Beauty and Brains

Last week, Alex wrote about how smart people live longer. Today, we learn that smart people may be better looking too!

Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and his colleague, Jody L. Kovar, assert that beautiful people also tend to be smart people -- and vice versa.

In the July issue of Intelligence, the sociologists offer a theory to explain the confluence of beauty and brains. Their argument, in a nutshell: Intelligent men achieve higher status and marry beautiful women, who pass their genes on to their disproportionately attractive and smart kids, who win mates who are good-looking or brainy, and so on. Or at least that's what they put forth in the journal article, "Why Beautiful People are More Intelligent."

Here is the full story. Here is a home page for one of the researchers. But wait...he's the same guy who says that marriage ruins male productivity.

Addendum: I just stumbled upon Randall Parker's treatment of the same study.