I don’t have much time to blog today (or this week) due to drawing deadlines; so I’m just going to quote from this article in yesterday’s Times.
Researchers at the University of Alberta carefully observed how parents treated their children during trips to the supermarket. They found that physical attractiveness made a big difference.
The researchers noted if the parents belted their youngsters into the grocery cart seat, how often the parents’ attention lapsed and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child’s physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale.
The findings, not yet published, were presented at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
When it came to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion to attractiveness. When a woman was in charge, 4 percent of the homeliest children were strapped in compared with 13.3 percent of the most attractive children. The difference was even more acute when fathers led the shopping expedition – in those cases, none of the least attractive children were secured with seat belts, while 12.5 percent of the prettiest children were.
Homely children were also more often out of sight of their parents, and they were more often allowed to wander more than 10 feet away.
Age – of parent and child – also played a role. Younger adults were more likely to buckle their children into the seat, and younger children were more often buckled in. Older adults, in contrast, were inclined to let children wander out of sight and more likely to allow them to engage in physically dangerous activities.
Although the researchers were unsure why, good-looking boys were usually kept in closer proximity to the adults taking care of them than were pretty girls. The researchers speculated that girls might be considered more competent and better able to act independently than boys of the same age. The researchers made more than 400 observations of child-parent interactions in 14 supermarkets.
The article does go on to quote a skeptical expert, who points out that this study fails to control for class.
So that’s why my parents allowed me to be far more independent than my baby sister. It wasn’t that I was mature and less likely to get into mischeif, it was that she was much prettier than I was.
Pub Sociology had a skeptical take on this a few weeks back:
http://pubsociology.typepad.com/pub/2005/04/ugly_children_a.html
Controlling for class (and race) is a definite issue here. I suspect that controlling for number of siblings will also be an issue.
Personally, I’m more interested in what criteria they found makes one young child more aesthetically pleasing than another. They pretty much all look alike to me.
Um, there are seatbelts on the carts? And if I’m shopping, how is my attention not going to “lapse” from time to time? I have to look away from my child to actually get the food. And you just try to keep a kid from moving around in a shopping cart. Try!
Also, I’ve yet to find a parent who thinks that his or her child is ugly. I think my daughter is the most beautiful little girl in the world, but some would call her “homely” because she has some of the typical features of a child with Down syndrome. I guess I fail on all counts for this study. I must not love my ugly daughter! Ridiculous.
I really don’t think the study was claiming or implying that the parents of the homely kids didn’t love them or even that the parents would have judged the children on the “ugly” scale. I would be surprised by that finding for sure, but I’m not very surprised that pretty kids might actually get more attention. I hypothesized that when I was a kid!
Normally, they go for things like feature symmetry and proportionality and weight distribution for scientific beauty characteristics.
a lot of warning bells went off on that…
no controls that i see (race, class, sibling #)
attractiveness set by scale? sounds extremely arbitrary and subjective. how many researchers did the rating, the one doing the watching? only one? what was the race/age/marital status/social status/gender of the researcher vs the researched (has a huge impact on what they would consider attractive.. though there are universals.. there are also huge experiential factors)
how many subjects were there (would impact how statistically significant 4 vs 13% really is)
I’ll reserve judgement, but it smelling like preliminary and/or poor research that ends up getting a LOT of press and then never getting the ‘oops.. sorry… research was bad’ correction later.
I can’t imagine how they measured (accurately) facial symmetry and weight distribution in a supermarket.
This study sounds like a desparate cry for media attention, lol.
I don’t know anything about the study, but it would make evolutionary sense to devote more protection to the more attractive sibling, if you had more than one child and insufficient time/attention to give them each optimal management. Prettier children aren’t any more likely to reproduce, but they are more likely to grab a mate of similar high genetic quality. (One of the more grossly unfair aspects of reproductive biology; attractive people tend to have better genes, and attractive people tend to mate with other attractive people, Billy Joel aside.)
(In a futile attempt to forestall the froth, by attractive people I mean people who have high levels of body and facial symmetry and “correct” body shapes. Yes, there is some cultural construction of beauty – those “correct” body shapes – but symmetry is a universal. And symmetry turns out to be highly inversely correlated to the level of genetic defects that a person carries; everybody’s got some, some people have many more than others.)
I think Jasper about hit it. Watch the parent and kid for ten minutes in a supermarket, and you not only are sure they’re parent and kid, but you have evaluated the child’s attractiveness to the parent and gained a measure of how much attention that child receives overall from his or her parent(s)? Not buyin’ it.
The study’s premise may be correct, but this is no evidence for it.
Sounds like a doubtful study for all teh reasons mentione above, and because it’s based on a limited sample (here I asume that teh researchers didn’t go all over North America to observe).
Trey:
To say the least. How many of us have not noticed when chatting with our friends about people we find good-looking (whether they be children, peers, or objects of sexual attraction) that our friends’ 10’s are frequently our 4’s or unders? I don’t see how this experiment could be controlled enough to make it valid.
[groooooaaaaannnn] Oh jeez, not more evo-psych(obabble). Look, there is absolutely NOTHING about what you might call a “10” on the attractiveness scale, which would probably be my “3” or “4” (which in itself suggests the whole evo angle is pretty damn flimsy), relative to your own “3” or “4” that makes that 10 more genetically desirable or otherwise “fit”. Nothing. The whole evo-psych thing that goes on about facial symmetry indicating genetic fitness is rubbish, as demonstrated by the fact that people we often in the nastiest little recesses of our brains label “DAMN butt-ugly” frequently mate and reproduce quite effectively, with healthy offspring. You have to get far beyond what is conventionally considered “unattractive” or even “ugly” to get to the point of actual physical problems being indicated by physical appearance. And there’s also the point that a lot of quite serious, even fatal, genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis or haemophilia, don’t manifest themselves in “ugly” faces.
