DOES HAIR COLOUR, AGE, GENDER AND/OR HEIGHT RELATE TO INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discover mainly whether hair colour relates to intelligence, but also whether age, height and gender relate to intelligence too, and to discover whether the stereotypical views that blondes are less intelligent, taller people are more intelligent, older people are less intelligent and that males and females intelligence differ, are actually true or whether they are just an inaccurate conception about physical attributes and their relation to intellectual ability.

This was aimed to be discovered by recording 16 males and 16 females hair colour using a hair colour chart, age and height and then by getting them to complete the National Adult Reading Test which consists of 50 not very well known words that should be read aloud by the participants and then marked by the experimenter regarding whether they have correctly pronounced the words. The IQ scores were then worked out by their answers; the NART is an accurate predictor of IQ scores.

It was discovered that the hypothesis that the four physical attributes mentioned related to intelligence was not supported. There was no significant relation between height and intelligence, gender and intelligence, age and intelligence or hair colour and intelligence.

The information concluded from this study could prove useful in providing more information on stereotypes and reducing ignorance in society.

Introduction

A stereotype is defined as ‘a conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image’ (http://dictionary.reference.com). Stereotyping has plagued our society throughout history. A large number of stereotypes in the world are based on physical appearance. Many studies in psychology relating to stereotypes have aimed at discovering what specific stereotypes exist; only a small amount of research has been carried out to discover whether there is any truth behind these stereotypes.

The main focus of this research is to look into the stereotype that blondes are less intelligent.

The idea of the ‘Dumb Blonde’ has been around for centuries. There are many predictions and ideas as to where it originated. Many people believe that Marilyn Monroe played a large part in endorsing this stereotype, however she was more of an exemplification of this stereotype rather than its creator. The ‘Dumb Blonde’ stereotype was thought to have existed long before this.

The large majority of people in the world have dark hair (Jonathon Rees); therefore people with blonde hair are a minority, this already signals them out. This is the case for centuries that darker hair is the norm. The stereotype appears to originate back to the ancient Greeks. They were a naturally dark-haired population. There is evidence to show that they discovered a way of lightening their hair by using soaps and bleaches. A quote from the poet Menander follows; “The rays of the sun are the best aid of making hair fair and our men know it. For after they have bathed their head copiously in a special ointment they sit in the sun, their heads uncovered and wait there for hours for their hair to turn, and it does!”. This trend was centered in Athens, where there were also prostitutes who dyed their hair blonde. Later, however, during the Roman republic, the Romans believed the blonde Greeks to be ‘trollops’ and they looked down upon them. Roman women wore wigs made from the hair of captive barbarians. Blonde hair was thus seen to be something that was directly related to the conquered Greeks who were thrown to the lions. (). There was thought to be strong convictions about bleaching hair throughout history, which is thought to explain peoples attitude towards bleached hair that has become popular. ‘Puritans decreed the bleaching and dying of hair as ungodly’, (), A similar perspective is still around today. Make-up and hair dye in the 19th century was perceived to only be used by prostitutes and mistresses, ‘respectable women scorned them’ (). Wendalyn, the writer of the article Dumb/dizzy Blonde () concludes by suggesting that ‘the dumb blonde stereotype arose from the emotional need: the spurned wife needs the mistress to be stupid, the social reformer needs to think the prostitute can be educated out of her profession, the weak-willed man needs to think that he is smarter than his arm candy’.

One belief about the ‘Dumb Blonde’ stereotype is that blonde hair implies youth and therefore this in turn implies ‘naiveté and inexperience’, which could be considered as a lack of intelligence, (). These are useful clues as to where the stereotype originated there is no definite answer as to where the ‘Dumb Blonde’ stereotype originally came from.

In 1989 Weir and Fine-Davis aimed to show the effect that women’s hair colour had on the their perceived personality characteristics. They conducted a study in which they recruited 75 male and 75 female. Each participant was asked to rate a set of photographs of attractive female undergraduates on their perceived personality traits, such as temperament and intelligence. Included in these photographs were three photographs of the same female with blonde, brunette and red hair. It was discovered that the male participants significantly rated the blonde females with lower intelligence than the brunettes and redheads. The participants also rated the target female as being more temperamental as a redhead than as a blonde or a brunette. This study is thought to show serious implications about the way in which men view women and it shows that the stereotype of the dumb blonde does actually exist. However there is nothing included in this study that suggests that this stereotype might actually be true. This is what this research is aimed at discovering.

There are many points that have arisen from previous research, (discussed bellow) that suggests that there could be a correlation between hair colour and intelligence.

These points are as follows:

Blonde women are perceived to be less intelligent then brunettes and redheads.
Males are more likely to pick a mate that is similar to them, therefore if a male is less intelligent they are more likely to pick a similar female and they are more likely to perceive a blonde-haired female as being less intelligent.
Intelligence is heritable.
Hair colour is heritable.

