think of your straight A jocks and cheerleaders that go on to ivy league universities).
Intelligent people are not hard to find. it depends on what IQ level you’re willing to define as intelligent. If you go based on any classical definition, you’re thinking about the top 20% of society.
In which case, if you were to have a room full of 10 people chosen at random, 2 of them would be considered “intelligent”. I imagine a similar number of them would be considered “beautiful.”
Lastly, I am an intelligent person, and am highly likely to choose a physically attractive mate over a physically unattractive one. Not that anecdotal evidence is statistically significant, but it’s still more sources for my claim than you provided for yours.
10.
duggi wuggi | May 11, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“Life is not high school.” — apparently it is, for you
11.
Heinous Tugboat | May 11, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Except that they’ve found Intelligence is a very, very poor predictor of success. Sure, it isn’t negatively correlated. That’s because it really just isn’t correlated at all. If you replace the author’s argument with motivation, I suspect it would not only be more true, it would also likely be demonstrated in statistics.
12.
Jake | September 28, 2006 at 2:41 am
I think the theory is only partly true. NO? Turn on a pornchannel and see the people incredibly beautyful, both male and female – so smart people choose such a way of making living? What about hollywood? They are all beatyful there… with or without cosmetics? How about their relationships, they are non existen…
So also in this theory, incredibly sexy women would only date nerdly PC users and scientists – assuming they are not rich.
The smart people I have met mostly have some kind of complexions, they feel incomplite and sadly or not this feeling pushes them to extremes – higher education, doctor degrees, gene technology etc.
13.
fred | September 28, 2006 at 3:31 am
premises are false.
QED? ha!
If intellegence was genetic, we’d be extinct already (stupid people breed more before their premature death– and are more likely to kill some smart people…)
Looks are not genetic, sometimes the looks don’t come out in the kids.. even then, opinion varies on that topic.
14.
Stephan Wehner | September 28, 2006 at 8:19 am
I find it interesting to note that both “beautiful” and “intelligent” are difficult to define. In fact, a statement like “beautiful people are more intelligent” reads pretty silly, when you remind yourself that there are different kinds of beautiful and also different kinds of intelligent.
Compare with more objectively verifiable statements “Darkness of hair is related to height”.
But the “proof” says the “environment” is doing the selecting. Therefore the “environment” is also defining what is beautiful and intelligent.
So that makes sense.
15.
tecmorose | September 28, 2006 at 10:39 am
It sounds like a nice idea, but somehow i don’t think it really pans out. The flaw may be, there are a lot of intelligent people who for some reason choose not to use their intelligence, they are slackers, or drunkards, etc., and they never end up propogating the species, whereas the non-intelligent, less beautiful people are always getting it on ’til 6 in the mornin’ if you catch my drfit. Check out my blog at, http://underdogs.wordpress.com , not sure whether or not you’ll find intelligence or beauty there.
Ryan
16.
Victor | September 28, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Well, the problem is that people are shallow and pretty people tend to screw other pretty people…both of whom could be stupid resulting in a very pretty moron – and we all know more of these than the smart hottie.
Women marry money, not brains. And, trust me, I know a lot more rich guys who got their money by being opportunistic assholes as opposed to rich guys who got rich by being smart.
All in all, this is entire premise is flawed.
17.
Richard | September 28, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Doesn’t this whole thing seem a little sexist?
18.
Miri | September 28, 2006 at 4:50 pm
In the Jewish society, the rich heiresses were traditionnally led to marry intelligent men, so the intelligent men could study and improve their knowledge and not worry about the incomes in the family. Hence, the Jews were “more intelligent”, at least the society improved its chances to breed intelligent children.
It was a social rule, and it’s hard to measure if it worked or not, but the impressive number of Jewish Nobel prizes and Jewish renowned people can testify there was something into it. But I agree there is more than one type of intelligence.
While you can try to measure intelligence with IQ tests or by testifying of the accomplishments of given people, there is no objective way to measure beauty. All is in the eye of the beholder.
You have an interesting thesis but the premises do not hold.
19.
thomasvr1 | September 28, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Obviously the controversy in the assumption initiated by this blog post has done its job in attracting responses. Any person in their right mind knows that intelligence and beauty are on two different planes. A more interesting comparison would be peanut butter and jelly.
20.
Ascentia | September 29, 2006 at 2:42 am
Oh hell, Henry Kissinger didn’t get dates with all those beautiful women because of his looks! Or wait, did he? Maybe it was physical attributes, but I can’t personally see sitting on his nose.
21.