Anyone who relies on their subjective judgement of “attractiveness” in orderto reckon a person’s genetic fitness is, frankly, pretty damned ignorant. And any evolutionary psychology that would encode such preferences in the individuals of the species would be predisposing the species to a hell of a lot of failure and waste of perfectly good genetic material. Now that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?
Evo-psych is just the latest in the lame attempts by hegemonic groups to hold onto their power by claiming social inequalities are not socially constructed but are “natural” and therefore unchangeable…..and therefore there is no point in looking at US or OUR abuses and excesses, and no reason WE should have to change anything WE do or think–let alone hold ourselves accountable for our actions. It’s lazy and it’s contemptible and frankly I’m sick to the teeth with it.
I’d also like to point out that it’s pretty damned hilarious that the powers that be would tout evo-psych as an explanation for why those deemed “attractive” are supposedly given preferential treatment, given that so many of that powerful are actually DAMN butt-ugly. Is that an ad hom attack? Actually, at this point, I’m not too bothered. And I really think it raises a lot of interesting questions: firstly, if attractiveness indicates genetic superiority, how come so many of the powerful and influential are so hideous? Also, if attractiveness guarantees ones success in the social world, how come celebrity entertainers may be attractive (I personally would actually debate that one), but the people with the real power are……….usually not?
Oops, I forgot to indicate that the second quote in the above post is from Robert, not Trey. My apologies.
Crys T says: Evo-psych is just the latest in the lame attempts by hegemonic groups to hold onto their power by claiming social inequalities are not socially constructed but are “natural”? and therefore unchangeable…..and therefore there is no point in looking at US or OUR abuses and excesses, and no reason WE should have to change anything WE do or think”“let alone hold ourselves accountable for our actions. It’s lazy and it’s contemptible and frankly I’m sick to the teeth with it.
.
hear hear!
This study certainly sounds very doubtful. The explanation given by Dr. Harrell, like a lot of explanations in evolutionary psychology, does sound like something thought up after the research was done rather than a predictive hypothesis. I suspect that if the study had shown that more concern was shown for the safety of the ugly children some evolutionary reason could be given for that. Perhaps it would be said that the parents were showing that they valued the pretty children more by allowing them freedom and a chance to develop their minds and social skills, while the ugly children were simply strapped in because it was easier that way.
Nevertheless, Dr. Harrell’s idea that parents may value pretty children more is not totally ridiculous, even if this study is not enough to support it. I don’t think it is necessary for ugliness to be always or even usually a sign of some defect for the theory to be true. I expect that throughout most of human history beauty, other things being equal, has meant greater reproductive success. A beautiful woman is more likely to marry a rich and successful man. She probably will not have more children than an ugly woman but many more of her children will survive.
It is also not necessary for there to be universal standards of beauty, as long as there are standards that are common to each local population. It is not beauty that is being selected for, after all. It is a particular parental behaviour. Dr. Harrell’s theory amounts to saying that, if a limited amount of parental care is available, the allocation of that care is determined at least in part by the parents’ genes, and that, in the past, those parents who had genes that made them allocate more care to the children that they and the society they lived in saw as being prettier than the others had more grandchildren who survived to adulthood. I suppose that could be true. The parents need not be conscious of their behaviour and, of course, the behaviour is not unchangeable. Just because your genes make it more likely that you will do something does not mean that you have to do it.
Evo-psych is a field in a primitive state. It is prone to post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies. However, I don’t think the whole project is fundamentally ill-conceived, let alone malicious. If we can figure out genuine connections of cause and effect and real evolutionary pressures on the human psyche, that would be wonderful. You can’t expect these people to get all of the answers right immediately. That isn’t to say we should give them some kind of special suspension of skepticism about their results or views. I’m just saying that the whole project could be productive even if it’s off to a rocky start.
I agree with everyone who says that the study was sketchy, to say the least.
I know at least two people whose parents were convinced they were ugly, and the parents weren’t shy about telling them, so it does happen–and, of course, causes non-trivial damage.
Thanks for the auto-preview–it’s very handy.
You can’t expect these people to get all of the answers right immediately.
You can expect them to conduct well-designed studies that don’t start by assuming a premise is true.
That’s really one of the main reasons why evo-psych “research” is so suspect: what they do is take an example of human behaviour and decide that it *must* have an evolutionary basis (never mind that there are usually decades worth of research on that behaviour that show pretty compelling evidence of its being the result of cultural teaching, that it does indeed vary from culture to culture, to subcultures within larger cultures, etc.) and, well, basically cobble together some silly theory about how this behaviour is beneficial in terms of human evolution.
Funny how those behaviours so often tend to be discriminatory ones where the bias is against minority or minoritised groups, doesn’t it?
What really gives it away for me is the following: I notice that to date, whenever I’ve read any evo-psychobabble is how WASP beliefs and behaviours–and almost always North American WASP beliefs and behaviours–are taken as representative of “humanity” as a whole.
But that still is imposing a WASP North American perspective that says beauty is a more desirable characteristic in humans, especially as far as reproduction is concerned. Not all cultures agree: their are cultures in Africa where plainer women have been traditionally preferred over more beautiful ones for the purposes of marriage–along with having children and passing on that so-important DNA. And I think similar parallels can be found in cultures around the globe, especially peasant cultures, and they have been applied to both men and women. Hell, even in WASP-y societies, young women have until very recently been explicitly warned off “too” good-looking young men in a variety of ways. If physical beauty, no matter who is doing the defining or how narrowly or widely the definition is accepted, were truly valued in the way the study is saying it is, why should these examples exist?