A logical assumption that could be made from these findings is that blonde haired people are more likely to be less intelligent than others.

Another point provides support for this particular stereotype is the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. This is defined as, ‘ a statement that comes true as a result of having been made’, (Stratton & Hayes, 1988 ).A lot of work in this area was carried out by Rosenthal. In one study he gave students rats and told them to train them to complete a maze. There were no differences between the rats, however he told the students that some of the rats were going to be quick at learning the maze and that others were going to be slow. It was discovered that the rats did infact perform in accordance to the false prediticions that had been made, thus showing that the students beliefs about the rats performance had effected their training. Rosenthal also went on to carry out a further study that looked at teacher’s expectations of their pupils and how this can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Stratton & Hayes, 1988). This idea can be related to the study in hand. It could be suggested that if females with blonde hair are perceived to be ‘dumb’ by others then this could cause them to act accordingly.

These points suggest that there could be a correlation between hair colour and intelligence and will be discussed bellow.

The research conducted by Weir and Fine-Davis that has been mentioned provides support for the first point. There has been consistent support for the second point, it has been shown that the more similar someone is to another individual the more attractive they are perceived to be by that person. This is shown by the ‘similarity-attraction hypothesis’, ‘the assumed or perceived similarity serves as a predictor for the attraction response’ and people are only thought to stay in a relationship with a person who they believe is loyal to their ‘self-concept’, ().

There is a great amount of research showing that intelligence is heritable, including, Wang and Oakland, (1995), who carried out a study on genes and heritability. The studied children aged 4-6 years old. It was found that children with parents of intellectual status such as teachers and doctors were significantly more intelligent than children with parents who were either clerks or workers, (Kanazawa & Kovar, 2003). As it is well known that hair clout is heritable. Thus the conclusion that blonde haired people are less intelligent appears to follow from these four assumptions.

Another consideration mentioned previously is that being stereotypes in a particular way could actually make an individual act accordingly, and live up to their stereotype, this is known (as mentioned previously) as the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. In support of the effects of this assumption a study was completed by Forster et al, he believed that from previous findings people perform badly if less is expected of them, that blonde jokes would cause a self-fulfilling prophecy for blondes and therefore have the same effects. He selected 80 participants, 40 of them were blonde, to take part in a test that was aimed at measuring speed and accuracy. 20 of the blonde participants were told negative stereotypes about blondes, using ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, etc. The findings were significant that the blondes who had heard these negative stereotypes previous to the test consistently performed worse then the others and did not answer as many questions in the time that was given. It was also found however that although the blonde participants who had heard the negative stereotypes performed slower, they were no less accurate; This research suggests that this negative stereotype does affect cognitive ability thus showing that a self-fulfilling prophecy is created.

The idea of hair colour and intelligence being related is not the only aspect that this study wants to uncover. If hair colour is thought to relate to intelligence then perhaps other physical aspects of an initial can relate to intelligence too. To discover whether this is an accurate prediction, other physical attributes have been brought into the equation. These attributes are: age; gender; and height. There has been previous research to suggest that these aspects are related to intelligence. Intelligence has been shown in a number of studies to decline with age. McLean, Reynolds and Kaufman, (2002 (age and wais-r)) found that as age increased within an age range of 20-74 the efficiency on Performance IQ and Full Scale IQ decreased. Bors and Forrin (2002 (age and fluid intelligence)) used 63 adults within the age range of 26 and 80 and tested them all on three ‘speed of information processing paradigms’. The results showed there were differences in age and intelligence and that this was related to ‘age-related declines in cognitive speed’, (Bors and Forrin, 2002). However there are also age and intelligence studies that suggest that these to factors are not related. A study conducted by Deary et al (1999) shows this. This longitudinal study consisted of 101 children who undertook a psychometric intelligence test and who were followed up at the age of 77 and given the same intelligence test. It showed that the mental ability differences of the participants showed ample consistency throughout their lives and Nelson (1991), got 120 patients from the National Hospice for Nervous Diseases to complete the National Adult Reading Test, found that age had no effect on reading ability and so this study does not have ecological validity. Therefore suggesting that age might not relate to a decline in intelligence. However, previous studies have all been conducted very differently, some using more than one test, some longitudinal, some not, therefore a straight forward IQ test presented with its relation to age is a good follow up from these studies and ties in with the idea that physical attributes can relate to intelligence.

