Sunday, November 19, 2006

SOME VERY "INCORRECT" FINDINGS ABOUT ATTRACTIVENESS

Psychologists have long demonstrated that we tend to perceive physically attractive people as not just easy on the eye but more intelligent and competent as well. That this perception might not be strictly rational could be concluded from the finding that the beautiful are seen as better than the rest of us in such apparently unrelated tasks as piloting an aircraft.

This tendency to see the attractive as bearing a host of other desirable qualities also explains why an attractive defendant is likely to be given a more lenient sentence or even be let off by a jury. The effect is profound - both genders see physically attractive men and women as more intelligent and good. Even very young children perceive better-looking teachers as more intelligent. As it is unlikely that children are prejudiced by personal biases arising from their own feelings of attraction or of falling in love, it would appear that something profound is at work.

The evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa from the London School of Economics and Jody Kovar of the University of Pennsylvania in the US have published research that argues that the beautiful really are more intelligent. Their paper, actually entitled: "Why beautiful people are more intelligent", rests on genetic and evolutionary principles. Women prefer more intelligent men, as has been repeatedly confirmed by research. Most men place physical attractiveness as their highest valued feature in women. So it follows that if there are genes for attractiveness and intelligence, over time these will tend to cluster in the products of liaisons between the good-looking and the intelligent.

A less palatable conclusion is that in a competitive market the less intelligent and less physically attractive are left to mate with each other.

Before the appalled turn the page in disgust at such a politically incorrect theory, it might be useful to consider the science here. Kanazawa and Kovar point out that physical attractiveness is not as superficial as is commonly held, and is definitely not merely in the eye of the beholder. Infants as young as two months gaze longer at a face that adults judge to be more attractive. Twelve-month-olds also play significantly longer with facially attractive dolls. Because two to 12 months is not enough time for infants to have learnt the cultural values of beauty through socialisation, this suggests standards might be innate.

Cross-culturally, there is considerable agreement in the judgment of beauty among a host of racial and national groups, including those as widely separated as the Ache of Paraguay and the Chinese. In none of this research does the degree of exposure to western media have any influence on people's perception of beauty. This consensus appears to exist because it is possible to derive a mathematical formula that predicts how attractive a face or body is according to key proportions. The essential point is that attractiveness seems to be rooted in symmetry. Attractive faces are more symmetrical than unattractive ones. The symmetry of your body and face also appears to be associated with how genetically fit you are and how many developmental setbacks you suffered in the womb and while growing up. Resistance to parasites and other pathogens has been shown to be related to how symmetrical bodies are.

Beauty is now seen by evolutionary biologists as a kind of "health certification" guaranteeing that if you mate with such a person you are mingling your genes with higher-quality genetic material. How symmetrical a face is can now be measured from a scanned photograph, with a computer program measuring the sizes of, and distances between, various facial parts. Such programs assign a single score for physical attractiveness, which correlates highly with scores of prettiness assigned by human judges. Beauty therefore appears to be an objective and quantitative attribute of individuals a bit like height and weight.

Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, economists at the University of Texas and Michigan State University, published a study in the American Economic Review in the 1990s entitled "Beauty and the Labour Market", which found that relative to average- looking women, below-average-looking women are married to men with significantly less education.

Kanazawa and Kovar cite five previous studies that have found an association between physical attractiveness and intelligence, including a recent comprehensive meta-analysis (a pooling of all the data from a variety of studies). The authors of the meta-analysis are so convinced that physical attractiveness is a strong sign of superior intelligence that they dismiss the maxim "beauty is skin deep" as a myth.

But as the concept of intelligence is deeply controversial, evolutionary theorists have looked for a real world measure of success that should correlate with IQ. Irene Frieze led a team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh who, in their study of MBA graduates, found that more physically attractive men have significantly higher starting salaries and their advantage increases over time.

For women, attractiveness has no effect on starting salaries but better-looking women earn significantly more later in their careers. In their sample, men earn $2,600 more on average for each unit of attractiveness (on a five-point scale), and women earn $2,150 more.

Kanazawa and Kovar caution against the mistake of using attractiveness as a measure of intelligence and vice versa. They point out their finding is only of an association that, while statistically significant, is an imperfect one. Certainly you should never choose the pilot of your aircraft merely on their looks.

Source



Stupid accusation about Tasmania from a leading British newspaper

The stupid political correctness described below is added to by the newspaper's accusation that the Tasmanian blacks were "eradicated by genocide". The accusation is scurrilous but is a favourite of Leftist historians worldwide. All the evidence shows that the Tasmanian blacks were already dying out when white men first arrived and that their demise was hastened by the diseases of the white settlers to which the blacks had no immunity. See here and here

One of the world's most significant collections of human remains is to be lost to science, after the Natural History Museum (NHM) today agreed to repatriate it to an Australian aboriginal community. Bones and teeth from 17 aboriginal Tasmanians, which were collected in the 19th century, will be sent back to Australia next April, where they are expected to be cremated.