Maybe it’s just that early 21st Century middle-class America has created an absolute fetish of “good looks”, and so many psychologists being what they are (absolutely ignorant of any culture, class or era but their own) look at the “here and now” of their own group (in that way hegemonic groups have of blinkering themselves to any points of view other than their own) as if it represented something more wide-reaching.
Katherine said:
But surely it’s only relatively recently in human history that we’ve had the concept of marriage, not to mention the concept of “rich and successful”. And I’m not at all sure that women and children depending on a male “provider” isn’t a relatively recent invention as well. Even in fairly recent history, society was organised quite differently, with more emphasis on the extended family and less on the isolated male-female (usually) pair. It still is in some societies. And if we think of human society thousands, not tens, of years ago, it was undoubtedly different again. It seems very unlikely it would not be!
I’m just saying, “most of human history” is a long time.
Also, this study could just as well imply, for example, that the types of people who would treat children badly/neglectfully are genetically more likely to have ugly children. Because it seemed to be comparing one family to another, rather than looking at a family with several children and asking whether the more attractive children are treated differently by the same parent.
As it is, the study seems meaningless to me.
I admit I had fallen for the sound bite version of the story.
Thanks for giving us enough facts to see that the study was (probably) bad science, and the coverage was bad journalism.
“Young Canadian parents belt their prettier kids more often.” One more reason for a fence at the border.
I’m not going to express an opinion on the study’s methodology, but I will say that I experienced a huge difference in how I was treated by my parents and by others when it became apparent that I was going to be a fat kid and had to start wearing glasses at about the same time, at age 6. Before that, I’d been either a cute, chubby baby or a 4-5 year old on a growth spurt. I was a very good looking child. I remember people regularly stopping my mom on the street, commenting on how beautiful I was and asking if I modeled. In a year, I went from that to being teased mercilessly by other kids and getting a lot less attention from my parents. For example, my dad has rolls and rolls of film of me between birth and kindergarten, but practically no pictures of me after age 5 exist. No doubt the researchers would have rated 5-year-old me as attractive and 7-year-old me as unattractive, but there was no genetic difference. I suppose you could say that my genetic flaws were hidden at 5 and visible at 7… Hum. The tendency to be heavier is a genetic asset in some situations. Can’t say the same for nearsightedness, I suppose. On the other hand, I’ve always been healthy and have nice, symmetrical features.
My God, the work hasn’t even been peer reviewed and published yet, its just a silly press release that probably leaves out every important factor in the study aside from the message the reporter thought would sell some papers. Hold your horses!!
The only mention of evo-psych came from a skeptical critic (who may or may not have been at the conference) and his argument is ludicrous. How are ugly parents supposed to know if their children are going to be ugly or not before they are born? Maybe if they were an ugly brother and sister trying to have kids (I suppose they would have much more serious problems to worry about than ugly kids) but 2 genetically different ugly parents having an ugly baby?? That critic obviously doesn’t understand genetics.
This type of study is not new, or uncommon, and the type of findings suggested here have been found in many well controlled experiments. It goes both ways too, babies respond more positively to attractive adults (although I doubt if they care if Mom and Dad are good looking or not).
As for trying to use these arguments for genetic superiority of a class of people, this is the type of rubbish the Germans used. The researchers made no such suggestion, nor would I fathom that they would care to.
From a sheerly practical stance, did the researchers check all the carts and the belts prior to the shopping observations? Matt and I are fairly consistent about buckling Sydney into the carts, but there have been tons of times where the belts are stuck in too tight of an adjustment, or the clasp is broken or worn down. Also, we are less likely to buckle her in if we are doing a quick swap from him to me or me to him and need to have her sitting down for a minute. It just seems unlikely to me that a parents perspective on their childs beauty is more important in their latching or not latching their child into a grocery cart, than convenience of the system, scatter-brainedness and in general chaos that seems to often take over on grocery runs as a parent.
I’d like to say that I don’t find the premise behind the experiment invalid: I think it’s possible that parents from certain cultures and certain social classes within them may very well show a preference for those children who exhibit features that are deemed by that class and culture to be more “attractive”.
The problem is that, as so many here have pointed out, the methodology in this specific study is so subjective (eg having the researcher in question assigning an attractiveness rating to the child) and otherwise flawed (for just one example of many, consider Kim’s point: seat belts don’t always work, so how the hell would a researcher know that not using one means less regard for the child?) that I don’t think the study itself can hold up under real scrutiny.
I’ve also said that I’m aware it was Robert who brought the evo psych angle into the discussion here. The results of the study (if it had been well done) could just as well have been used to show how cultural obsession with looks translates into unequal treatment of children. But, I’m also very sure that a lot of people on the street and in the media will use this study as an example of genetic influence on human behaviour, as it is the current fashion these blame-the-victim, hold-no-one-accountable days.
Sure, there are lots of ways this study could have gone wrong.
But many people, looking at kids (or at grown-ups) do make a snap judgment: “cute” or “not-so-cute”. (Or “really cute” and “yuck”.) And although your cute may not be the same as my cute, there’s enough similarity for Gerber to know who to put on the baby food jar.
Also, families do often have a child who is known and acknowledged within the family to be “the pretty one”.
I think it’s worthwhile and interesting to try to figure out a way to assess whether parents treat ‘the pretty one’ better.
It’s statements like this that make me skeptical of evolutionary (pop) psychology – what possible meaningful (non-circular) definition can “high genetic quality” have?
