Kids think four-eyed kids are smart
New research shows that young children think their peers who wear glasses are smarter and more honest. Optometry researchers at Ohio State University surveyed kids between 6 and 10 years old. From OSU Research News:
...The survey (also) suggested that children don’t tend to judge the attractiveness of their peers who wear glasses when asked about their appearance, potential as a playmate or likely athletic abilities...Link
On average, two thirds of the participating children said they thought that kids wearing glasses looked smarter than kids not wearing glasses. And 57 percent of the participants said they thought kids with glasses appeared to be more honest. Both kids with and without glasses thought other kids wearing glasses looked smarter.
Walline said the findings suggest that media portrayals associating spectacles with intelligence may be reinforcing a stereotype that even young children accept.
the latest
latest episodes
We all know those kids are at least smart enough to have their eyes checked instead of avoiding reading because it's difficult. Or at least their parents are.
All hail our hypermetroptic overlords!
Have they done a study comparing intelligence of glasses wearers vs. non wearers? Maybe we really ARE smarter.
There would be evolutionary benefit for increased intelligence to compensate for inadequate physical senses.
I call it the "Tina Fey Effect". :)
@3 - I read a summary of a study done a couple of months ago about the nerd factor of those who wear glasses, and I think part of the study was intelligence levels. It was pretty funny.
Apparently there's not a link except in one area: those who wear glasses read more. Do we need glasses because we read more and thus notice problems with our eyes? Or maybe something else explains it.
Jharder, I have trouble with the evolutionary explanation you're suggesting, but there are possible developmental explanations. For example, maybe reading a lot in childhood causes near-sightedness. Or maybe near-sighted children are more likely to engage in contemplative activities than physical activities.
Anyway, yeah, I have no problem believing that kids would believe in a link between glasses and intelligence. I believe it too, down in my gut. While I know, intellectually, that plenty of stupid people have bad eyesight, somewhere on a sub-intellectual level is the conviction that people with glasses are smarter, which is why if you put a pair of glasses on a woman, she'll immediately become more attractive to me.
And if she's wearing those black-rimmed nerd glasses -- oh, man!
People tell me I look smarter with glasses. My only conclusion from a statement like that is that I look rather stupid without them. Oh well.
There would be evolutionary benefit for increased intelligence to compensate for inadequate physical senses.
Evolutionary, no. Developmental, yes. I've worn glasses since the second grade, and I did try to compensate for my physical weakness by paying more attention in class. "Smart" was a stereotype I could deal with better than "last picked at recess", although later on "nerd" replaced "smart".
My brother on the other hand, just broke his glasses all the time doing all the physical activities the other kids did.
Hm.
Looking back, I can't really think of a person who wore glasses who struck me as dull.
And women with glasses are instantly more attractive. Agreed, #6!
Doesn't Seinfeld have a bit about this? It goes something like: Why do we assume people who wear glasses are smarter? It's a handicap! Is it because we think they read more? It's not like we see someone with a hearing aid and go "Oooh, they must be paying real close attention and listening very closely to everything"...
And is this an inappropriate place to mention that girls with glasses are cute? (all other things being equal)
There's a simpler explanation to this: until the 20th century, people who could read were smarter (i.e., better educated) than people who couldn't.
Consider...a literate man needs glasses to read, and gets them. An illiterate man needs glasses to read, but can't read anyway, so doesn't get them.
As a result, in a society with less-than-universal literacy, glasses are a marker of literacy, and so education, and so "intelligence".
We're only a hundred years (or less) from that kind of a society, so I suspect our present-day attitude that glasses = smartitude is a leftover from those days.
As far as the advantage to glasses goes, an enormous part of the brain, some say as much as half, is used to interpret vision. When someone is born blind, this part of the brain will rewire itself to work on other things, mostly the other senses, so they basically turn into Daredevil from the comics [in theory at least]. It isn't impossible that for people with glasses, the brain gave up on extracting too much information from faulty lenses and started compensating in other departments. So rather then physical inadequacy compensating for greater intelligence, I think it would be the other way round; intelligence compensates for poor vision.
