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Many a times in hollywood, blondes are projected as unitellegent, stupid and dull-witted. In fact a perception around the world can be realized about the same. In friends circle, TV shows and social networks, everyone keeps hinting in one way or the another that blondes lack intelligence or good judgement.

So the question is, Is this true and do we have any research material that backs these sarcastic humor against blond women??

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    Consider that "pretty" people (especially women and girls?) have the option of influencing people by that hook and may practice that skill instead of "smarter" alternatives. So even if the statistics hold up the causality might be social rather than related to intelligence.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 17:04
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    BTW, I have strong suspicion, that in Hollywood vast majority of blond girls are actually fake blonds, but I can't find any reliable data about that.
    – vartec
    Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 22:36
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    @Randolf : As far as the attraction goes, you are correct. I too don't have a theoretical explanation but a practical one. Facebook has emerged BIG from this consequence only. People can see pretty faces anywhere but they tend to incline or attracted towards the faces they see more often. Hence, it's way ahead of any dating/blind dating website.
    – Pankaj Upadhyay
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 5:31
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    Could it be because stupid, dull-witted, girls tend to grab the pyroxide bottle more than others, while smart, intelligent, girls go for a brown colouring? :)
    – jwenting
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 5:37
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    I guess the reason why Hollywood uses blondes for stupid people is the same why the bad guys in Westerns always wear black hats. Visual clues (subtle or not) are used to tell the audience what these people are. It's just one of the many tropes used in popular culture, see tvtropes.org
    – Lagerbaer
    Commented Jul 20, 2011 at 0:44

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If you take a look at the IQ by the country table

enter image description here

... and cross reference it with countries with significant blond population, you'll see that these countries are very close to top.

enter image description here

  • yellow represents 80%+ light hair
  • light orange is 50-79% light hair
  • light brown is 20-49% light hair
  • dark brown is 1-19% light hair
  • black represents no presence of light hair

Note however, that above map refers to natural blond, while stereotype does not make that distinction.

Since there seems to be some confusion, let me explain few things:

  • The claim in the question is that blonds are dumber. Lack of negative correlation of prevalence of natural blond with IQ proves, that in case of natural blonds the claim is false;
  • there are great many definitions of intelligence, it's known that IQ does not measure intelligence directly, but it is highly correlated with it. Even if you do not agree with particular metric, it doesn't change the fact that's its highly correlated.
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    Ah ha! So, then, it's a matter of jealousy! ;-D
    – Randolf Richardson
    Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 19:35
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    Keep in mind that IQ tests are based in part on cultural background. Applying the same test to people from different cultures tends to yield different results (which this map seems to indicate, I don't believe for a moment that the average African is dumber than the average Asian or North American for example, they seem to have set out to prove that blacks are stupid, as by that map the average IQ in Africa is 50% of that in China).
    – jwenting
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 5:36
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    @user: how is high IQ scores from countries with 80% blond population not evidence, that claims about blondes being dumber are false?
    – vartec
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 15:30
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    -1 You aren't comparing within the same populations. I could find 3 things Scandinavia and Italy have in common to "explain" why we have higher IQ. This might've been interesting if you compared the IQ of blondes in Sweden with non-blondes in Sweden, as it is this is a sherry picked correlation with to many external factors that is glaced over. For all you know the higher IQ countries spend more time in school, have more educational TV or have subtleties in their cultures that makes them favor IQ raising activities. For instance: Sweden is (was?) the most food secure place in the world.
    – Kit Sunde
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 17:02
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    @vartec Intelligence tests aren't culture-fair, they were meant to differentiate between people in the same culture (originally to assess aptitude for higher education). You can handwave this, because "eh it's just about proving a stupid joke wrong", but I'd hope you wouldn't do that because you might be quoted or linked by someone who wants to prove "Aryan superiority". Not so cute. Also, again, national comparisons don't speak to the individual level.
    – Ruben
    Commented May 31, 2012 at 14:14

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