Ted,
The sceptical critic was not the only person to mention evolutionary psychology. Dr. Harrell, the leader of the research team who carried out the study, first suggested an evolutionary explanation of the results. According to the NYT article he said that parents care more for prettier children because they ‘represent the best genetic legacy.’ The explanation does not work unless ugly people have consistently had less reproductive success than beautiful people for a long enough time to affect the evolution of parental behaviour. The sceptical critic said that ugly people probably do not have fewer children than beautiful people. I expect they don’t in modern Canada but, of course, human beings did not evolve in modern Canada.
It would certainly be ridiculous to suggest that parents can predict how pretty their children are going to be but the theory does not demand that and, as far as I can tell, no one suggested it.
Of course Dr. Harrell may be wrong about the reasons for the parents’ behaviour and still right about the behaviour. I think you have a good point when you say that we should not write off the study on the basis of one newspaper article.
Emily:
Absolutely. As long as we’re going to be honest about the limitations of the studies we do and don’t try to do some sort of ridiculous contortions in order to force the square peg of the results into the round hole of our a priori theories.
That one I have to disagree with strenuously. From personal experience, I can say with all honesty but a lot of personal shame at having to expose my nasty little thoughts in public, that when it comes to babies
many people’s cute is my “eeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!!” No two ways about it. And when it comes to pretty women, it’s the same often enough to be worthy of note. And when it comes to men considered sexually attractive, the same.
And what has this sort of theory got to say about why so many of us end up finding people we objectively consider homely or downright ugly sexually attractive?
Jeff:
Yep. And why exactly would “good looks” be an appropriate indicator of this putative “high genetic quality”. ARE there really people out there who really do believe that there is something intrinsically superior about the genes of prettier people? Scary.
And rubbish. There is NOTHING to suggest that prettier people are any healthier or in any other way genetically better off than ugly people. Nothing. And to say there is, or even to suggest it might be so is nonsense. These are ideas that should have been discarded centuries ago. The fact that they are rearing their heads again says something very frightening about the way Western society is heading.
Katherine,
I think the ‘best genetic legacy’ part are the words of the reporter and not the researcher. Those words are not in quotes in the article, so I assume they are paraphrased from what Dr. Harrell said. Whether or not the reporter interpretted his words correctly is arguable.
Crys T,
I’m totally confused by what you have written. For starters, sexual attractiveness and attractiveness as assessed in this study are 2 completely different things. Do you think the researchers were assessing if the kids were sexy? In facial attractiveness studies sexual cues are always taken out (no hair, no bodies, just the face) and its usually fairly challenging to figure out if the face is from a male or female because they are generally morphed together from groups of faces. I’m not sure if you have ever participated in these kinds of studies, but I used to design and run them (once upon a time), and I think what you are imagining they are all about is totally different from the reality.
Secondly, I don’t see where any of the researchers have made any argument about pretty people being genetically superior. Moreover, to assume that the researchers decided themselves which children were attractive and not a panel of neutral observers is unfounded. The only place where this is explicitly stated is in the other blog, and I doubt if they know if that is the case. If that was true, the researchers would have virtually no chance of getting their findings published (and likely would have been laughed out of the conference hall in the first place).
Finally, because a trait, be it behavioral or physical, offers an organism an advantage does not mean that the advantage equals genetic superiority. Evolution only means that organisms change over time bringing out new species etc., etc.. Natural selection (which I think is what ‘evolutionary advantage’ would be referring to) means that a certain genetic mutation offers an organism a survival or reproductive advantage at a given place and time. Taken out of the time and place context the “selection” of a mutation may or may not occur. Any attempt to assign “genetic superiority” based on our current understanding of genetics and natural selection is unjustified.
It’s statements like this that make me skeptical of evolutionary (pop) psychology – what possible meaningful (non-circular) definition can “high genetic quality”? have?
Lower incidence of damaged chromosomes. Nearly all people have at least some damaged genetic material (radiation, environmental toxins, etc.). Damaged chromosomes impact facial and bodily symmetry. Facial and bodily symmety impact perceived attractiveness. Ergo, perceived attractiveness has a relationship to genetic quality.
There is NOTHING to suggest that prettier people are any healthier or in any other way genetically better off than ugly people. Nothing.
Except for all the many, many, many pieces of research that indicate that prettier people are better off, genetically and otherwise.
I started going through Google, but screw it; you can type “correlation between attractiveness and genetic health” just as easily as I can.
Please note that I’m not advocating for any theory of genetic superiority. A person with bad, but undamaged, genes, is arguably worse off than someone who has better genes but has sustained more genetic damage in their life. (Additionally, what constitutes “bad” or “good” can vary greatly by societal and material conditions. For example, if you’re a farmer, a gene complex that causes a person to have a predilection towards working in extended 12-hour shifts is beneficial in Norway. It will kill your ass in Mississippi.)
These are complex questions, not made easier by the tragic history of genetics in the last century or the emotionally-laden terms that are often used. “Superior” carries a lot of baggage; it also means just plain “better than in a particular context or for a particular use”. The F-22a is generally a superior fighter plane to the Mirage; that doesn’t mean that the Mirage is crap, or that we should round up the French and put them in camps.
(Maybe just a few of the French.)
Damaged Chromosomes??? It doesn’t matter unless its in the gametes.
I’m sorry Robert, but I don’t buy the argument. Those damaged chromosomes that got passed on from either Mom or Dad or both might lead to deformities but I wouldn’t count that in a symmetry study (definite exclusion criteria). Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by damaged chromosomes, but in my world that means serious business, not the kind of subtle changes that make someone more or less attractive. Moreover, unless the damaged chromosomes occur fairly early in development (if they weren’t passed on from Mom or Dad) I fail to see how they could affect symmetry. They might cause diseases like cancer which could influence symmetry, but that’s already a more serious issue than an alteration in attractiveness.