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Gender is another of the aspects being examined. This area also has a large amount of research behind it. Gender differences were studied by looking at the performance on the California Verbal Learning Test, Digit Span Backwards, Symbol-Digit Modalities Test, Spot-the-Word, and choice reaction time. Jorm et al, (2002) got participants to take part in this study and found that males performed better on the Digit Span Backwards and on reaction time and females performed better on Symbol-Digit Modalities Test and recall, showing that there are significant gender differences in intelligence. However, Deary et al (2002) came up with different findings. They looked at over 80,000+ children’s’ IQ scores in Scotland and found that there were no significant gender differences in test scores although there was a significant difference in there standard deviations. There were a lot more boys that had very low and high scores of intelligence.

Despite the fact that it will be interesting to discover whether gender differences are significant in this study, gender is also useful to look at because the stereotype ‘Dumb Blonde’ only applies to females, so it will be interesting to discover whether hair colour makes a difference to intelligence in, not only females, but males as well.

The final point being researched, which is height and intelligence was inspired by research done on height and status. If height is a strong determine of status then there is suggestion that height may also be related to intelligence because intelligence and status normally go hand-in-hand. However it could also just be due to a stereotypical view that tall people are more capable or intelligent.

One study that relates to this are was reviewed by Lee Ellis (1994) on the relationship between height and social status. This idea was first studied in non-humans, and it was found that size and dominance was significantly related. This was also the case when it was then looked at in humans. Social status positively correlated with height. Nelson (1991), conducted a study on intelligence and social class, using the National Adult Reading Test and found that there was no relation between the two variables. However, his participants were all patients from the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and therefore the participants are not representative of the population and so this study does not have ecological validity. Is height related to social status because of a stereotypical view or is there another reason why this link exists? Could it be that taller people are actually more intelligent?

Cernerud 1995 found similar results amongst 10-year-old children. He discovered that lower class boys who were selected for higher education were taller than boys staying in their social position, and that higher-class boys who were selected for elementary education were even smaller. It is interesting that the results for girls were not statistically significant. As gender and height are being recorded it will be shown whether there is a relation to height and intelligence and also if this correlation is gender specific.

Hair colour; Height; Gender; and Age are not the only physical attributes that have been related to intelligence. Physical attractiveness has also been related to intelligence. Jackson et al (1995) LINDA examined this relationship in adults and in children, they collected 113 reports into four categories, these were: adults perceived competence; children’s perceived competence; adults actual competence; and children’s actual competence. It was found that there was a stereotypical relationship between attractiveness and intelligence because the attractive people in the study were perceived as more competent than the less attractive people. It was also found that attractiveness related to competence in children but not in adults.

A study conducted by Reynolds and Chastain (1985). They collected data from a sample of WAIS-R IQ scores and related them to race, occupation, urban-rural residence, geographic region and education. They found that there was no significant difference between urban-rural residence and geographic regions, but there was found to be significant differences with race, education level and occupational groups. The black participants scored less on the full scale IQ compared to white participants and college graduates got significantly higher scores. Also researched in this study was the gender of the participant and the relation it had to IQ scores, however there was no perceived difference for this.

The idea of race, culture, and intelligence is a widely researched area in psychology and it does not seem to relate specifically to the research in hand, therefore, although there should be a brief acknowledgment of this area, it does not appear necessary to look into its relations to intelligence in great depth.

The idea of height relating to intelligence could be due to a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the perception that taller people are more clever than shorter people and therefore causing taller people to believe that they can do better than shorter people ad thus acting accordingly. Gender differences in intelligence could be due to a self-fulfilling prophecy, or perhaps because the tests used in studies were unintentionally either male or female orientated. Age could be related to intelligence as suggested earlier. It is, of course, not certain whether there is any kind of a link at all between these attributes. Therefore, this research aims to achieve a clear view as to whether hair colour specifically, but also height, age, and gender have any relation to intelligence and if this is the case, to come up with some implications as to why it is.

It appears that with hair colour and its relation to intelligence, there is very few articles or research that looks into this specific area, and those that do assume that it is completely a stereotypical view. No research has been aimed at discovering if there is actually any truth in this stereotype. This research aims to discover if there is a relationship and also, at the same time, seeing if there is a relationship between other physical attributes and intelligence. The points: that blonde women are perceived as less intelligent, males are more likely to pick a mate that is similar to them, and that both hair-colour and intelligence are heritable, suggests that it is possible that there could be a link between hair colour and intelligence, as well as the well known negative stereotypical views about blonde women that could cause a permanent self-fulfilling prophecy. However, previous history of the origins of the ‘Dumb Blonde’ stereotype, and research into self-fulfilling prophecies suggests that there is no relationship between hair colour and intelligence as it suggests that this is purely a stereotypical view devised by coincidental happenings, however this could also show that it originated as a stereotypical view that then, due to self-fulfilling prophecies and/or people perceptions of blondes in relation to the points mentioned could have actually caused the stereotypical idea to actually become a reality, and the study conducted by Forster et al suggests that blonde women aren’t stupid, but when faced with negative prejudices about their appearance it is shown to affect their confidence and make their performance poorer.

