Net of intelligence, black men are significantly more physically attractive than nonblack men. There are many biological and genetic differences between the races. However, such race differences usually exist in equal measure for both men and women. For example, because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races. And the mutation loads significantly decrease physical attractiveness because physical attractiveness is a measure of genetic and developmental health.
But since both black women and black men have higher mutation loads, it cannot explain why only black women are less physically attractive, while black men are, if anything, more attractive.
The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races, and testosterone, being an androgen male hormone , affects the physical attractiveness of men and women differently. Men with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine features and are therefore more physically attractive. In contrast, women with higher levels of testosterone also have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive.
The race differences in the level of testosterone can therefore potentially explain why black women are less physically attractive than women of other races, while net of intelligence black men are more physically attractive than men of other races.
Others have done so, though, including Marianne Kirby. Kanazawa is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he published a study claiming that liberals and athiests were smarter than conservatives and believers. And yet P. I see a more central flaw with Kanazawa's method beyond its creepiness, reliance on unscientific conjecture or abuse of factor analysis. Since the interviewers' assessment data was never intended to be used for an analysis such as Kanazawa's, the survey was not designed to capture that information.
In fact, nowhere in the study monograph, nowhere on the website and nowhere in the study design materials is the interviewer's assessment of the interviewee's attractiveness mentioned. I emailed the study designers to ask why they collected this information in the first place, and will update this post below if they answer.
Why was the study undertaken? According to the study website , it was in response to a mandate by the US Congress inthe NIH Revitalization Act of , where Congress asked a division of the NIH to "provide information about the health and well-being of adolescents in our country and about the behaviors that promote adolescent health or that put health at risk" with "a focus on how communities influenced the health of adolescents.
The Add Health study measures hundreds of variables. One has to wonder: why pick only race? Especially when the results of your "study" are so unabashedly weak? Seeing that Kanazawa based his findings on such a tenuously related study, I wonder how many other studies he scoured for evidence to support his point.
This sort of "fishing" for results to support your finding leads to bad science, period. Like it or not, the burden is higher when you're a scientist blogging about science. And anyone who can only think of one explanation for an observed difference in a data set might simply be incapable of meeting that high burden. To quote Kanazawa, a little bit of logic goes a long way. Seeing that his work is rife with logical errors, Kanazawa should be criticizing himself.
I drafted this post after spending a couple of days sorting through my emotions on Kanazawa's work. Seeing that the man clearly relishes his role as an agent provocateur, I knew I could not impact him or those who respond to his work from a place of emotion. He has made that much clear. From my incessant reading of blog responses and comments, I have encountered the sentiment that because Kanazawa's question was immoral to ask, his results are invalid.
I agree with my heart and soul that the way he framed his so-called "research question" is offensive, racist and harmful. As I tweeted after reading Kanazawa's post, "Imagine a little Black girl reading this filth. It's reality. I stand in solidarity with Black women and hope you will heed this blog's cry to stand stronger than ever in self-love.
The intent behind a question can establish an immoral line of inquiry and instigate immoral research methods see the Nazi doctors' experiments. But a question itself is not evil. Scandalous, offensive and sometimes frightening questions are often at the root of important scientific inquiry.
When supported by data significant enough to support them, these questions drive us toward the truth see, e. Kanazawa does not earn censure with the political incorrectness of his question, but earns social and scientific irrelevance through the weakness of his research.
This irrelevance earns Kanazawa a special place in hell in today's link-driven media economy — one where no one will hear him scream. One week later, neither Kanazawa nor Psychology Today 's editors has published any official defense, apology or explanation.
The silence is deafening. About the Author: Khadijah M. Britton , JD, is founder of BetterBio, a Massachusetts-registered nonprofit and fiscally sponsored project of the c 3 Fractured Atlas whose mission is to empower journalism that reinforces the intimate connection between life and science. BetterBio provides a platform for comprehensive science reporting, challenging us to ask hard questions and debunk dangerous myths while addressing our collective social responsibility. Khadijah also serves as a post-graduate research fellow in antibiotic policy under Professor Kevin Outterson at Boston University School of Law while she completes her Master's in Public Health at Boston University School of Public Health and studies for the bar exam.
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. On May 16, , Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist associated with the London School of Economics, posted a blog on the website of Psychology Today.
The blog, which was written for a publication called The Scientific Fundamentalist, made a series of contentious claims including that African-American women are, on average, less attractive than women of other races. A flurry of responses ensued, and the essay was subsequently removed from the Psychology Today website. Since then, commentators and members of the public have raised concerns about the source and quality of data upon which Kanazawa based his blog post.
Add Health would like to respond to these concerns. The data Kanazawa used for his research were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Add Health , a congressionally-mandated study funded by the U. National Institutes of Health. Add Health data are available in two forms: a "public use" data set, which includes data from a subset of participants, and a "contractual" or "restricted-use" data set, which includes the full set of variables and participants.
The "restricted-use" data are available to researchers who have appropriate research credentials e. Kanazawa applied for and was granted access to these restricted data, as have thousands of other researchers. Because Add Health was congressionally mandated and funded by the National Institutes of Health, these data are a public resource.
Add Health has sought to make its data widely available to the scientific community of qualified U. Add Health does not stipulate what research topics can or cannot be studied and does not censor research findings.
As do other studies, Add Health relies on the scientific peer-review process to evaluate the merits of any given analysis of project data. Kanazawa based his blog post on data derived from interviewer ratings of the respondents that were recorded confidentially after the interview was completed and the interviewer had left the interview setting. It is a widely-used and accepted survey practice for interviewers and researchers to include such post-survey completion remarks.
These remarks provide both an additional observation about the respondent and data on the context of the interview for researchers to assess data quality.
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By Matthew Johnson Uncategorized July 3, More posts by Matthew Johnson. Related posts Make way for Episode 15! Abundance, Provision and Neighborliness. Leave a comment Cancel reply. Send Comment. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.
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