Here’s what struck me as I read this. Keep in mind that I don’t know all the facts about the study methodology. In the matter of seat belting, they said that only 4% of the “homeliest kids” were buckled in whereas 13.3% of the most attractive ones were. The researchers made 400 observations. I could find no confirmation, since the study has not yet been published, but I will assume that the category of homeliest kids would then most likely number no more than 100. Ditto the most attractive kids category. So we are really discussing a mere difference of 4 (or less)homely seat-belted kids vs. 13 (or less) attractive seat-belted kids. How can you possibly draw a conclusion of any sort from differences in 9 observations?
If this wasn’t damning enough, the study also says that younger children were more likely to be seat-belted than older children. I personally find a far greater percentage of younger kids to be attractive than older kids, and I suspect that the researchers may well share a similar view. (I myself was a gorgeous baby, a pretty toddler, a kinda cute kid until 2nd grade, and it all went downhill from there. I know lots of others with the same story.) Therefore, we would expect children rated attractive by the researchers to be buckled in more often than homely kids, simply because they were more likely to be younger!
A sample size of 100 is large enough to draw meaningful results from.
If they didn’t norm for age, you are right that there’s an issue there. But they probably did norm for age.
Robert wrote:
I blogged about this yesterday, and spent some time looking for research that supports that claim. I was suprised to find it was really difficult to find any. Magazine-type articles, yes. Research papers, no. The closest thing is the paper by a research group at the LSE that comes up when I type in the search terms you suggested. It’s a bit of a strange one, arguing for a correlation between beauty and intelligence, though it seems to consider intellingence as a property of men, and beauty as the domain of women.
But, that aside, this is a paper by sociologists, and while such research may be valuable, it’s not the same as research demonstrating a correllation between facial symmetry (for example) and the presence/absence of genes that control other aspects of health and physiology. No genetic testing was done, and the assumption that “intelligence” is entirely or mostly genetically determined is a shaky one, to say the least. Even once you’ve defined what intelligence is.
If you (or anyone else) is aware of relevant research that’s been doneon the subject, I’d be very interested to hear about it. I’m not convinced by the theory, but am not above changing my mind if I’m shown to be wrong!
Well, it’s a study that agrees with what most people already thought, so screw methodology.
Sarah,
I think I read the same article as you and I didn’t get it. The article was in a journal called “Intellegence”. Is that what you read? I didn’t buy at least one of their four assumptions and they lost from there. I also really got lost on the men and power and women and beauty thing. Seemed to me the logic didn’t add up, not to mention, anytime the IQ factor gets introduced I recall the writings of the late, great Stephen J Gould and skepticism takes hold.
I have also looked for some research articles, in scientific journals, on the topic, and haven’t found a single one that actually looked at genetics and attractiveness. I’m not suprised though, we have no idea what genes are involved in attractiveness, even though certain traits (like symmetry) seem to be universal contributers to attractiveness. Alot of the behavioral type stuff tends to get funded by the cosmetic industry, for obvious reasons, and by crime-type organizations (like the FBI and INTERPOL) because it is related to face recognition. I think it would be hard to justify a big expensive genetic study on attractiveness and genes through say the National Institues of Health. They and we have many more pressing issues to worry about.
There is some interesting stuff out there on genetic theories and attractiveness and mate selection, mostly from a Dr. Langouis (sp?) and Dr. Thornhill. As a molecular biology leaning neuroscientist, I find many of their theories intriguing but I don’t think there is any actual genetic evidence to support them. On the other hand, the human behavioral and zoological evidence is fairly convincing. If you ask me, their feild is in desperate need of an amazingly clever molecular biologist to pull it together, but I kindof doubt that will happen anytime soon.
Ted: ” For starters, sexual attractiveness and attractiveness as assessed in this study are 2 completely different things. Do you think the researchers were assessing if the kids were sexy?”
No, and I never, ever suggested that. I gave several examples of “attractiveness”, including finding children or babies cute/pretty and finding your peers good-looking. Only one of my examples included finding others sexually attractive. I think you were misunderstanding my position: I was arguing not with the study itself (though the way it has been described suggests it leaves a lot to be desired regaring methodology), but with the conclusions some posters here were coming to based on the study.
” In facial attractiveness studies sexual cues are always taken out (no hair, no bodies, just the face) and its usually fairly challenging to figure out if the face is from a male or female because they are generally morphed together from groups of faces. I’m not sure if you have ever participated in these kinds of studies, but I used to design and run them (once upon a time), and I think what you are imagining they are all about is totally different from the reality.”
I am a researcher currently doing fieldwork in social psychology, so please, I know my methodology, thanks.
“I don’t see where any of the researchers have made any argument about pretty people being genetically superior.”
I was responding to the opinions expressed by one or two posters *here*. If you read over the responses again, you will see at least a couple of instances where people have implied exactly that.
“Moreover, to assume that the researchers decided themselves which children were attractive and not a panel of neutral observers is unfounded.”
And even if the judgements *had* been made by a “panel of neutral observers, itself a mere suggestion, in NO WAY means that those judgements are not culturally and class based. Unless you can show that that panel was made up of a culturally, nationally and socioeconomically diverse group. And, let’s be honest, exactly how likely is that?
“Any attempt to assign “genetic superiority”? based on our current understanding of genetics and natural selection is unjustified. ”
I certainly won’t argue that.
Robert: “Facial and bodily symmety impact perceived attractiveness. Ergo, perceived attractiveness has a relationship to genetic quality.”
