The role of height in the sex difference in intelligence

[FarCenter]

http://ajp.press.illinois.edu/122/4/reyniers.html

SATOSHI KANAZAWA and DIANE J. REYNIERS
London School of Economics and Political Science

Recent studies conclude that men on average have higher intelligence than women by 3–5 IQ points. However, the ultimate evolutionary question of why men should have evolved to have higher intelligence than women remains. We suggest that men may have slightly higher intelligence than women through 4 mechanisms: (1) assortative mating of intelligent men and beautiful women, (2) assortative mating of tall men and beautiful women, (3) an extrinsic correlation between height and intelligence produced by Mechanisms 1 and 2, and (4) a higher-thanexpected offspring sex ratio (more sons) among tall (and hence intelligent) parents. Consistent with our suggestion, we show that men may have higher IQs than women because they are taller, and once we control for height women have slightly higher IQs than men. The correlation between height and IQ and the female advantage in intelligence persist even after we control for health as a measure of genetic quality, as well as physical attractiveness, age, race, education, and earnings. Height is also strongly associated with intelligence within each sex.

[niyad]

1. this is actually from the Onion, yes?

[hlthe2b]

3. "Measured intelligence" (indeed)

:eyes:

[seabeyond]

11. well.... if nothing else i am thrilled with the responses to this. truly knocked on ass

reading thru this. even if.... 3-5 pts?, even if.... so what. yet all the conclusions.... fuck.

hubby asked me to tone down the oh my fuckin god.... as i was reading. lol

but

i am thrilled with responses if nothing else. it is the op that seriously posts this shit that is the concern. it will become the ultimate gospel for the very very small handful here on du.

[Make7]

2. Or perhaps IQ tests are not entirely gender neutral... (n/t )

[FarCenter]

4. Or maybe they are not height neutral

On the other hand, NBA players don't seem to be geniuses...

[ananda]

5. Perhaps sexism isn't exactly gender neutral either!

nt

[MineralMan]

6. OK, that paper gets a C- and won't apply towards credit for

your advanced degree. Sorry. Bad logic.

[NightWatcher]

7. Let's put men and women together, see which one is smarter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YajTg5ti4mo&feature=related

Let us put men and women together
See which one is smarter
Some say men, but I say no
Women run the men like a puppet show

It ain't me
It's the people that say
Men are leading the women astray
But I say, it's the women today
Smarter than the man in every way

Chorus:
That's right
The women are smarter
That's right
The women are smarter
That's right
The women are smarter
Smarter than a man in every way

[HeresyLives]

8. Easily explained by Kanazawa's wiki entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa

You'll especially love his remarks on Ann Coulter.

[redqueen]

17. wow

[seabeyond]

51. .

:)

[seabeyond]

21. his sole purpose is to confine all numbers and info into his bullshit evo theory. ya

that is truly an "honest" way of presenting science.

this is the cult like group of males roaming our lands right now. scary thought

[KittyWampus]

37. whoa, that was an interesting read.

[Confusious]

55. Seems he's pretty low on the Intelligence graph himself

I guess they give out doctorates to anyone these days.

Maybe I can get me one on the Internet!!!!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

56. And here I thought General Ripper was a fictitious character. Wotta psycho.

[Captain Hilts]

9. Who designed the IQ test? Men? I thought so! They wrote the Bible too!

[harkadog]

25. What makes you think only men design IQ tests?

Just because women don't do quite as well as men? Poor logic at best. The idea that men and women are "equal" or the "same" in every way is just nonsense.

[Captain Hilts]

27. No, I've read some history on them, actually. It all went back to the

testing vs. essay debate, and so forth.

In academia this comes up a lot.

[harkadog]

34. I believe you but it just seems in current times

women would be designing the tests also. Especially since women outnumber men in universities now.

[Captain Hilts]

42. But these - and their format - go much farther back.

Testing, in general, becomes an issue in teaching because male students usually do better on standardized - multiple choice tests than female students. Female students write better essays. Male students are FAR more likely to speak up in class, and so forth.

It's part of a larger debate.

2-5points just isn't statistically all that significant anyway.

[harkadog]

46. Men are risk takers, women not so much.

That is why they do better on multiple choice tests -- they are more willing to choose an answer they are not quite sure of. Same thing about speaking up in class. They are less afraid of saying something that it "wrong".

[Captain Hilts]

49. Yes. And men are also rewarded and encouraged to take risks.

Girls who are risk takers are called 'tomboys' and learn early that this kind of behavior isn't often rewarded in girls.

I think these things are changing somewhat.

[seabeyond]

47. tell boys, give me an essay, even when not well versed in subject and i could always kick ass

multiple choice, i could always find more than one option. none of them were definite for me. too open for questioning.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. The measures of intelligence that are quantifiable do not tell a complete story. n/t

[eShirl]

13. +1

[ThomWV]

12. Are you trying to say that men and women like to have sex with tall attractive intelligent partners?

How could that be?

[harkadog]

26. It is saying women do

It is called attraction.

[treestar]

30. I imagine it is trying to say the usual

That men like looks and women like brains. Therefore assuring smart but ugly men everywhere.

When I was a young and beautiful girl, I liked those good looking boys best. Something wrong with my genes, I guess.