Lee McEwan | October 3, 2006 at 4:40 am
Great find. I love academic review articles like this one. They represent the start of a rich seam of discovery for the reader. I would hope that the fact that this article is so contentious will just spur more people on to seek out the references and check the facts themselves. I think the conceit of using a logical construct in this way to make a grand theory is fantastic. The bold assertions made in the article will hopefully trigger a good debate in the academic literature that follows.
22.
transformedia | October 4, 2006 at 1:14 am
Flawed this premise may be, yet it rings quite true for those of us who are stupid and/or ugly. The major difficulty with it is that we never see ourselves as others see us, and that being so, all the other factors go out the window.
I know some dolts who feel that their opinions and pronouncements are cogent, valid and useful to others, when more often than not, they are bullshit, constructed so that he speakers can hear the sound of their own voices.
I know some truly attractive and sexy women who couldn’t recognize those traits in themselves if they were pointed out to them by a jury. Many men are emasculated and terrorized by the overtly attractive of the opposite sex because society has convinced them that the superficial traits are the only viable currencies that would bring a beauty to their side – the women are just as brainwashed. A hottie is not going to waste any time finding out if the geek is interesting, she wants a reflection of her own surface beauty to make her feel like that porn goddess she is supposed to feel like.
23.
Pretty Girl | November 3, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Beauty can in fact be measured. There was a study done with babies as well as with adults. The more symetrical the face the better score it got. Even babies preferred faces of “beautiful” people. This study then determined what was the most beautiful combination of facial features, i.e. ratio of distance from corner of eye to bridge of nose… those sorts of things.
Another thing that might allow beautiful people to appear more intelligent is through educational or occupational sucess. It has been proven that a “beautiful” person is more likely to get the promotion or the job, apartment… etc. etc. Beauty in our culture is rewarded sometimes above intelligence or talent.
There could be minor relationships that would account for the signifigance, but I think having brains and beauty is more about the luck of the draw.
24.
Sir Nicholas | November 27, 2006 at 1:49 pm
What a load of crap. Ive seen many intelligent people who are very ugly. In fact ive seen more ugly smart people then good looking intelligent people.
25.
Abril | December 6, 2006 at 9:18 am
“statistically significant “?? Who did the study?? Where? When? you cannot generalize the results.. please, publish the complete investigation
26.
Clas | December 8, 2006 at 9:12 pm
I am very intelligent, and nerdy as well. I am a computer engineer. I am a superior being.
27.
transformedia | December 12, 2006 at 8:42 am
In the minds of those who have been gifted with enough acceptable evidence to convince them that they are superior, there is a factor of confidence and security that is quite venerable. Not all people have been gifted thusly, obviously, therefore ones’ life-long task is, among many others, to parent oneself and sustain oneself through recognizing and accepting the reflections of ones’ abilities and successes. The world and life as it occurs is often harsh and ugly, so ones’ very survival can often be founded on the talent to see “what is” and press on. There aren’t many weak old people.
28.
sadiztik | December 26, 2006 at 11:19 pm
@abril
The answer to your questions can be found right at the bottom of the blog entry! Do I infer that you are not one of the beautiful people?
@wtf
Many of the intelligent people that most people are familiar with are handsome or beautiful. The problem is that most of the portraits that people are most familiar with were taken when the subjects were already old. If you take the time to find pictures of these intelligent people you would be surprised to discover that they are indeed beautiful.
In fact, ugly and intelligent people are so uncommon that any such combination in any real person is readily noted.
29.
aprilgonzaga | December 27, 2006 at 10:06 am
hmmm…. i didn’t know there was a correlation between intelligence and good looks… maybe it takes a stroke of goodluck to have inherited the “good genes” from your parents hehe…
30.
Snoopsmsc | December 27, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Has no one ever realized that beautiful people are given things that others aren’t. I worked at a grocery store for 6 years, and I can tell you from experience that it is a natural tendancy to do things for especially attractive people that you wouldn’t do for most people (in my case, cashing checks, or returning items that don’t fit within our policies). I find it hard to beleive that I am the only person with this tendancy. Sex sells for a reason, while it may not be the only reason for a certain person getting something, it is definetly a contributing factor.
31.
Anonymous.Theories | December 27, 2006 at 2:45 pm
How can people say that intelligence and beauty is subjective??
IQ tests, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, SAT are all quite effective in determining relative intelligence and ability.
And as Pretty Girl said, studies show that babies prefer symmetrical faces. And the faces that these babies prefer are also faces that adults find attractive.