Nonsense. As I’ve already said, there are a lot of butt-ugly people out there with perfectly “good genes”–though, as Jeff and Ted have pointed out, that term doesn’t really have a whole lot of meaning, at least, not in the way laypersons understand it. I can’t claim to know for sure, but I imagine laypersons are much more likely to bang on about “good genes” than geneticists are.
Also, please explain how this theory of yours (“pretty face=’better’ genes”) deals with what I brought up earlier: there are many genetically-carried diseases/disorders, such as cystic fibrosis or haemophilia that IN NO WAY manifest themselves through “unattractiveness”.
You can’t just pick and choose the examples that support what you want to believe and toss whatever’s inconvenient out the window. Ugly people are no more likely to be ill, lacking in intelligence or otherwise feeble than pretty people are. To say they are is utter nonsense. Conversely, many people who are ill or dying DUE TO GENETIC DISORDERS are quite attractive. There is no way of getting round that.
“A sample size of 100 is large enough to draw meaningful results from.”
It all depends on the size of the entire population you are drawing that sample from. And if that population is of any size at all, you are going to have to do a lot of hedging, acknowledging of limitations and other assorted arse-covering techniques when you present your results. Hell, in my current study, my sample size is more than twice that, out of a total population of less than 100,000, and I’m having to qualify my conclusions all over the place. To try and generalise results based on a sample size of 100—or even 400–to the entire human race is preposterous. Especially when all those studied come from the same geographic area. There’d need to be a HELL lot of studies that replicated the methods and came up with similar results before we could even begin to consider this a general human trend.
According to the different sample size calculators I’ve tried, even with a target population of only 300, you’d still need a sample size of between 169-200.
The most you could reasonably hope to do with such a small sample is get some interesting ideas for use in a larger study.
(and yes, BTW, I’m very aware that a lot of psychological research bases its conclusions on similarly small sample sizes that are similarly constrained by geography: that’s one of the big reasons I’m so sceptical about so much psychological research)
Crys T,
And even if the judgements *had* been made by a “panel of neutral observers, itself a mere suggestion, in NO WAY means that those judgements are not culturally and class based. Unless you can show that that panel was made up of a culturally, nationally and socioeconomically diverse group. And, let’s be honest, exactly how likely is that?
I couldn’t disagree more. I think there is good evidence that perceived facial attractiveness is genetically determined, in other words, all humans find certain types of faces attractive. Environment probably plays a role, but I would argue it is so minor as to be negligible. Of course this all changes if you know the person you are judging and then all biases come into play. I would imagine that you would not agree, but this is why you are a sociologist and I am a molecular biologist :-).
As per your other points, I am a molecular biologist and I would never claim to know my sociology methodology. Some of your previous comments indicated a fundamental misunderstanding on how facial attractiveness studies are performed. I suppose I’ll take your word for it.
As for the stats, which test did they perform? How were the samples grouped, and how many groups were there? This was not reported anywhere so how do you know what the power could possibly be? There is nothing worse than bad science, but I hope we don’t judge it based on newspaper articles.
Finally:
No, and I never, ever suggested that. I gave several examples of “attractiveness”?, including finding children or babies cute/pretty and finding your peers good-looking. Only one of my examples included finding others sexually attractive. I think you were misunderstanding my position: I was arguing not with the study itself (though the way it has been described suggests it leaves a lot to be desired regaring methodology), but with the conclusions some posters here were coming to based on the study.
I realize you never said that, it was tongue in cheek… But I also didn’t notice any other posters making comments on the downfall of Western Society or how terrible we have become, or the hegemony of the elitist good looking people, this was all coming from you. I didn’t see other posters jumping to conclusions (just posing questions and ideas), aside from yourself.
Ted – I wasn’t really talking about trying to determine which genes contribute directly to attractiveness/facial symmetry, but about possibly trying to prove the suggestion that people with symmetrical faces, or people who score highly on “attractiveness tests” have other genetic characteristics that mean they have higher “genetic quality”, or lack genetic defects, or whatever.
I do agree that this isn’t likely to happen in the near future, now that I think about it. I’d just assumed, from the way this is considered fact in some circles, that there was actually good evidence for it. It looks as though there isn’t. Yes it’s certainly a plausible theory, and probably does contain some truth, but I suspect the whole truth is rather more complex.
And yes, that sounds like the same article I read. It was very unconvincing, especially when they mixed data about “general intelligence” collected recently with results of IQ tests from as far back as the 1910’s (haven’t the notions of IQ from that time been long since discredited?), as though they were the same thing. It seemed a rather sloppy attempt to patch together random bits of research to come to a predetermined conclusion.
I found myself wondering – why don’t they do a test themselves. Why not take a group of people, rank them by attractiveness using whatever criteria are usual, then ask them to take an intelligence test, and look for correlation. That wouldn’t be perfect, of course, especially given the difficulties of defining and testing for “intelligence”, but it would be better than what they did.
Excuse me, but I never said that either. In fact, if you’d actually go back and look at what I DID say, a lot of it was pointing out that in fact most people in the elite AREN’T particularly attractive, sexually or otherwise.
What interests me about this whole thing is the way that those elites, despite the fact that they themselves are not particularly Beautiful People themselves, and also, it must be said, many evo psych-positive scientists– who as far as I can see are for the most part not much to write home about as far as looks go either– seem to be so gung-ho about proving these theories. Why they do it, I don’t know, but I’m sure that the article Sarah brought up in which intelligence was seen as a “property of men” and beauty as a “property of women” likely offers some clues.
So much of what passes for “research” these days really is not much more than elite-funded apologias for the status quo.