All previous studies in these areas are unclear and difficult to decipher. There is no direct relation between intelligence and the four physical attributes mentioned, only assumptions. This research aims at creating a clear observation of the relationship between the physical attributes and intelligence and to discover whether there is a correlation or whether the relations are based on stereotypes.

Previous research has suggested relationships between age, gender, height and intelligence and also research into hair colour and intelligence show that there is a well known stereotype that blondes are less intelligent, and with consideration to this and the points mentioned previously and the knowledge that negative stereotypes can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy, the hypotheses for this study are as follows:

Blondes are less intelligent than people with other hair colours.
As age increases, intelligence decreases.
The taller someone is the more intelligent they are.
There will be a difference in intelligence between males and females.

Method

Participants:

32 students were randomly selected within the university. 16 were males and 16 were females of any hair colour, age and height. The participants were recruited from university buildings. These were the union and King Henry building (Psychology department). Participants were mainly recruited from King Henry building suggesting that the majority were Psychology students. Their ages ranged from 15-20 to 46+ and their heights varied from 5’1 to 6’4.

The study should not cause any physical or mental harm to participants. There is no deception involved as the informed consent form clearly states what the study is about, (see appendix). In the case of any concerns arising, the participants are given the details of the university’s counseling services on the debriefing form, (see appendix). The informed consent form provides the participants with specific information about the nature of their participation and helps them decide whether or not they wish to take part. Participants are also informed on how to withdraw their data on the debriefing form should they wish to do so.

The National Adult Reading Test is being used to discover the participants IQ, it has been in use for several years and it has been found to cause very little anxiety to participants provided that appropriate reassurance and reinforcement is given and is less stressful than other cognitive tests, (see appendix).

Apparatus:

Basic apparatus used in the study consisted of:

Pen/ Desk/ Chairs.
32 Informed consent forms.
32 Debriefing forms.
Tape measure to measure the participant’s height.

A hair colour chart was also used, with sample pictures of a variety of different hair colours so the participant’s hair colour could be coded simply.

The Appearance Record form consists of a table that lists the participant number; natural hair colour, (white, lt.blonde, dk.blonde, lt.brown, dk.brown, black, grey, red/blonde, ginger); whether their hair was dyed, (bleached or other); their height, (feet/inches); their age; and gender.

The National Adult Reading Test was used to discover their intelligence. This particular test was selected because it was available from the university resources. It is generally used with patients suffering from dementia. When working with patients with dementia, researchers need to determine whether there has been deterioration

of intellectual performance after the onset of the dementia, however this is often difficult as there is normally no record of the patients IQ before the dementia onset so it can therefore not be compared to their present intelligence level. It was noticed, however, that patients with dementia were still able to read surprisingly well. It was then shown that word-reading ability and general intelligence were highly correlated, which made this a favourable way of discovering patient’s premorbid IQ scores.

As the N.A.R.T scores directly relate to intelligence tests and the National Adult Reading Test is a lot simpler than a full-scale IQ test, and therefore less time consuming, also because it is readily available for use at the university it makes it an ample way of discovering participants IQ scores in this study.

The majority of words in the English language follow common rules of ‘grapheme-phoneme representation and pronunciation’, (Nelson et al, 1991), however, in contrast to these words some English words are written in such an irregular way that ‘the application of the common grapheme-phoneme and stress rules would result in incorrect pronunciation’, (Nelson et al, 1991). These particular words would have to have been previously learned to be read correctly. These types of words are the words used in the National Adult Reading Test and therefore provides ‘a particularly sensitive measure of word recognition and familiarity with words’.

Procedure:

32 students were recruited within the university, 16 males and 16 females, the majority were likely to be Psychology students as most of the participants were recruited from that area of the university. The study was carried out in a quiet room within the university in which the researcher tested each participant individually. Each participant signed the informed consent form (see appendix).

After agreeing to take part in the study, participants were asked to select the colour that their natural hair colour most closely matched to on the hair colour sample chart (see appendix). They were then asked whether they had dyed it in anyway, and whether it was ‘bleached’ or ‘other’. Their height was then measured using a tape measure and this was recorded on the Appearance Record sheet (see appendix), along with their participant number, gender and the category that their age fell into, either: 15-20; 21-25; 26-30; 31-35; 36-40; 41-45; and 46+.

