Category: Intelligence

Are taller people really smarter or is IQ unrelated to height?

Smarter people are indeed more intelligent, research finds.

The reason is that the genes that are correlated with height are also correlated with intelligence.

The conclusion comes from a study of the DNA of 6,815 people.

Of course, there are still people who are short and intelligent, plus those who are tall and dim.

But, on average, there is a small association between being taller and having higher intelligence.

Around 70 percent of the genetic differences in IQ and height come down to genetic factors, the rest was environmental.

Why taller people are smarter

Multiple studies over the last 50 years have found links between greater height and higher intelligence.

The explanation for the phenomenon could be that tall, intelligent people tend to look for other tall, intelligent people to mate with.

Dr Matthew Keller, who has conducted a twin study on the phenomenon, says:

“It does look like there are genes that influence both height and IQ.

At the same time, it also looks like people who are taller are slightly more likely to choose mates who are smarter and vice versa.

Such mate choice causes ‘IQ genes’ and ‘tall genes’ to become statistically associated with one another.

There are a lot of exceptions, but there’s a statistical relationship that does happen more than would be expected by chance.”

The studies were published in the journals Behaviour Genetics and PLoS Genetics (Marioni et al., 2014; Keller et al., 2013).

Smarter men do look more intelligent, but the faces of high IQ women do not reveal their intelligence.

Can you tell how intelligent someone is just from their facial features?

Only if they are a man, according to a study published in the journal PLoS One (Kleisner et al., 2014).

The study finds that when judging men just on their facial appearance, there was a relationship with actual intelligence.

But when it came to women, there was no relationship between how intelligent people were perceived and how intelligent they actually were.

The authors speculate that this is because women are primarily judged on their attractiveness and this swamped any judgements about intelligence.

These predictions were in stark contrast to people’s assumptions about the connection between appearance and intelligence.

The faces that look high IQ vs low IQ

People strongly agreed on the type of face that looked intelligent, which was:

“In both sexes, a narrower face with a thinner chin and a larger prolonged nose characterizes the predicted stereotype of high-intelligence, while a rather oval and broader face with a massive chin and a smallish nose characterizes the prediction of low-intelligence.”

The three image below show what people perceive as low, average and high intelligence appearances in men and women:

The research was carried out in the Czech Republic, so these associations between facial features and perceived intelligence may be culturally specific.

But, as you’ll see from these photos, people’s perceptions of intelligence were also associated with attractiveness.

In other words, more attractive people also appear more intelligent, possibly due to the halo effect and/or possibly because there is a small association between higher attractiveness and higher actual intelligence.

Smile to look intelligent

Finally, the study found…

“…a correlation between semblances of emotions of joy or anger in perceptions of high or low intelligence in faces, respectively.

The ‘high intelligence’ faces appear to be smiling more than the ‘low intelligence’ faces. A similar pattern was described for the perception of trustworthiness.”

On the other hand:

“…low-intelligence faces are perceived as untrustworthy and considered angrier.”

In the other words: frown to look more stupid and smile to look more intelligent.

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People with a larger head size also have larger brains and are more likely to have higher IQs, a study finds.

People born with larger heads are more intelligent, according to the results of a large study.

Head size — along with greater brain volume — is also linked to having a more successful future.

Those with larger heads are more likely to go on to higher education.

This is probably because children with greater head size have higher scores on tests of verbal and numerical reasoning.

Head size and intelligence study

The findings come from the UK Biobank study, which is following half a million Britons.

Their physical and mental health is being monitored and connections to their genes are being analysed.

The research has been running for over 10 years.

The findings of the study underline the link between health and intelligence.

People who are taller and have a larger head size and, therefore, larger brains are also more likely to be healthy, the genetic study found.

Smarter people had a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s diabetes and other diseases.

Dr Saskia Hagenaars, the study’s first author, said:

“The study supports an existing theory which says that those with better overall health are likely to have higher levels of intelligence.”

Dr Stuart Ritchie, who co-authored the study, said:

“This study tests whether genes that are linked to mental abilities and educational attainment are also genes that are related to some disorders.

We found that there are many overlaps: to take one example, genes related to being taller are also related to obtaining a college or university degree.

We also asked whether the sets of genes associated with many disorders and traits predicted people’s actual levels of cognitive abilities.

We found many overlaps there, too.

To take one example, people with more genes linked to cardiovascular disease tended to have lower reasoning ability.”

The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (Hagenaars et al., 2016).

Hairy chests and body hair may say something about a man’s IQ — now we know why some men undo more shirt buttons than they should.