I have long suspected this correlation myself. My personal belief is that intelligence and beauty is proportional to how evolved (due to their environment) a group of people are. The more difficult an environment is, the more selective people are when mating, and also the more intelligence you need to survive this environment.
32.
customer583 | March 12, 2007 at 6:44 pm
anyone who has ever been to college or has been around a group a college students (specifically the fraternity/sorority type) knows that this is complete bullshit.
33.
mike | March 19, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I had been to college and my less attractive instructor kept on saying negative things to a group of people that are more attractive than him , incidentally I am a member of the group of people he kept on negatively criticizing and so to is his wife.
unconsciously he loves us people and I think he is a bit crazy with attractive people.
34.
Rebecca Aguilar | June 6, 2007 at 7:42 am
What isn’t considered in the relationship between beauty and intelligence is that these are traits that WE CAN WORK ON AND IMPROVE.
Heredity? How about makeup and a good education? What roles do they play in the relationship between brains and looks?
35.
k | June 8, 2007 at 5:08 am
Well… Orince Charles is NOT exactly beautiful neither that intelligent though he is the son of the queen of england!? he maried the pretty Diana and had 2 sons, one handsome and the other NOT handsome so…
36.
hatjhie | July 6, 2007 at 2:56 am
Hm….., it’s not related I think, just gene work
37.
Rich | August 23, 2007 at 12:22 am
What is beatiful and what is intelligent? All people have different tastes for different types of dimeanors, personality, morally based realizations and so on…. To shrink down the standards to one ridiculous one is dehumanizing. So many actualizations that we humans percieve can cannot be expressed with words. In my opinion, the people that can express deep concepts verbally, with mutual understanding is where genius lies.
38.
Tushar | August 23, 2007 at 10:35 am
Hi my opinion on this topic is that most of the beauty full are inteligent. There may be any other reason for this i e brain is not coneted with looks . Among my friend circle most of Beautys are inteligent.
39.
Chuck | February 18, 2008 at 7:29 am
This argument is garbage. You’re assuming that the intelligence of the women and the physical appearance of the man have no impact on the offspring.
40.
nicky | February 19, 2008 at 12:25 am
ya i disagree. although from what i have observed, intelligent people are beautiful and not necessarily vice versa. thats because some one who is intelligent (socially, academically) is more likely to be happier and confident and have a beautiful approach to life which makes them appear beautiful..
41.
whatever | March 2, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I have two words for you. “PARIS HILTON” LOL!
42.
iriayo | April 2, 2008 at 5:57 am
beauty is never associated with intelligence and cannot be equated.some ugly people are more intelligent than the most beautiful people in the world
43.
Naomi | May 2, 2008 at 4:59 pm
To Freds comment: The human race actually is becoming less intelligent and more weak. Before technology, industry and goverment welfare programs the strong/ healthy (often=beauty standards) and intelligent were the only ones to survive. Before birth control the birth rate was about the same for all people but the weak and stupid had a higher mortality rate. (Darwin) But today the more intelligent people know to control how many children they have and the stupid people just keep breeding and stay alive despite their inferiority. We keep them alive. So as a human race many scientists have said we are literally becoming less intelligent and less healthy. You should watch idiocracy. Only a comedy but very truthful.
44.
Oscar Lopez | May 3, 2008 at 1:08 am
I read the attached e-book and there is no evidence that supports the first 2 statements. Moreover, even if we accept all 4 statements as unarguable truths, this still does not make any sense. Here’s why:
The expression “are more lilkely” used in the assumptions does not make absolute statements. Therefore, even if we considere the 4 assumptions as true, one can still say that:
1. Unintelligent people can also attain a higher status
2. Unintelligent higer-status men can also attain atractive women
3. Unintelligent and low-status guys can also attain atractive women with “beauty” genes.
My 3 statements do not contradict the first 4 but impale this deceiving hypothesis.
45.
smart!!! | May 22, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Hi! look, if youwant to interact with people entelligent as you enter this page ubermens.com!!! ;) the original!
46.
Anne | July 20, 2008 at 1:31 pm
This is assuming that intelligence in inheritable. While it is to some extent, a lot of it is how much you valued education growing up. In my experience the more beautiful people were more popular and thus were more interested in social relationships. The ugly nerds had no choice but to study. Thus it would make sense if the smartest people are not necessarily the most attractive.
47.
siddharth parakh | July 22, 2008 at 5:26 am
Love is beyond beauty and intelligence and the assumptions in the original theorem are false.While all the three are relative and circumstancial,nature has its wonderful method of selection.
48.
