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Is there an inverse relationship between beauty and intelligence?

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clav

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In my boredom, I stumbled upon a research paper that talked about a correlation between beauty and intelligence. It claims that the most attractive women are in the "most intelligent group."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...d=965532&md5=1402750b6f0587fdcf02080312bb6b76

Mirror: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2004.pdf

This doesn't change my perception though. Generally, I have always thought a majority of people (especially females) with high physical attractiveness tend to be unintelligent.

What are your thoughts?
 
Makes sense to me. Many of the girls I've met who are attractive came across as intelligent and also tend to even be nicer than their fat and/or ugly counterparts
 
Pretty much any girl can be made to look hot with the right make up and hair. So what I always thought was, intelligent girls are less likely to care about trying to make themselves look good in front of the mirror all the time, whereas girls who aren't as intelligent can be obsessed with it. Obviously there are exceptions both ways though.
 
Actually, some girls that are attractive (or just plain hot) just use their body rather than their intelligence to get what they want, and if they happen to do this while at school, they just end up being idiots because they don't study at all.

Or maybe not, I just made that up right now based on what I saw at my school when I was a student :P

On the other side, I know of a couple girls that are hot and at least a bit above the average in intelligence (which, in Spain, isn't a big deal..) so I can't tell you...
 
Innate intelligence and sexual appeal are both extremely desirable genetic traits. It stands to reason that the two would be simultaneously expressed in an individual more often than not.
 
I find intelligent girls more attractive than unintelligent ones. Although obviously an unintelligent girl would do for a quick fuck, you're not going to be wanting a long relationship with her because she has nothing more to offer.
 
In my youth I subscribed to the theory that fatties were smarter because they had to work for their grades/guys/etc. As I grow older I've met some fat cunts that were not only atrocious, but had the personality to match. It's a crapshoot IMO.
 
claviertekky said:
In my boredom, I stumbled upon a research paper that talked about a correlation between beauty and intelligence. It claims that the most attractive women are in the "most intelligent group."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...d=965532&md5=1402750b6f0587fdcf02080312bb6b76

Mirror: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2004.pdf

This doesn't change my perception though. Generally, I have always thought a majority of people (especially females) with high physical attractiveness tend to be unintelligent.

What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

Are attractive girls stupid, or are you just attracted to stupid girls?
 
It's very likely that the Pretty girls = dumb meme started because some people were jealous, and people remember dumb pretty girls and forget smart pretty girls. (There was some name for this type of effect...Affirmation bias or something?)

Naturally, if you believe that pretty people are dumb, the ugly people are smart might be a obvious conclusion.
 
Asmodai said:
No relationship. Hot girls get much, much more attention, so people notice when they are stupid.
Click to expand...

This is a good point. How do you know her ugly friend is dumb when the closest thing you've done to acknowledge her is kick her in the shin to make space?
 
X-Ninji said:
It's very likely that the Pretty girls = dumb meme started because some people were jealous, and people remember dumb pretty girls and forget smart pretty girls. (There was some name for this type of effect...Affirmation bias or something?)

Naturally, if you believe that pretty people are dumb, the ugly people are smart might be a obvious conclusion.
Click to expand...

Yep. This was one of the more interesting parts of first year psychology.
 
not in my personal experience.

ive been told countless times throughout my 30 years that i am both very handsome and bright/intelligent. also, (not deliberately, of course) most of the people i associate with are both beautiful and intelligent.

but i suppose my associations and i could all be exceptions. for instance, ive never met one person in my life that didnt DESPISE G. W. Bush, yet he got elected twice.
 
nope
danica_McKellar_l3.jpg
 
No. Everything is circumstantial.

Pretty sure the idea most people grew up with was: "Ugly people don't get much attention or love(for lack of a better word), so they spend time concentrating on other things. Beautiful people usually have things handed to them/an easier time with things because others are more willing to help them out, as a result they never try/have to work as hard."

But I disagree, especially considering how different "ugly" and "beautiful" or "smart" and "stupid" are for different people.
 
Life would be so much easier for us nerds if the beautiful girls in high-school weren't also the same girls in our advanced history classes.
 
claviertekky said:
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

Intelligence is different then ignorance. A gorgeous female might not know a damn thing, but it might have less to do with her intelligence and more to do with the fact that she never had to learn.
 
Attractive intelligent girls realized that they get further by being dumb.
 
I don't think there's much of a relationship between looks and intelligence, but I don't doubt the study.
That said, good-looking girls certainly have less incentive to develop their minds.
 