A hairy chest signals higher intelligence in a man, somewhat tongue-in-cheek research finds.

Dr Aikarakudy Alias, a psychiatrist, has found that hairy chests are more frequent among men who are highly educated, such as doctors.

Dr Alias surveyed male trainee doctors in the US and found that 45 percent of them were ‘very hairy’.

This is in comparison to the 10 percent of men in the general population who had very hairy chests.

The same was also true when Dr Alias looked at the academic rankings among students.

Among engineering graduates, the top students had more body hair than the students who ranked lower.

Hairy chested Mensa men

The evidence doesn’t stop there — even if you are wishing it would!

A survey of 117 male members of the high intelligence society Mensa found they were more likely than average to have a hairy chest.

The most intelligent also had hair on their backs.

Had enough yet?

Yes?

Tough. There’s more.

Dr Alias has also looked at the body hair of boxers.

After examining pictures of top-ranked boxers, he has found that the world champions were less hairy than non-champions.

What this proves I’m not entirely sure.

That you need to be less intelligent to be a world champion?

That can’t be it.

Einstein had no body hair

Of course, not all intelligent men are covered in body hair.

Just look at Albert Einstein, who reportedly had no body hair at all.

Still, it raises the questions of what all this means for the modern fashion for men shaving their body hair?

Could they be shaving off a proud signal of their higher intelligence?

Answers on a postcard to anyone but me.

The studies were presented at the eighth Congress of the Association of European Psychiatrists in 1996 by Dr Aikarakudy Alias.

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It is linked to higher IQ and being 30% less likely to suffer major depression.

People who are intelligent are 30 percent more likely to be short-sighted, research finds.

Intelligent people are also 30 percent less likely to suffer from major depression.

The findings are part of a study looking at the genetic underpinnings of intelligence.

The results come from 300,486 people aged 16 to 102 who had their DNA analysed.

The researchers found 148 different genetic locations were linked to cognitive ability.

Smarter people are also likely to have better mental health, a lower risk of cancer and greater longevity.

In fact, intelligent people are 17 percent more likely to live longer.

Dr Gail Davies, the study’s first author, said:

“This study, the largest genetic study of cognitive function, has identified many genetic differences that contribute to the heritability of thinking skills.

The discovery of shared genetic effects on health outcomes and brain structure provides a foundation for exploring the mechanisms by which these differences influence thinking skills throughout a lifetime.”

The search for connections between genes and intelligence has proved difficult.

Professor Ian Deary, who led the study, explained:

“Less than a decade ago we were searching for genes related to intelligence with about 3,000 participants, and we found almost nothing.

Now with 100 times that number of participants, and with more than 200 scientists working together, we have discovered almost 150 genetic regions that are related to how clever people are.

[…]

One thing we know from these results is that good thinking skills are a part of good health overall.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Davies et al., 2018).

Which hair colour is linked to higher intelligence?

The stereotype has it that blondes, while having more fun, are not as smart.

However, contrary to the stereotype, blonde women have slightly higher IQs than brunettes, a study finds.

However, the difference is so small as to be statistically insignificant.

Blonde men, meanwhile, have similar IQs to men with other hair colours.

So, blondes are not dumb — whether they are male or female.

The point might seem trivial, but the study’s author, Dr Jay Zagorsky, argues that stereotypes can have real-world implications:

“Research shows that stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences.

This study provides compelling evidence that there shouldn’t be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence.”

The conclusions come from a survey of 10,878 white Americans asked about their natural hair colour (Hispanics and African Americans were excluded to eliminate bias).

The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair and 100.5 for black hair.

However, the differences were so small as to be unlikely to represent a real difference.

Dr Zagorsky said:

“I don’t think you can say with certainty that blondes are smarter than others, but you can definitely say they are not any dumber.”

A factor that could explain blondes having higher IQ is that they also had more books in their homes during childhood, Dr Zagorsky said:

“If blondes have any slight advantage, it may simply be that they were more likely to grow up in homes with more intellectual stimulation.”

While the research may reveal little difference, stereotypes are powerful, Dr Zagorsky writes:

“…humans use a person’s looks as a signal for the person’s personality or productivity.

For example, blonde women are often stereotyped as dumb or incompetent while redheads are seen as people with fiery tempers.

These stereotypes are reinforced in popular culture with the dumb blonde female being a staple of Hollywood movies such as Reese Witherspoon in the “Legally Blonde” series or even Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

The study was published in the journal Economics Bulletin (Zagorsky, 2016).