To the present day, I still want to wear glasses to the extent that I wore window glasses for quite some time, until I inevitably lost them while drunk. I actually have better then average vision, but rather then impress people with my ability to read small print from far away, I'd rather they simply thought I was intelligent from the get go; think of the time it saves. Also, I'm inexplicably attracted to people with glasses to the point where its embarrassing. I just can't help it.
"How could someone with glasses so thick be so stupid?"
-Bart Simpson
This stereotype has been reinforced for decades. I think Ben Franklin had something to do with it. Then again, I don't wear glasses so what do I know?
I wore glasses as a kid, big Cokebottle things that got me hassled all the time. Being reasonably studious, and needing to read things like "words", I kept wearing them.
Until around age 12 when I broke my only pair while on a weeklong camping trip. I found I could get by just fine without, and with a little exercise I trained my good (left) eye to focus well enough to read. When I got back to school I promptly ditched the gogs, and never got contacts as I don't like the idea of a piece of plastic getting stuck in my eye socket.
A year ago (I'm 26) I went in for a pre-op exam for Lasik surgery on my bad eye. It turns out that my lopsided vision (20/20 left, 20/100 right) has forced my eye muscles to overcompensate when focusing. Thus I couldn't get Lasik in my right eye because I'd probably wind up with double vision (horribly crosseyed). Most likely, any form of corrective lenses would cause the same issue as well.
Lesson: ditching the glasses is kinda dumb in the long term -- you may never be able to fix your broken eye :) I never did lose the "smart kid" tag... growing up in a small town, everything follows you forever...
International Male, the gold standard for douchebag clothing (yes, I have lots of it) used to sell 'Attitude Glasses'. They're de rigueur for strippers of all genders who want to work the office nerd look before peeling down.
#3 and #5, actually there IS some correlation between myopia and IQ, and at least one study shows that it's independent of how much people read.
It's a 2004 study with Seang-Mei Saw as the lead author if you want to look it up. They say: "An interesting observation is that nonverbal IQ may be a stronger risk factor for myopia compared with books read per week."
I have 20/20. Sigh.
I am aesthetically attracted to PaulDRye's explanation at #11, though. Nice.
I wore glasses a kid too - good ol' bifocals - I can't tell you how many comments I got...but ironically, it took a pretty bad bike accident to prove the worthiness of glasses - they actually saved my eyes from serious damage! And speaking of kids, I've been working with Intel on their International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which is going all week in Atlanta. It has grown in size and prestige to become the crowning achievement in the U.S., and internationally, in high school science competitions, and there are some super cool projects being presented. I urge all of you to check it out - the site is http://www.intelisef2008.org/.
@ #14 schr0559
Until around age 12 when I broke my only pair while on a weeklong camping trip. I found I could get by just fine without, and with a little exercise I trained my good (left) eye to focus well enough to read.
I started wearing glasses when I was 4 and did almost the same thing as you when I was 14. I lost my contacts on vacation and had to go without. Over the course of the day my eyesight became clearer and I didn't wear glasses again for a good 15 years. I have to wear them again now, but I don't mind. I hear I look smarter.
I've never thought of glasses as an indication of intelligence or anything.
I blame that on the fact that I live in a country where myopia is so prevalent that everybody who doesn't wear glasses is presumed to be wearing contact lenses until confirmed otherwise. By the time we reach adulthood, 4/5ths of us will be myopic.
Didn't Pol Pot lead a campaign against people with glasses on a basis of them being representative of the bourgeois intellectual elite? Just sayin, not just kids, ruthless dictators as well.
"Apparently there's not a link except in one area: those who wear glasses read more. Do we need glasses because we read more and thus notice problems with our eyes? Or maybe something else explains it."
Have a link to this study? It seems to be fairly widely accepted that there is a link between myopia and intelligence:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DB1439F933A15751C1A96E948260
http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/full/45/9/2943
and also, children who read more, are more intelligent: http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/65
Antinous, do you have a poet's shirt. Please say no.
Well I suppose that's good news for my one year old who has glasses. Though she's far-sighted, so according to some of those studies above, maybe she's not actually smart, but at least everyone will think so.