[)raven | December 4, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Intelligence has nothing to do with how attractive you are, on a basic level. I am highly intelligent, but I would never think of myself as attractive. Mostly because the things I like to do are very secluded and isolated, like reading, studying, drawing, painting, writing music, playing music, and many other things. I care very little for my or anyone else’s looks. Does that make me ugly? Yes.
Also, I have found that people who have more of the attractiveness rely and depend less on their brainpower to come across as influential. For example, a woman who is very attractive can have anything she wants from men, because of her influence, she relies less on intellectual and social manipulation, being right, and other things that I have to do on a daily basis at work and with strangers in order to be heard or understood. The person who devised this formula knows very little about people like me, and I would advise people who believe this to think about whether physical characteristics have any possible way to impact intelligent reasoning other than to hinder it.
49.
Heres The Facts | March 2, 2009 at 7:26 pm
WTF is probably retarded or “very slow” as is the politically correct term. The fact of the matter is that the hypothesis presented holds water.
People of higher intelligence tend to perform better in life. These well-performers tend to attract someone else who meets their qualifications accordingly. Either the person they mate with is as intelligent and attractive as them, or more commonly, they are less intelligent but better looking.
Therefore through multiple generations of suitable mate selection you end up with ever increasing numbers of intelligent and attractive people, while the converse is also true.
Barring drunken hook-ups, eventually the world will be completely divided into two groups:
1) Attractive and intelligent
2) Unattractive and unintelligent
50.
rebekah | March 9, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I don’t think scientifically, that pretty people are naturally smarter..however, I think there is a sad reality that teachers often believe in and put more into the more attractive children..so hence they succeed.
I disagree that beauty can be scientifically measured….I know so many women who some men think they’re beautiful, and others think they got hit by the ugly stick…beauty is subjective….I never did buy that experiment with the babies…I always wondered if the “attractive people” photographs had more colorful clothes on or something. I wasn’t considered beautiful by a lot of people, and yet babies were always drawn to me, and I to them.
51.
Dee | March 27, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I have been saying this for year. That is because intelligent people are smart enought to put themselves together and smart enought to eat well and exercise. There is always an execption to the rule (think of all the graphs you have done over the years). Newton was more handsome than Einstein and certainly contributed more to modern math and science.
52.
~BRE IN CLASS~ | April 23, 2009 at 2:53 pm
this is stupid.what a stupid poop head!! there are ugly smart people and beautiful smart ppl and ugly stupid ppl and beautiful stupid ppl..the person that thought of this is stupid!!
53.
~BRE IN CLASS~ | April 23, 2009 at 2:54 pm
THIS IS STILL STUPID
54.
Iris | April 24, 2009 at 9:08 am
It’s not entirely true of course, but I can see how it might work. Beautiful people take care of themselves; they take pride in how they look. Logically, they might put more effort into work as well and hence be more successful. Good – looking people also tend to be more confident and confidence gets you further in life. I know many people who are not naturally beautiful, but take time with their appearance. They are also achievers and get good grades in university, or do well at work. That’s not genetic though; it has to do with upbringing. I think it would be better to say ‘people who take more pride in their appearance achieve more’.
Of course you get ugly smart folks (Stephen Hawking, for example) and beautiful dumb people, but there are exceptions to every rule.
Either way, the two should be respected individually. You should be respected for your brain even if you are ugly, and your looks can be admired even if you are dumb. Just don’t get jealous because I have beauty and brains. :D
55.
mk | May 4, 2009 at 3:14 pm
This is interesting and I would have to agree with Iris. It seems impossible to correlate being attractive with being intelligent when the standard of “beauty” changes every twenty years or so.
56.
sOL | June 3, 2009 at 10:35 pm
i don’t think they have any relation between beauty and intelligent because good looking is the parent give to u however inteligent is depend on to do u willing to learn, study and think.
57.
Martin Roberts | June 21, 2009 at 8:10 am
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is not something we can measure, but we normally perceive the mentally retarded as being ugly. Presumably to stop us breeding with them.
58.
Victor | July 29, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Warren Buffet is considered by many who have met him to be the smartest person on earth, yet that hardly makes him the most handsome guy on the planet ( he may be, of course, at least to his mother;-) ).
59.
victor | September 30, 2009 at 11:07 am
It’s hard to believe that intelligence and beauty meet in the same people.
I think that if you’re a bit prettier people like you and they encourage you to express. If you are smart, this encouragement is enough to make you learn and train and get to the top.
The ugly smart people get isolated and never get to perfect themselves to the point that it shows.
Don’t forget that the pretty&dumb people are more likely to show their “wits” publicly and in a marked manner. And people don’t give attention to the dumb&ugly anyway,