Here is a fun one to start with: A research paper from Ohio State University says that blonds are not dumb, and actually top the IQ tables.
From the paper:
4. Conclusions
Popular culture portrays white women with blonde hair as beautiful but dumb. Nevertheless, each year millions of people in the U.S. spend over a billion dollars to change the color of their hair, many to blonde (Deborah and Ellen, 2006). Surprisingly, NLSY79 data show the dumb blonde stereotype is a myth.
Mean values of IQ shown in table 1 show that on average, blondes are smarter than brown, red and black haired women. The distribution of IQ shown in table 2 reveals blondes have the least percentage of low IQ or dumb women, and blondes are most likely to appear in the exceptionally high intelligence or genius category. Only data in table 1’s median column suggests blonde women are not the smartest, but instead have roughly equal intelligence to brown haired women.
A persistent myth in the U.S. is that blonde haired women are more beautiful, but less intelligent, than women with other hair colors. Employers who believe the beauty part of the myth will choose and pay higher wages for blonde women to work in front-line positions where aesthetics and customer interactions are important. However, employers believing the myth that blondes are dumb will also slow the advancement of qualified blondes for back-room managerial positions, where intelligence is more highly valued than looks. Future research is needed to see if this leads to the perverse result that for a given job, such as waitress, blondes earn more than women with other hair colors, but that women with other hair colors are more likely to be promoted to higher paying positions than blondes.
These findings also have implications for research on the economics of beauty. Previous findings showed that more attractive people received larger financial benefits than the less attractive. However, if blondes are both more likely to be considered beautiful, and they are of higher average intelligence, then not all the economic return attributed to beauty in the previous research is discrimination. Instead, some of the “beauty premium” might actually be caused by blondes having higher ability because they are smarter. Future research on the economics of beauty needs to include both attractiveness and intelligence indicators to isolate the true effects of attractiveness.
While it is beyond the scope of this research to investigate genetic relationships between hair color and intelligence, results suggested that blondes grew up in homes with more reading material than women of other hair color. If living in a more literate environment is truly the driving reason for higher blonde intelligence, then the solution for people who wish they or their children were smarter is not to dye or bleach their hair. Instead, the prescription is to provide or engage in more intellectual stimulation, such as reading books.
Johnston (2010) and others have posed an interesting follow-up question, “Do blondes really have more fun?” Maybe in the next 50 years of collecting data on some of society’s serious problems, the NLSY79 will include enough extra information to also answer this question.
From the paper:
4. Conclusions
Popular culture portrays white women with blonde hair as beautiful but dumb. Nevertheless, each year millions of people in the U.S. spend over a billion dollars to change the color of their hair, many to blonde (Deborah and Ellen, 2006). Surprisingly, NLSY79 data show the dumb blonde stereotype is a myth.
Mean values of IQ shown in table 1 show that on average, blondes are smarter than brown, red and black haired women. The distribution of IQ shown in table 2 reveals blondes have the least percentage of low IQ or dumb women, and blondes are most likely to appear in the exceptionally high intelligence or genius category. Only data in table 1’s median column suggests blonde women are not the smartest, but instead have roughly equal intelligence to brown haired women.
A persistent myth in the U.S. is that blonde haired women are more beautiful, but less intelligent, than women with other hair colors. Employers who believe the beauty part of the myth will choose and pay higher wages for blonde women to work in front-line positions where aesthetics and customer interactions are important. However, employers believing the myth that blondes are dumb will also slow the advancement of qualified blondes for back-room managerial positions, where intelligence is more highly valued than looks. Future research is needed to see if this leads to the perverse result that for a given job, such as waitress, blondes earn more than women with other hair colors, but that women with other hair colors are more likely to be promoted to higher paying positions than blondes.
These findings also have implications for research on the economics of beauty. Previous findings showed that more attractive people received larger financial benefits than the less attractive. However, if blondes are both more likely to be considered beautiful, and they are of higher average intelligence, then not all the economic return attributed to beauty in the previous research is discrimination. Instead, some of the “beauty premium” might actually be caused by blondes having higher ability because they are smarter. Future research on the economics of beauty needs to include both attractiveness and intelligence indicators to isolate the true effects of attractiveness.
While it is beyond the scope of this research to investigate genetic relationships between hair color and intelligence, results suggested that blondes grew up in homes with more reading material than women of other hair color. If living in a more literate environment is truly the driving reason for higher blonde intelligence, then the solution for people who wish they or their children were smarter is not to dye or bleach their hair. Instead, the prescription is to provide or engage in more intellectual stimulation, such as reading books.
Johnston (2010) and others have posed an interesting follow-up question, “Do blondes really have more fun?” Maybe in the next 50 years of collecting data on some of society’s serious problems, the NLSY79 will include enough extra information to also answer this question.