[seabeyond]

35. we want 'em old, ugly lol lol and..... ya right. cant even say with straight face

evolutionary psychology is all about stroking the fragile male ego.

[treestar]

38. When I was young and pretty all I could think about was getting

me a guy with money, old, ugly, that didn't matter! :sarcasm: And it was only biology and would have had nothing to do with the money! :rofl:

[seabeyond]

44. except golly gee, went with the sexually peaking 19 yr old dudes.

my bad. money and forever wasnt high on my list. but then, i defied evolutionary theory even then, wanting to play and not marry and birth those babies.

[tonysam]

14. Anybody who thinks men have "higher" intelligence than women

is full of shit.

[seabeyond]

15. iq, i kick my older brothers ass and he is 6'2". my middle brother, about same height kicks mine

at about 186 iq. and not a chance you could pay me to take his place.

not gonna put iq into a gender fight. no way in hell.

[HughMoran]

16. "even after we control for ..." yeah, OK

Controls are never as good as they think they are.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

18. The gender IQ difference is not presumptively meaningful

Men and women perform differently (on average; in aggregate) on different things.

How much weight you give to tests of different abilities favors or disfavors sexes.

Since there is no "right answer" to how abilities ought to be weighted male and female IQ testing is normalized in practice, meaning that the group "all women" is 100 and the group "all men" is 100.

It's a calibration thing.

The "correct" weighting of abilities is somewhat arbitrary.

If the results were not normalized then the test would be normalized... they would change the weighting within the test so that man and women performed the same on average.

It's an old issue. Men and women are not the same but it is not obvious that either is intellectually superior... it's a value judgement. So we assume equality.

[anonymous171]

19. If men are smarter it's only because women made them that way.

As the article pointed out.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

20. The most brilliant people I've known have been short. Scary genius brilliant.

This is such bullshit.

[AlienGirl]

22. At 4'10" tall and you-don't-wanna-know on my "real" IQ test when I was a kid, I scoff

The association between height and intelligence is almost certainly an artifact.

Tucker

[seabeyond]

24. my teenage son has finally started sprouting. *sigh*. lol. the pressures for a boy

but what i have noticed of late is the emphasis, importance to him with height (now that he obtains it). starting to rein him in on the prejudice of comments he is non thinkingly making.

our society certainly feeds this along with other shallow, not important issues.

my mom proudly stood her 5'2" with all of us towering her. lol. she could/did take all us on.

[Captain Hilts]

33. As little kids we are socialized to associate authority with height. As adults, we don't

get over that. Hence the high batting average of taller candidates over shorter ones.

A friend is engaged to a tall guy. She'd never dated anyone so tall. She said it's been fascinating seeing how people react so differently to a big guy than a normally-sized one. She said it's kind of weird. People just inherently respect him.

[seabeyond]

of course. conditioning. i always try to allow boys to see societal conditioning.

who wants to walk thru life being conditioned by society in where to place ones next step.

men are generally taller than women. women have sex. probably women will have sex with a taller man.

has to be evolutionary psychology at play

[Captain Hilts]

45. Beats me. nt

[harkadog]

29. If all you are giving is personal anecdotal evidence

to back up an assertion then your IQ score may have been in error.

[AlienGirl]

31. Nice snark. I am saying this is likely an artifact.

[harkadog]

39. Whether it is or not has nothing to do with your personal statistics

which is what you provided.

[seabeyond]

32. and if you are taking this report seriously, without question, it shows the error of its ways. nt

[harkadog]

36. I don't take any report seriously without question

But it seems many posters condemn any report without question if it conflicts with some personal view they have.

[redqueen]

40. It's called a bullshit detector.

Look into it.

[harkadog]

48. No thanks. Non response.

[seabeyond]

50. no. read the dude's postion, so, aware of his agenda. and see clear flaws

in the very little bet of the study. wasnt a tough one. nothing to do with personal view. all to do with invalid study, clearly. hence why questioning you even taking this a little bet seriously with the obvious junk science.

[Mari333]

23. every so often, some inane drivel like this article comes around

and I often realize I could probably sprinkle glitter on a dog turd and sell it as a diamond to people who believe this shite.

Its such a shame I have ethics.

[treestar]

28. What does height have to do with it?

:rofl:

Yeah, the intelligent men get the beautiful women, OK let's accept that. Suppose the kids inherit his looks and her brains? They never account for that. :rofl: Especially is they were the daughters. Ugly smart girl is the first child, and handsome dumb boy is the second. Failure of evolution! :rofl: Didn't those genes know they were supposed to take the beauty gene from mom and the brain gene from dad? Why did those genes distribute themselves randomly? :rofl:

[AlienGirl]

43. They also don't account for regression towards the mean, or...

...those inconvenient studies that suggest that IQ is inherited from the maternal side!

Tucker

[Motown_Johnny]

41. Or the questions on the test play to male strengths and female weaknesses

[bertman]

52. Satoshi Kanazawa and Diane J. Reyniers, the two newest nominees for TWIT and TWITESS of

the Year Awards.

[Matariki]

53. The Almighty Tallest ask - could you be any smaller?

[undeterred]

54. And yet intelligent men are not smart enough to choose

a woman because of her intelligence rather than her beauty? :shrug: