Are actors dumb?

It is not difficult to find someone who believes actors are dumb. Indeed, some actors encourage this impression by the kinds of interviews they give. However, my experience, in the past, with actors, is that, in general they are bright – at least the ones I worked with are. What makes film-making interesting, as much as anything else, is the conversations to be had, with the other cast members, during breaks in filming: why? Because they are relatively smart.

Now, my personal observation that actors seem smart and make for good conversationalists, has some interesting scientific backing. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the LSE found, in his research, that attractive people have higher IQs than unattractive people. The average discrepancy was 12.4 IQ points – which is really quite a lot. The disparity was greater for attractive and unattractive men, with the difference being 13.61 IQ points. For women the difference was 11.39 IQ points.

It is not much of a leap to see that this supports my personal experience that actors are relatively bright. You see, to be cast as an actor, in a film, one usually has to be more attractive than the average person. Thus, the cast of a film will be selected for attractiveness and will be superior in that respect. Since attractiveness and intelligence have a correlation of 0.381, there will be a tendency for the more attractive actors and actresses, to also be smarter than the average person as well. Hence, my experience that they make for good conversation.

So, the next time you hear someone call actors “dumb”, you might just like to point their way to Kanazawa’s research on attractiveness and intelligence. If an actor or actress is good looking, they are also likely to be relatively intelligent, too – or at least 12.4 IQ points above their unattractive peers, anyway.

Satoshi Kanazawa made a very interesting point in an article he wrote for Psychology Today. He noted that the correlation of intelligence and attractiveness was exactly the same as the correlation of intelligence and education...0.381. Thus, he pointed out, quite tellingly, that you are as safe to make a judgement on someone’s intelligence from an assessment of their attractiveness, as you are from knowledge of their education. That struck me as rather interesting. So, all you have to do to see whether someone is likely to be intelligent is to judge whether are pretty or handsome!

Please note the limitation on this. The mean difference in intelligence between the attractive and the unattractive was only 12.4 IQ points. It wasn’t 50 IQ points. So just because someone is pretty, that doesn’t mean they are a genius, too. However, it does mean that they are less likely to be seriously dumb – and that they are more likely to be a genius than someone who is less attractive. Appearance is just one more useful characteristic for assessing how intelligent people are.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The true value of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is marketed as a social network for professionals. It is also one of the ways people use to look up old friends, perhaps from University, school, or previous jobs.

Most people think of the value of LinkedIn, to be in the networks it allows you to form. However, I personally don’t think this is its most valuable attribute. That value lies in something more subtle than a network. LinkedIn’s true value is not in who joins your network, but in who doesn’t.

I have recently become active on LinkedIn, although I have supposedly been a member for a couple of years. I say “supposedly” because in all that time I never logged in and never did anything on LinkedIn, at all. Now, my recent activity has involved a lot of checking for the presence of old friends on the database and sending them an invitation. The responses have been instructive. There have been two types of response: the quick acceptance, either without notice, or with an accompanying note – and the complete failure to respond. In my case, of 19 invitations sent, 14 have resulted in acceptance and 5 have responded only with silence. I find these ones the most interesting. Of these two of them are people I have worked with and the rest are people I had considered old friends. That these people, whom I had lost contact with, but still considered warmly, should ignore my request to join me on LinkedIn, is very instructive indeed. It says that, perhaps, my memories of them are undeserved, that the lingering warmth I feel for their inner image, within me, is inappropriate. It prompts me to re-evaluate my personal history.

Further examination of those who ignore my request is even more instructive. One of them was once considered my “best friend”. Yet, he has ignored my request now, for over a week and a half. Why has he not accepted? There is, perhaps, a clue in the number of his connections. He has HUNDREDS. He may actually begrudge me the advantage that would accrue upon accessing his network, given that mine is new and much smaller. There might be some selfishness at work here. Either that, or there are things I just don’t know about my former best friend, at all.

Then again, there is another LinkedIn member who has ignored my request. In this case I cannot be entirely certain that I have the right person, but it is extremely likely that I do, since he is in the same industry and has the same rare name. He is a writer, or as he puts it: “Independent Publishing Professional”. He is actually a best selling literary writer, whom I first met about 17 years ago, unbelievable as that is to write, now. Those 17 years seem awfully brief. I met him regularly, over the space of about six years in the 1990s, then a couple of times in the last decade (since I had left the country). However, it should be noted that I met him many times, and we had many conversations. I considered him a good friend. He, too, has ignored my request. In his case, I do wonder if he is, again, guarding his contacts, most of which are in publishing/writing. He knows that I am a writer. Perhaps he feels competitive.

LinkedIn is a test of the solidity of one’s relationships and friendships. If an overture to an old friend is ignored, then it allows one to reconsider whether that “old friend” was much of a friend at all – or whether they are too shallow to remember one, over the intervening years.

In a way, therefore, though disappointed, I am as grateful to those who refuse my LinkedIn request, as to those who accept. Those who refuse to join me on LinkedIn are letting me know the true nature of their feelings and thoughts towards me. They are letting me understand how little, perhaps, I really knew them at all.

So, here is a big thank you to all those who have joined me on LinkedIn – and just as big a thank you to all those who have refused to do so. You have spared me much time, in my future life, from considering you. Thanks.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)