The specimens are the first from the museum's collection of almost 20,000 human remains to be repatriated since the law was changed last year to allow it to do so. The request from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC), supported by the Australian Government, was accepted by the museum's trustees even though its own scientists had argued strongly that it should be kept intact as "a particularly important collection to the global scientific community." The ruling sets a precedent that could ultimately see thousands of items from the NHM's collection returned to indigenous communities for burial or cremation. Although 54 per cent of its human remains are from the UK, all those from abroad that are less than 1,000 years old could now qualify for repatriation if an appropriate request is made.

The Australian Government has already begun negotiations about the return of a further 450 items that originated in Australia, and Native American and New Zealand Maori groups are also in discussions with the museum. The prospect of losing so many specimens from one of the world's foremost repositories of human remains has dismayed some scientists, who argue that they retain great importance. Original remains are valuable for studies in fields as varied as human evolution and forensic science.

The Tasmanian collection is particularly signficant because the island has been isolated from the Austrialian mainland for thousands of years, and its aboriginal population offers valuable insights into human evolution that cannot be obtained from other sources. A few dozen museum specimens are all that remains of this unique ethnic group, which was eradicated by genocide in the 19th century.

"Failure to maintain scholarly access to these remains would reduce the ability of all people to know aspects of their common heritage, to the detriment of both the Tasmanians and the wider community," NHM scientists said in their response to the repatriation request. "The Tasmanian human remains must continue to be available for scientific research, either at the NHM or at another repository."

While most scientists accept the case for repatriating remains where a clear line of descent to living individuals or communities can be proven, many object to the idea of granting broad claims where ancestry is less certain. Some modern aborigine groups can trace descent to full Tasmanian aborigines, but have heavily interbred with other populations. The NHM's trustees, however, agreed to the TAC submission, which argued that the remains were taken without consent from an oppressed people, and should be returned for cremation in accordance with local spiritual and religious traditions.

The museum, however, has approved a three-month period of extensive scientific research on the remains before they are returned, including DNA analysis and CT scanning. The TAC had explicitly asked that no further research be conducted on the specimens. Michael Dixon, the museum's director, said: "This is something of a momentous day for the museum. It is a landmark decision, following our first opportunity to consider the repatriation of human remains. "We acknowledge our decision may be questioned by community groups or by some scientists. However, we believe the decision to return the Tasmanian remains, following a short period of data collection, is a commonsense one that balances the requirements of all those with an interest in the remains."

Chris Stringer, Head of Human Origins at the museum, said: "I regret the future loss of scientific data from these specimens," he said. "If the Tasmanian people in the future want to investigate their own past, they will no longer be available."

The decision marks only the second time that a national museum has agreed to repatriate human remains since the Human Tissue Act allowed them to do so. Prior to last year, the NHM and other state collections were banned from parting with any of their specimens by the British Museum Act of 1963. This provision was repealed following the Palmer Committee's 2003 report into collections of human remains, which recommended that institutions should normally seek to return such specimens if an appropriate modern ethnic group requested them.

Several private collections, such as the University of Manchester, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, have already returned specimens voluntarily, and the British Museum has returned cremation ash bundles to Tasmania since the law was changed. The NHM will also return a skull of an aboriginal Australian that was exported illegally in 1913. This decision was not contested by scientists.

Source



"RACISM" TO EVICT A TROUBLESOME FAMILY?

An envoy from a leading European human right agency chided Slovenia on Thursday for its treatment of a Roma family, saying it was "unacceptable" to remove them from their home because their Slovene neighbors wanted them out. Thomas Hammerberg, a commissioner of the 46-nation Council of Europe who came to Slovenia to examine the case, said it contained "racist and anti-Roma elements," and urged the government to fight xenophobia more vigorously. "Regardless of the circumstances, it is unacceptable that a group of people has to abandon their home because a majority population wishes so," Hammerberg told reporters in Ljubljana. "As Slovene citizens, Roma must have the same right as other citizens to choose where they want to live."

The 32-member Strojan family — including 14 children — was forced to leave the village of Ambrus, just outside the capital of Ljubljana, late last month, after hundreds of their Slovene neighbors approached their settlement and demanded that they leave. Villagers accused the Strojans of polluting the environment and the nearby source of water. They said a man that lived with Strojans had beaten a villager and left him in a coma.

Police, which came to protect the Gypsy — or Roma — family, eventually decided it was safer to escort them out of the village. The family is now settled in a former refugee center, and a government plan to move them to another village failed because villagers there protested against it.

Hammerberg said hate speech and threats to Roma have increased across Europe, and that the case showed that Slovenia was "not immune" to that. A European Union report issued this year showed that Roma were still the most discriminated against in Europe.

Source

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