And, btw, I’m not necessarily including the study above in this criticism, because I simply don’t know enough about it. Also, I think that from a social psychological point of view, given the proper reservations and caveats, it may have something to say about a certain set of behaviours of a certain specific population.
And there are also racists who will never, ever say a Black child is good-looking. And sexists who will always rate a blonde girl more highly over a girl with any other colour hair. And on and on and on. Scientists like to believe that the work they do and they questions they choose to ask are not culturally-bound, but that is wishful thinking. There IS no such thing as “neutral panel” when it comes to judging a bunch of children on physical attractiveness. And in any case, the idea of a “neutral panel” was your own. There’s nothing so far to suggest that this was even done. In fact there has been nothing at all that has contradicted the idea that the ratings of the childrens’ supposed attractiveness were not done by each individual researcher on the spot in a totally subjective way.
And this whole “facial symmetry” thing is a red herring as well. I can believe that there may well be an *upper limit* to the degree of facial asymmetry that humans will accept before judging a person too unattractive, but to generalise from that there are universally constant degrees of attractiveness to the human face that all humans will recognise is preposterous. And what this study is addressing: it is trying to assess different behaviour for DEGREES OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS, most of which would be well *below* that upper limit to acceptable degree of asymmetry.
And it’s once we get past that upper limit when your dog-ugly becomes my cute, and your gorgeous becomes my hideous. Now you can tap-dance round that one all day and long into the night, but the fact remains that there is no proof whatsoever of a constant, universal scale that defines “beauty”. All the asymmetry theory really doing is suggesting there are outer limits to that definition.
The whole point certain people here were raising regarding this study was that it’s somehow “proven” or at least understandable that prettier people are more likely to breed, and that this is why prettiness is somehow an evolutionary advantage. The problems with that assumption are probably many, and two I can think of right off the bat are 1) prettier according to whom? and 2) I’m sure most of us can come up with scores of real-life examples of homely people we know sprogging like mad while a surprising number of our supposedly-gorgeous pals stay childless. Of course, conveniently for the evo-psych enthusiasts, there probably are no studies or stats to back up that anecdotal observation–mainly because there’s not a lot of money currently around to support most studies that are going to contradict the US middle-class’s current obsession with phyical perfection as an indicator of moral goodness.
Feck it!!! I read the following 3 times before posting & it sounded okay: “And it’s once we get past that upper limit when your dog-ugly becomes my cute” This should say, “it’s once we get BELOW that upper limit”…..as in “within the boundaries”……………..
Crys T,
How can you say these sort of things and expect to be taken seriously:
You say you never said anything of the sort I accused you of, and then you proceed to write exactly the sort of thing in the next sentence.
Science is not about proving your agenda!!! Who are these elite-funded apologias? You consistently offer up this type of venom with no proof. This poor guy who did the study is trying to improve grocery cart safety for goodness sake. I bet he was funded by the Grocery or Insurance industry.
I agree that it is nearly impossible to find neutral observers, but you can have people with no immediate bias. What you are proposing would make any psychophysical study nearly impossible. Might as well not do it I suppose.
As per the attractiveness thing, it is not about beauty or ugly, it is about attractiveness on a scale. Very few would fall into the “beautiful” or “ugly” part of the scale. Thing is, no one tries to define what the ugly and beautiful part of the scale is in the first place. I don’t think anyone cares either. If you don’t believe the symmetry and attractiveness thing, disagree because you’ve read the lit and don’t find it convincing. I’ve read the lit and have published in it, and I find it convincing and well conducted. Most of the faces that are used aren’t even real either. They are computer reconstructions from laser scanning devices which record shape and texture dimensions of a face independently. They are then recombined and averaged with other faces to create a series of composites. There are other theories out there which are also convincing and well conducted. Could be one or the other or a combination of all of them, who knows. I happen to think its a worthwhile pursuit, and can answer some important questions about our behavior.
I said that I believe that a good portion of what humans find attractive in other faces is genetic. Surely racism and sexism are not genetic. This is why you don’t rely on a panel of observers made up of one racist or sexist. There are always outliers and n never = 1.
And this one really chaps my hide. Money is not given to researchers after the fact to those that come up with data to support a conclusion. I’m not sure how it works in the sociology world, but I’m sure its not like that.
Sarah,
I think something like this has been done and Stephen J Gould wrote a masterful bit about it in The Mismeasure of Man. The book longsince left my shelf for a library so I can’t come up with pages, but I’m fairly sure there is a bit about it. Anyway, if you are interested in this sort of thing, that book is a masterful account of how these types of studies have been misused in the past and how we have learned from looking at such falacious measures of geneticly related intellegence. IQ may in fact be a decent measure of intellegence, the argument is it likely has nothing to do with genetics, and that is where his argument begins.
No, science *shouldn’t* be about proving your agenda. In the Real World, however, scientific-sounding studies are used every day for exactly that end. And evo-psych is in large part just the latest chapter in this long and by now quite frankly boring story. White middle class guys have been using “science” for generations to look for excuses to naturalise their position, with the aid of a few useful idiots from other classes to give the whole farce the superficial appearance of “objectivity”.
And please bother reading what I wrote before flying off the handle: you accused me of saying there was a “hegemony of the elitist good looking people” when I never said any such thing. In fact, I said that the hegemonic group is NOT conspicuously good-looking.
In case you were unaware: elite groups DO fund scientific research. It may not always be for shady ends, but, sad as it may be to acknowledge, many times it is.
