New Study Claims Taller Are Smarter

[mattfromnossa]

While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds. "As early as age three -- before schooling has had a chance to play a role -- and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests," wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The findings were based primarily on two British studies that followed children born in 1958 and 1970, respectively, through adulthood and a U.S. study on height and occupational choice.
-----
The researchers explain that early nutrition is an important predictor of both intelligence and height. That makes sense, but then the problem to address would be adequate nutrition as it affects both intelligence and height, not the spurious conclusion that taller people are smarter. Moreover, children who have access to adequate nutrition will still be different heights as a result of genetic make-up. The bell-shaped curve for height attests to the fact that while children may grow at the same speed, they grow at different percentiles. To conclude that the child growing an average of 2 inches per year at the 75% is better off than the child growing an average of 2 inches per year at the 5% is based on heightist notions. The deeply ingrained heightism so pervasive in our culture and in the work force makes it easy for people to make assumptions that short people are inherently inferior rather than looking at the societal forces that lead to such discrimination. There was a study by David Kurtz, an Eastern Michigan University marketing professor. He asked 140 recruits to make a hypothetical hiring choice between two equally qualified applicants, one 6 feet 1 inch tall, and the other 5 feet 5 inches tall, for a sales job. Seventy-two percent "hired" the tall one, twenty-seven percent expressed no preference, and one percent chose the short one. This has nothing to do with actual intelligence and everything to do with heightism. This study by the Princeton economists is reminiscent of Arthur Jenson’s conclusions back in 1969 when he published an article in the Harvard Educational Review maintaining the whites are genetically superior in intelligence to blacks.

[aquart]

1. I suspect that I'm taller than you.

Heh. Heh. heh.

[Lithos]

2. Who else started humming the Randy Newman song?

?

[silverojo]

3. I'm not sure if this is true...

But, as it happens, I was a tall child, and I was quickly labeled "gifted", got the highest grades in school, the whole bit. On the other hand, the girl who was my toughest competition for making it to the top of the class was a short Japanese-American girl. :)

[rooboy]

4. Is there a link for this?

since I'm a highly intelligent short person?

[mattfromnossa]

6. the link is....

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12466.pdf

and news story link is

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14517687/

[Bitwit1234]

5. Don't understand This

All thru elementary and high school most of those who started with me when all the way thru to graduate.

Myself and two other girls were the shortest in the class. All three of us were the smartest. We got the highest grades and were honor students. We played sports, not basketball but, field soccer and softball. Now we have tall girls AND boys in our class and we outdid them all. SO BEING TALL MAKES YOU SMARTER.

[rockymountaindem]

9. I personally feel height only matters for guys

There are other factors for women, IMHO, but height is a big one for guys.

[JDPriestly]

7. I know too many very smart short people.

How about Robert Reich for one. Yes, I'm short. But still, this tallism idea is nonsense.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

8. I don't believe it for a second. I work with someone who's 4'10" and the she

is the sharpest tool in shed.

And, she is one of many short folks I've known who could run circles around me, intellectually.

I call BS on this article. MKJ

[AndyTiedye]

10. There Sure Were A Lot of Us Short People at MIT When I Was There

[BlueJazz]

11. Finally ... this explins why Men are so much smarter than Woman.

beeing a Man I always surprected that We (Manly Men) were the smartor of the twoo speicees and now i have absolut proof!!

[Speck Tater]

12. There is one big problem with such a statement.

Such generalizations, while statistically true in large enough samples, are often taken to be universally true in particular cases. It is mistakenly assumed that if Mr. A is taller than Mr. B then Mr. A is more intelligent than Mr. B. Within those broad statistical trends there is still a huge amount of space for variation.

A friend of mine in high school towered over me. I am 5'5" and my friend was well over 6 feet tall. He was functionally illiterate and had an IQ in the mid 80's. If Mensa raised their IQ requirements up to my IQ (average of three tests taken in high school, grad school and the Air Force) 99.4% of the members of Mensa would no longer qualify. Mensa requires the top 2.00%. I am in the top 0.003%. Almost everybody is taller than me. One person in 33,000 has a higher IQ than me. One Mensa member in 167 has a higher IQ than me, but, statistically, the vast majority of them are taller than me.

That's why I object to such generalities which, while statistically true given a large enough sample, have no meaning whatsoever in any particular individual case. And yet statistics such as these, although meaningless outside of large random samples, are applied by the ignorant as if they were relevant to individual cases. Believe me, I've been the victim of a lot of anti-short discrimination in my life, and the last thing we short people need is more "amunition" for the ignorant to miss-use against us.

If you showed me a study that said the average blonde was prettier than the average brunette it wouldn't convince me that Ann Coulter was prettier than Jesica Alba. Studies like that are a complete waste of time and money, since nothing they reveal can be applied in any real-life descision-making situations.

(ED: for careless spelling ;-)

[Nihil]

13. Don't worry ...

> (ED: for careless spelling

... we'll just put it down to you being short ... :P

(Seriously though, I totally agree with you about the application
of generalised studies to specific individual cases - especially
on somewhat pointless subjects as this.)

[DireStrike]

14. My guess is that it has to do with nutrition

Eat well, grow as tall as you can, develop whatever you need to support strong cognitive function.