# Black Women Less Attractive - Is the Outrage Due to Flawed Researched or Political Correctness? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 29, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691 "2011-05-29T19:44:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![eman77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f04885/32.png) [@eman77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eman77)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/1 "2011-05-29T19:44:15Z")
This is based on an article posted on Yahoo this morning. [http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20110528/tc\_atlantic/psychologytodayapologizesblackwomenlessattractivearticle38261](http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20110528/tc_atlantic/psychologytodayapologizesblackwomenlessattractivearticle38261) After a quick skim of his Wiki page, this does not seem to be the first time Satoshi Kanazawa has stirred some emotions. He’s all about Evolutionary Psychology which many people are against and reading some quotes he seems to be very blunt, and appears to lean towards the wacky side. However one quote he says I do agree with and makes a part of me look for evidence there is a crusade against him. He says "“political correctness is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism”. Is this blacklash a case of “HOLY CRAP, YOUR NOT ALLOWED TO SAY THAT” or is his research biased towards racism and his personal subjective opinion? My curiosity expands from the worry that political correctness may one day wipe out valid research in the case true positive-negative racial differences are found. What does the Dope feel about this issue? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/2 "2011-05-29T20:07:55Z")
Without reading the original paper, I won’t myself say that it’s flawed, but any study which claims to be objectively measuring attractiveness has at the least a very high bar that it needs to clear. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/3 "2011-05-29T20:14:29Z")
I will probably get flamed for this but as a personal preference (I am a white, heterosexual male) I find black women overall less attractive than white women BUT a really attractive black women, to me, trumps white women almost every time. There are some stunningly beautiful black women who are hard to beat. I have guessed, being white, I tend to allow for a more shades of gray when I look at white women and decide (again for myself) whether they are beautiful physically. I have found my boundaries for what I consider to be a beautiful black woman to be more narrow. That, I suspect, would reverse itself if you asked a black man. I also noticed on my recent trip to London that the black women I saw there tended to be faaaar more attractive than black women here. Again in my view and of course anecdotal. Seriously though, my jaw was hitting the floor. The black women there I found to be gorgeous more often than not. I’m hard pressed to think of a woman I’d rather have sex with than Halle Berry. Of course that is an open question as there are lots of beautiful black women and lots of beautiful white women (and Asian and Indian and Persian and whatever). At the end of the day I am a guy. Hot is hot and I am not choosy about race/nationality/religion. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/4 "2011-05-29T20:28:48Z")
As I understand it, to a large degree “attractiveness” is a sort of mathematical average of the facial appearance of people; take a bunch of sample faces, [merge them into an average](http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=1127&id=41272) and you get a face most people will find more attractive. I expect that means that anyone obviously far off the average will generally be considered less attractive, and in this country black people aren’t the average. > [@](#): > > If Winkielman and Halberstadt are correct, then beauty depends on what kind of faces you are exposed to. “In places like London or New York, your category is wider,” because you are exposed to a wider variety of people, Winkielman said. “But in places with separation of ethnicities, a multiracial face might look weird.” > > Winkielman pointed out that people often say that they find exotic faces more attractive, though the data suggests the people prefer average faces. “Prototypes are not exciting. They are extraordinary because they are so well balanced, but they are not intriguing,” he said. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/5 "2011-05-29T20:52:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Without reading the original paper, I won’t myself say that it’s flawed, but any study which claims to be objectively measuring attractiveness has at the least a very high bar that it needs to clear. I agree. We’ve all encountered cultural practices that we find hideous (or at least unattractive) and yet within that culture is a sign of beauty. Even within our own culture, if we look at photos of what was considered attractive 50 or 100 years ago, it’s not the same as what we consider attractive today. As for whether or not Political Correctness or Religious Fundamentalism is a bigger thread to Evolutionary Psychology, I don’t think the latter really comes into play at the level of peer reviewed scientific journals, but I’m always suspicious of claims of PC control of science. Evolutionary Psychology is a strange field to begin with, and a lot of what goes on in that field is not really testable or falsifiable. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/6 "2011-05-29T20:52:56Z")