Oh of course, one can no longer have an informed opinion without offering iron-clad “proof”. Well, sorry, until the people who’ve done these studies come out and admit that what they do comes out of the desire to naturalise the position of that hegemonic group, I can’t offer you any. I’d also like to point out that you can also offer up absolutely zero in the way of “proof” that YOUR belief that evo-psych is done out of honest scientific curiosity is “true”, either. Looking at who is funding what research questions is to my mind pretty important in judging the level of bias.
Science is not “neutral”. That naive belief was dismantled some years back. The questions that receive enough funding for research are for the most part those that elite groups want asked. Other questions that might, if receiving enough funds for proper study, offer up evidence to contradict that elite-endorsed research are often denied any chance at all. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to get funding for research that might challenge the elite position. I can tell you first-hand it’s frequently impossible. But of course, whatever works to validate the status quo is in itself viewed as “neutral” by large sections of the public and the scientific community, even though it is no such thing.
Again, I really wish you would bother reading what I write before attacking me for things I never said. I’ve already discussed my opinion of this study–and not in the terms you’re trying to impose on my views, I might add. Please go back and read again before making more off-base rebuttals to assertions I never made.
You can do it. You just have to provide the relevant demographic information of those observers, not commit the fallacy of declaring them “neutral”, and take this all into account when presenting your results. Is that too much like hard work or what?
What, am I losing my memory??? Oh no, wait, here it is from my post that you are currently lambasting: “I can believe that there may well be an *upper limit* to the degree of facial asymmetry that humans will accept before judging a person too unattractive”
Once again, if you’re not going to read, please stop commenting. Conversely, if you’re going to comment, please read. Since your reply doesn’t seem to me to be responding to what I actually wrote, I’ll hold off on my own reponse for now.
And I don’t. I dont’ because what I’m hearing from historians and a wide variety of cultural anthropologists doesn’t bear that theory out. Like I said, I can believe an upper limit to degree of acceptable facial asymmetry, but once you get below that, it’s all pretty much up for grabs. The problem with so many “hard” scientists is that they conduct their research as if humans lived in a historical & cultural vacuum. And when it’s pointed out to them that their conclusions aren’t borne out by well-established findings in historical and/or cultural research, they blithely minimise everything but their own work. It’s what I said earlier: you can’t just focus on what you want to see and throw out every other piece of evidence that contradicts you just because it’s inconvenient for your theory. But this is what so much current “scientific” research on human behaviour seems to be doing.
Of course I don’t think so. I think very little of human behaviour is genetic.
Again, WHERE did I say this? Oh right, yet again: I didn’t. Money is given to researchers BEFOREHAND because their proposals indicate they are asking questions certain people want to hear, that this research will be conducted in a way that certain people want to see, and, very importantly, those proposals indicate that the researcher has the bias that the people with the dosh to hand out want imposed on the results.
Crys T,
I’ll tell you who the group I was in and the others in the UT system were funded by. From INTERPOL as part of a grant to try to improve computer systems for recognizing faces from different camera angles based on how humans do it. To this end we were working on all facets of how humans recognize and percieve faces (this included looking at how other races percieve and recognize faces from different races). This was in the late 90s. Believe it or not, the overall goal was to come up with computer programs to recognize known terrorists and criminals in airports using a high throughput screening system with strategically placed cameras. I have no idea if they’ve improved on this or not, and I doubt if they would tell us anyway. We were only a small cog in the big wheel. Our other funding source came from NIH (along with the others in the UT system). All grants were fully peer reviewed and funded by multidiscipline panels. Some others, but not us, had smallish grants from the cosmetic industry. They were interested in how humans percieve attractiveness and in some of the computer models. The way this sort of thing works is you apply for money (its available to anyone and reviewed by an independent scientific panel) and if you get a high enough merit score you get money. The industry just asks for results from the research before it is published (~1 month head start which is about the lag between acceptance of a paper and publication).
I am now in more basic sciences and we still get some funding from industry. Its either contract work (like assessing an animal model of disease) or independently review funds on a topic they put out for funding (like novel approaches to pain management). They never tell us a thing, not even a hypothesis they might have floating around. Occassionally they call us out for consultation and we give them preprints of manuscripts (again about a one month head start). Salary supplements used to be allowed but this has been struck down for industry funds by NIH and other Universities. All other funding (which is the vast majority of our and other’s money) comes from NIH and CIHR, which is the same thing in Canada.
I read every word you wrote, multiple times.
I have been in this practice long enough to know how it works. Maybe sociology is different, but what you are proposing is just not true. Until you can provide substantial evidence I will not believe it. The proposal means that the researcher has a hypothesis. This is the basis of the scientific method. It is not a “bias”. Those who believe too much in their hypotheses are nearly always doomed to complete and utter failure. I honestly cannot think of a single hypothesis that I have had that has turned out to be correct. Hasn’t stopped the research though, you learn something new, change the approach or question and move on.
Look, I know many of these types of people, your “hard scientists” (in fact they comprise nearly ever person I know) and I don’t see that to be the case at all. Quite the contrary actually. Why do you think academics are so intent to stay at universities when industry types try to draw them away with big bucks. Its not the pay, I assure you. Its the interaction with others and the free exchange of ideas from your own and other disciplines.
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This is an interesting study indeed.
I don’t think the results are that suprising actually. From an evolutionary point of view: since symmetrical and better proportionned children will evolve into attractive adults and will mate other attractives with superior genes (gene that confer their host a socio biological advantage) it only make sense for them to care more about their progeniture since they are more “valuable”.
But, like it was mentionned before, the study didn’t take into account the fact that attractives will have more beautiful children and that uglies will breed more uglies so that might screw the results a bit…
Good lord, what weird studies people come up with. Here’s a simple theory – unhealthy children are less attractive. Bad parents are more likely to have unhealthy children.