I read something like that before and I think it has to do with something I had to research myself a bit for school, but it´s Germany only: people from a richer background are healthier, eat better food and are way less likely to be overweight (except for older males), especially the younger women than the average in their age group. They also normally can afford better education and put more emphasis on it, having better than average school success rates and enroll into university more often.

It´s basically the opposite for poor people.

So better body with better school career than the average -> "hot" girls are more likely to be "smarter".

It´s awesome, half the girls at university are super smoking hot, the other half better than average with only a few exceptions :D
 
claviertekky said:
In my boredom, I stumbled upon a research paper that talked about a correlation between beauty and intelligence. It claims that the most attractive women are in the "most intelligent group."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...d=965532&md5=1402750b6f0587fdcf02080312bb6b76

Mirror: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2004.pdf

This doesn't change my perception though. Generally, I have always thought a majority of people (especially females) with high physical attractiveness tend to be unintelligent.
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...
I think that intelligent girls avoid us. So thats why we dont know many of them.
 
I think there is a correlation between physical fitness and intelligence, not an exclusive correlation of course, but intelligent people usually know it's smart to keep their bodies healthy. A girl with a nice body would usually be considered attractive, hence intelligence can easily mean beauty.

Personally a lot of the most beautiful women I know are very smart.
 
If anything there's a positive correlation. If you look at history, pretty (or vain) civilizations also contribute greatly to the arts and sciences. As for present-day examples, the smart people I know are also gifted with good looks, myself included. I have cousins who are welfare leeching pond-scum and they're all ugly.

I think those of you who think otherwise watch too many movies that like to stereotype smart people as awkward, ugly nerds. Those 80's movies are the worst offenders.
 
Dunno, but cameras steal your soul.
Celebrities (the most photographed people there are) are the most soulless creatures on the planet.
 
Most people dismiss attractive women as dumb because of jealousy. Y'know, the fox and the grapes apply here. Same goes for other women who feel the same way.

It kills some people to know that there is someone better looking and smarter than them. The perception of pretty girls = vapid bimbos keep millions of bitter nerd and/or delusional virgins and seldomlaids (both genders!) from crying themselves to sleep every night.
 
claviertekky said:
In my boredom, I stumbled upon a research paper that talked about a correlation between beauty and intelligence. It claims that the most attractive women are in the "most intelligent group."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...d=965532&md5=1402750b6f0587fdcf02080312bb6b76

Mirror: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2004.pdf

This doesn't change my perception though. Generally, I have always thought a majority of people (especially females) with high physical attractiveness tend to be unintelligent.

What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

Just read through this article and they only make the case that intelligence and beauty are logically linked and as such can be a testable hypothesis. The catch is that they themselves do not do any tests and merely correlate data from other studies of which support their notion.

Kind of a crap paper if you ask me, but I'm a biologist not a psychologist and you don't get published in my field for conjecture.
 
louis89 said:
Pretty much any girl can be made to look hot with the right make up and hair. So what I always thought was, intelligent girls are less likely to care about trying to make themselves look good in front of the mirror all the time, whereas girls who aren't as intelligent can be obsessed with it. Obviously there are exceptions both ways though.
Click to expand...
Never saw it that way but makes a lot of sense.
 
There are these women and there are those women. Every human is unique and different so I think you can´t generalize here.
 
I believe people know they're pretty so they tend to become more social in high school/middle school. They don't have to study because they're part of the popular clique. This attitude takes form and carries over into adulthood. The potential for intelligence is there. They just never had to apply themselves.
 
I think they should specify that it's natural beauty and not artificial one created through the means of make up and plastic surgery.

Also smart != intelligent, at least from my perspective.
 
Attractive people are more interested in socializing than spending every waking hour studying. Which leads to a lack of knowledge, which leads to the impression of stupidity. It's not that super attractive people are stupid, it's that more often than not they're ignorant.
 
I have friends who are attractive, popular, and in the top of our class due to being on top of their studying as well as friends who are attractive but procrastinate until the day something is due and are happy with a C average. Depends if people want to maintain appearances and do well in life, skate through life on looks, or ignore what people see on the surface and focus on achievements and what not
 
claviertekky said:
This doesn't change my perception though. Generally, I have always thought a majority of people (especially females) with high physical attractiveness tend to be unintelligent.
?
Click to expand...

I think its more like: some attractive people use less effort in everything because they can get a lot just cuz they are attractive. If they are stupid, its just cuz they dont bother trying to be smart since they dont have to
 
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