Next the participants are handed the Word Card (see appendix), this is a lost of 50 words printed in order of increasing difficulty, the words are relatively short and they are all deviate from the common rules of pronunciation in order to rely on the participants previous knowledge of the words. The researcher notes down the participants number on their answer sheet (a copy of this sheet can be found in the appendix) and gives the following instructions: ‘I want you to read slowly down the list of words starting here’, the word CHORD is indicated, ‘After each word please wait until I say “next” before reading the next word. I must warn you that there are many words that you probably won’t recognise; in fact most people don’t know them, so just have a guess at these, O.K.? Go ahead’. The participant then reads aloud down the list of words and the number of errors made is recorded. The correct pronunciations of all the 50 words are found in the appendix of the N.A.R.T. Test Manual and the researcher would have thoroughly familiarised theirselfs with all the words before the test being administered. Allowances for slight variations in pronunciation are deemed acceptable when they are due to regional dialects or speech impediments. If the participant fails to wait for the researcher to say ‘next’ in between words then the instruction that they should wait is repeated as often as necessary. The participant is encouraged to attempt to pronounce every word on the list and to guess if they don’t know them. The participant’s responses are reinforced by encouraging them with positive feedback that is reassuring without being strictly dishonest. The participant can change their pronunciation of a word as many times as they like but if they do give more than one version of a word they must decide which version they feel is correct. There is no time limit imposed on this test. If a participant shows anxiety when attempting to answer any of the words then they are reassured that they are not expected to know all the words.

After the test is completed, participants are handed the debriefing form, (see appendix), and thanked for taking part in the study.

Results

The results showed no significance in any area of this study. A one-way anova was performed on hair colour related to intelligence. It was found that there was no significance in the results (0.790 = >0.05), therefore the hypothesis that blondes are less intelligent is not supported. The same test was completed for height and its relation to intelligence, these results weren’t significant (0.645 = >0.05), and the hypothesis that the taller the person the more intelligence they are wasn’t found to be valid. Also, there was no significance between age and intelligence in this study (0.704 = >0.05). This hypothesis, that the older the person the less intelligent they are was also not supported.

An unrelated t-test was carried out to establish whether the hypothesis that there would be a relation between gender and intelligence was also found to not be significant in this study.

A summary of these findings suggests that hair colour, age height and gender do not relate to intelligence in any way.

The graph showing Age relation to intelligence increases to an optimal level at 41-45 then decreases rapidly at 46+; the graph showing Hair colour and intelligence shows that the participants with Light blonde hair and Light brown hair are the most intelligent; the Gender and intelligence graph shows that males appear more intelligent than females; and finally the Height and intelligence graph shows there is no correlation. However none of these results reach the level of significance required.

As an after thought two more graphs were completed to show the relation between just females hair colour and intelligence, and just males height related to intelligence, this is because the stereotype of the dumb blonde usually only applies to females, and because some studies have suggest that the relation between height and social status only affects males and therefore could be related to intelligence.

The Female hair colour and intelligence chart actually shows that light blonde hair obtained the highest IQ scores, and the male height and intelligence chart shows no correlation at all.

This findings do not support the hypotheses that:

Blondes are less intelligent than people with other hair colours.
As age increases, intelligence decreases.
The taller someone is the more intelligent they are.
There will be a difference in intelligence between males and females.

Discussion

The results show that none of the four hypotheses were supported. Part of this section will aim to discover the reasons as to why this is the case.

Hypothesis 1 stated that blondes would be less intelligent than other hair colours. The results were not significant and the null hypothesis that there is no relation between hair colour and intelligence is accepted. As there is no similar research into this specific area it is difficult to say whether the findings of this study tie in with previous research on hair colour and intelligence related studies. However, it does appear to go hand-in-hand with Weir and Fine-Davis’ (1989) study. In their study they discover that males have a strong belief in the stereotype of the ‘Dumb Blonde’ as it was found that they significantly rated a blonde female as being less intelligent, this study, however completely assumes that the idea of the ‘Dumb Blonde’ is only a stereotypical view and nothing more, so therefore the results of this study tie in with that of Weir and Fine-Davis by suggesting that blondes are not unintelligent and that it is purely a stereotypical belief.

It would seem that from previous research, the findings of Rosenthal on the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies on pupils performance and how it can significantly change depening on teachers expectations of the child, and rats performance in a maze due to their trainers beliefs of their ability, plus the study conducted by Forster et al on ‘blonde jokes’ and the negative effects they have on female participants performance in a speed and accuracy test have all provided immense support for the existence of the ’self-fulfilling prophecy’. which would, in turn, would seemingly suggest that there are strong implications that the wide-spread negative stereotypical belief that blondes are ’dumb’, could cause blonde haired women to be more likely to act according to their stereotype. However this study does not support these previous findings. This is probably due to the fact that the previous research has all looked into the immediate, direct effects of self-fulfilling prophecy rather than the indirect influence of society and stereotyping.

