London, Jan. 17: Attractive men and women generally have higher IQs, a study in England conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) found.
“Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence,” said the LSE lead researcher, Mr Satoshi Kanazawa, in the latest issue of the journal, Intelligence.
The study indicated attractive men have IQs that are 13.6 points above the average, while beautiful women are 11.4 points higher than average, a report in the Daily Mail said.
Since intelligent men are more inclined to achieve more success, they are “more likely to marry beautiful women”, Mr Kanazawa said.
“Given that both intelligence and physical attractiveness are highly heritable, there should be a positive correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness in the children’s generation.”
Mr Kanazawa’s findings were based on the National Child Development Study, which followed 17,419 people since their birth in a single week in March, 1958.
Throughout their childhood up to early adulthood, they were given a series of tests for academic progress, intelligence and marked on appearance.
However, Mr Kanazawa says this should not be considered a justification for believing beautiful people are better than everyone else.