The four points mentioned in the introduction and there implications were not backed up by this study. The points were:

Intelligence is heritable, backed up by Wang and Oakland’s (1995) study on childrens intelligence in relation to their parents proffession.
Hair colour is heritable
Blonde women are perceived to be less intelligent than brunettes and redheads.
Males are more likely to pick a mate who is similar to them, therefore if a male is less intelligent they are more likely to pick a similar female and they are more likely to percieve a blonde-haired female as being less intelligent.

Previous research has shown that a person will be more attracted to a partner who is similar to themselves, you might be able to assume from this that an unintelligent male would be more likely to be attracted to blonde women as they percieve them to be similar to themselves, however, this assumes that a blonde-haired woman would have to also be attracted to someone who is less intelligent than themselves for this to be true, and that if the blonde female is infact intelligent that they would stay together. Therefore the last point mentioned is extremely vague. Previous research also highlights a problem with the assumption that blonde women are perceived to be less intelligent. Weir and Fine-Davis’ (1989) research showed that it was males only that significantly rated blonde females with lower intelligence than brunettes and redheads and not females, that the negative stereotype of the dumb blonde is only perceived to have some truth in it by less than half the population and therefore it may not have as much adverse affects as was first perceived.

Therefore, the idea that hair colour relates to intelligence may be a lot more far-fetched than was at first anticipated which would explain the insignificant findings of this research.

The findings from this study do not support, previously mentioned, McLean, Reynolds and Kaufman’s (2002) research , which showed that as age increased between the ages of 20 and 74 the efficiency on Performance IQ and Full Scale IQ decreased. However, Bors and Forrin (2002), who also found that intelligence decreased as age increased when testing 63 adults between the ages of 26 and 80 on sped of information processing pardigms, additionally discovered that this was to do with age related declines in cognitive speed. This would explain why the results from this study did not support previous research as there was no time limit imposed on the ational Adult Reading Test and therefore would not show whether age has any effect on speed of processing but only whether it had an affect on actual intelligence. Furthermore Mclean, Reynolds and Kaufman’s research used the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale which uses a variety of different scales, whereas this study uses a reading test, so the results from McLean, Reynolds and Kaufman’s study could be due to an age related decline in ability in certain areas of intelligence and not with reading ability. The results do, however, support Deary at al (1999) longitudinal study of 101 children who took an intelligence test and ere then followed up at the age of 77, as it showed that their mental ability was unchanging throughout their life. Both studies suggest that age does not relate to intelligence.

This consequently implies that intelligence does not, as first predicted, decrease with age, but cognitive processing speed, however, does.

Nelson (1991), conducted a study supporting this view. He got 120 patients from the National Hospice for Nervous Diseases to complete the National Adult Reading Test, found that age had no effect on reading ability.

The hypothesis that there will be a difference in intelligence between males and females wasn’t supported. Previous research looked at by Jorm et al (2002) looked at gender differences in cognitive ability. They used various different intelligence tests, such as, the verbal learning test, digit span backwards, symbol digit modalities test, spot-the-word, and choice reaction time. Jorm discovered that there were gender differences in intelligence; he found that males did better on the digit span backwards and on the reaction time test, and that females performed better on the symbol-digit modalities test and recall. Although this does show that males and females have very different abilities of cognitive processing, it doesn’t show that either males or females are actually more or less intelligent than the other.

The findings of this research supports that of Deary et al (2002), who looked at over 80,000 children’s IQ scores in Scotland and found no significance in the scores relating to gender, however, as mentioned before, there was a lot more males who had either very high or very low IQ scores. The results do support Reynold and Chastain’s (1985) study that, amongst other findings, found no relation between the gender of the participant and their IQ scores. This study suggests that males and females are equally as intelligent as each other when it comes to pronouncing words.

Research carried out by Lee Ellis (1994) looking at the relationship between height and status showed that in non-humans size and dominance was important, and that this was similar when relating to humans. He found that social status positively correlated with height. Cernerud (1995) found similar results amongst 10-year-old children. He found that the lower class boys who were selected for higher education were significantly taller than those staying in their social position, and that higher-class boys who were selected for elementary education were significantly smaller. These results are not supported by the study but they are not directly not supported as this research looks at intelligence and height whereas previous research looks at social status and height. However, as social status would seemingly be related to intelligence it does lead to the belief that intelligence would relate to height in some way, Reynolds and Chastain (1985) data shows that intelligence relates directly to occupational groups. This study shows now that height does not relate to intelligence and that the reason that height is related to social status must be due to a stereotypical view about shorter peoples capabilities in higher status positions. This supports the study conducted by Nelson (1991) on intelligence and social class, he also used the National Adult Reading Test and found that there was no relation between the two variables. However, his participants were all patients from the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases.

The idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy has been shown to exist and could still therefore cause taller people to believe they’re more intelligent or blonde-haired women to believe that they are ‘dumb’, however this probably didn’t affect the results of this study as previous research has demonstrated that the negative stereotypes only have a direct effect on a persons performance, for example, Forster et al study showed that only the blonde women who had been told negative stereotypical jokes about their hair colour before the test hadn’t done as well. The selection of blonde participants who had not heard these jokes, had probably heard of the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotypes before in their life but they had not been affected by them directly when taking the test, which would explain the insignificant results obtained by this study. As Forster says, ‘blonde women aren’t stupid, but when faced with negative prejudices about their appearance it is shown to affect their confidence and make their performance poorer.

In this study participants are clearly given details in the informed consent form that the study is aimed at discovering if hair colour, age gender, and/or height relates to intelligence. The reason that the results are insignificant could be due to the fact that blonde-haired, shorter, older participants, etc may feel it necessary to put more effort into the test to ‘prove’ that they are as intelligent as anyone else, which could have caused the insignificance in the results.

The National Adult Reading Test may have not been the best choice of IQ test as it is a very limited due to the fact that it only tests a person’s ability to pronounce a small list of words. Although it has been shown to relate directly to other IQ scores, this study used students selected at random from University buildings. There was no indication as to whether English was their first language or not. English could have been their second, third language, etc and they might have only just moved to this country and therefore this would be a great disadvantage to them when completing this test as it consists purely of words selected from the English language. Nelson (1991) says that ‘the NART may not be appropriate for a subject whose first language is not English’ because if their reading of English words is not fully developed then this could lead to an miscalculation of their IQ levels. This would therefore influence their results greatly, and thus reducing the validity of this research immensely.

Another problem with using the National Adult Reading Test is that it is recommended in the test manual that the test is not recommended for inexperienced researchers as the results rely on how well the researcher learns the correct pronunciation of the words themselves, whether they decide slight variations in the pronunciation of words due to regional dialect or perceived speech impediment. In this particular study the test had not been used by the researcher before, which shows inexperience. It was decided beforehand that as the researcher only knew the pronunciations they had learnt and not how they differed from regional dialect, that there would be not be any exceptions of any slight variations in word pronunciation as they would purely rely on the researchers interpretations of individuals and this limited knowledge was not deemed reliable enough. This however could cause problems in itself, for example, the English pronunciation of the word DRACHM is ‘dram’, whereas, the Scottish pronunciation of the same word ‘drakm’. This suggests that there are variations on the pronunciation of words due to regional dialect, thus suggesting that if some participants were from certain regions where the words were pronounced differently they would be at a disadvantage to the rest of the participants.

It was observed that quite a few of the participants became embarrassed when asked to take the test, and were anxious when they did not know how to pronounce a word, even after being assured by the researcher that they are not expected to know all the words, or even an admission that the tester did not know them when they first saw them. Some participants would not attempt to try to pronounce words, even when encouraged, which therefore limited their chances of getting a high score. Some participants said the first pronoun citation of a word that came into their head and would not change their answer whereas some kept changing their minds until told to decide which variation of the word was their final choice. It would seem that this test would benefit from an additional instruction beforehand that the words are ‘irregular’ words and that they do not follow the common grapheme-phoneme and stress rules, because some of the participants would answer correctly and then, thinking that it is a ‘trick’ change their answer to how they believed the word should be pronounced, usually following the rules of ‘regular’ word pronunciation, rather than how they would actually pronounce the words themselves. For example, a participant could read the word CELLIST as ‘chel’ist’ (which is the correct pronunciation) but then think about how it should be pronounced according to the application of common grapheme-phoneme rules and then change their answer to ‘sel’ist’ or ‘kel’ist’.

Another problem with just using the pronunciation of words as a test of intelligence could be caused by the fact that the some of the students selected were English students and consequently they had probably come across a lot more of the words than other participants, giving them an unfair advantage and further reducing the validity of the experiment. The test also completely relies on the testers knowledge of the words; the tester learned the words before conducting the experiment, however there is no way of showing that they learnt the words correctly. Also as only one experimenter was involved in this study there is no way of showing that they classified the results correctly or if they were biased with particular individuals, for example, the researcher themselves could believe that blondes are less intelligent and therefore unknowingly give more leeway to participants with blonde hair, etc, and unintentionally influence the results.

The selection of participants is also a very limited selection of the population. The results were all insignificant, showing that there was no relation between, age, gender, height and hair colour, to intelligence, but this could be due to the fact that only university students were used in the study and would therefore would have to all have a similar degree of intelligence to secure places in the university. This greatly reduces the chances of any of the results being significant.

There is very low ecological validity in this study. The fact that only 32 participants were used in a study with so many different areas being researched probably played a large part in the insignificance of the results as there was very few people available to fill each category, for example, nobody with grey hair participated and nobody between the ages of 36 and 40, etc. Such a small sample of the population in each category could not be classed as representative of society.

The National Reading Test does, however, have many strengths. It is easy for the participants to understand and less time consuming for them as it is a short test and does not need prolonged attention, the instructions on how to conduct the test and work out the results are clear and easy to do, making it simpler for the tester to carry it out and it is generally very accurate. The NART scores are quite stable too, as they are practically uninfluenced by lack of concentration and/or motivation.

However, it cannot be possible that everybody has developed their reading abilities to a level proportionate to that of their intelligence level, (Nelson, 1991). This would mean that the National Adult Reading Test would be useless at predicting their IQ.

Although none of the hypothesis for this study were supported

There are very little ethical issues to mention for this study. There are only a few extremely minor points that could have caused distress to the participant. The participant could have realised the study was looking at hair colour and intelligence due to the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype, for example, and been offended by it, or scared that perhaps it was true. Also, as mentioned before, it was noticed that there was a small amount of distressed caused in some participants when they realised that they did not know how to pronounce some of the words presented, however, they were reassured that they were not expected to know all the words.

Despite its problems the study was conducted in a professional way, it took place in a small quiet room within the university; all participants gave their informed consent to take part and were thoroughly debriefed completion. They were positively reinforced by the experimenter and were all treated as similar as possible to keep down the amount of confounding variables.

This research would have probably benefited from a pilot study, however it’s mistakes and the ideas it has brought up provides implications for further research in this area. It would probably be useful to replicate this study with a much larger selection of the population, such as with a couple hundred people rather than 32, and with a wider selection from different groups and not just from university students. The National Adult Reading Test would also benefit from being converted into similar tests for different languages so that this research could be carried out further afield than just English speaking countries or perhaps a different IQ test could be used, with different cognitive sections that could look at a participants verbal abilities, visual abilities, their logic, etc to see if this provides any variations in results. Height, gender age and hair colour are only four physical attributes that have related stereotypes, there are many other attributes that could be looked at to see if they relate to intelligence, for example, weight, eyesight (are people with glasses more clever?), or health problems, etc. Intelligence compared to non-physical attributes like personality traits could be looked into, for example, is there a difference in intellectual abilities between assertive, aggressive and passive people? Or this idea could be reversed and the relationship between physical attributes and its relation to other aspects such as personality traits could be studied, for example, are blonde haired people more confident?, are shorter people more passive?, etc. There are many implications for further studies that have arisen from this study that could be looked into, this area is so broad that the possibility are almost endless.

Although the study did not support any of the previously suggested hypothesis, it has presented people with the reassurance there physical attributes, height, gender, age and hair colour are unlikely to affect their IQ levels and that the views that people have, that blondes are dumb, or that older people are less intelligent are just stereotypes. This could be a very useful development in psychology. It could be very advantageous for use in society. The knowledge that shorter people are not less intelligent than taller people could be used in big businesses, recruiters could be supplied with this information so that they are more aware that if they pick someone because they are taller it could be that they are being influenced by a particular stereotypical view and would allow them to think more about how they make their choices, etc. Which would in turn give shorter people more of an advantage in life and help them reach higher levels in society. The results of this study could be used in a similar situation when it comes to gender and intelligence. There is still a chauvinistic view that women are less capable in the work place, etc, but now as more women are looking to follow careers rather than being housewives, the information would be very useful for recruiters to have so they can be sure that females are not less intelligent than males and therefore just as suitable for a higher position as a similar male. Which would help females who are struggling to follow a career due to stereotypical view of their abilities due to their gender. The information from this study could also be provided to nurses in elderly care homes, a lot of nurses in these kind of homes are thought to be very patronising to the patients and it would help for them to realise that they the patients intelligence has not declined because they are old, but that there cognitive ability has merely slowed down. This would help improve nurse/patient rapport in homes, and make the elderly patients more comfortable as they will be less likely to feel that they are being patronized by their carers. As for the results showing that hair colour and intelligence, this information would benefit the whole population, it would help blonde haired women in many different situation, from anything from making friends to following their career. If people were more accepting and less prejudice about the colour of someone’s hair then this would benefit the whole population. The idea that blonde-haired people are less intelligent almost seems to be comparable to racism, and any kind of prejudice isn’t good in society and should be changed. The whole of society would benefit from being less prejudiced towards people and any research that provides confirmation of prejudices is very useful for society as a whole.

In conclusion this study, despite its problems has provided many ideas for further research, has provided information that would be useful in society and most importantly has shown that stereotypes are just that. Hair colour, height, age and gender do not relate directly to intelligence.

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DOES HAIR COLOUR, AGE, GENDER AND/OR HEIGHT RELATE TO INTELLIGENCE

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