There’s a lot of physical variation in “negroid” facial features. Far more than in “caucasoid” features, which are pretty diverse themselves, but after all defined according to what some German guy in the 18th Century considered “the beautiful race.” So there are black women whom I would consider (entirely subjectively) as beautiful as anyone, and black woman that I would treat with complete disinterest. Kind of like white women, really. But then, I come from blonds, so I’m not all that impressed by fair skin; just being pale doesn’t really make you pretty. ---
**Author:** ![Implicit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Implicit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Implicit)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/7 "2011-05-29T20:54:28Z")
Using the Add Health Study on adolescent health and behavior as data is only one of many problems with the evo psych bunk presented by Kanazawa. Here is a fairly in depth summary of the rebuttals people have already made to this garbage: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-datas-in-satoshi-kanazawa-is-a-2011-05-23](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-datas-in-satoshi-kanazawa-is-a-2011-05-23) > [@](#): > > I am disturbed by the fact that the Add Health study’s adult researchers even answered the question of how attractive they rated these youth. I am even more deeply disturbed by the idea that we are to extrapolate a general theory of desirability from these adult interviewers’ subjective assessment of the children’s attractiveness. > [@](#): > > Hughes also points out that the Add Health data set fails to report the race of the interviewer, or any facts about the interviewer at all. For example, there is no data to analyze to help us determine if interviewers preferred interviewees of their same race. > > As Robert Kurzban comments in his Psychology Today blog retort to Kanazawa, “Rhodes et al. (2005) argued that if people prefer faces that constitute an average of the faces that they experience, then, as they put it, faces ‘should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population.’ They indeed showed some evidence for an ‘own race’ effect.” Hence, in knowing the race of the interviewer and the interviewee, we might actually be able to learn whether this held true and add to the body of scholarly knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/8 "2011-05-29T21:01:08Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > There’s a lot of physical variation in “negroid” facial features. Far more than in “caucasoid” features, which are pretty diverse themselves, but after all defined according to what some German guy in the 18th Century considered “the beautiful race.” I’m not understanding what you’ve written here. First of all, do you _know_ that there is more physical variation among “negroid” faces than among caucasian (which just for the sake of this argument we will define as “European” even though that is not by any stretch the only accepted definition of caucasian)? Second of all, what do you mean about the faces being “defined by some German guy in the 18th century”? The ideal, proportionate, symmetrical “averaged” face was being idealized at least as far back as Ancient Greece. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/9 "2011-05-29T21:08:37Z")
Here’s the original article. > **[BLACK TOKYO](https://www.blacktokyo.com/?p=7927)** > > Discover Japan through a unique Afro-perspective at Black Tokyo! Since 1999, we’ve been your premier source for insights, videos, and podcasts. Celebrate our 25th Anniversary with us as we explore Japanese culture and offer exclusive American and... Reads more like a blog post than a scientific article. > [@](#): > > 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.” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/10 "2011-05-29T21:12:22Z")
There are certain ethnic groups that I find completely unattractive. I can’t believe that men in those ethnic groups agree with me. I’m thinking, for example, of Papuan people. I’ve heard East Asian women talk about how disgustingly hairy European men are-- hair on your arms!! GMWaS!! OTOH, there is nothing more attractive than an angry Armenian woman. HOT!! ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/11 "2011-05-29T21:15:52Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’ve heard East Asian women talk about how disgustingly hairy European men are-- hair on your arms!! GMWaS!! Some of them _like_ that about white men. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/12 "2011-05-29T21:41:54Z")
You have to admit, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” is a pretty inflammatory title. If I were writing the results of the study I would have come up withing something a little more appropriate. I do question how one can objectively define attractiveness. You might produce a study showing most people display a preference for skin color and other factors but that doesn’t make black women objectively less attractive than white women. There’s a scene in the movie **The Gods Must Be Crazy** where an African Bushman sees a white person for the first time in his life and she’s half-naked. The narrator describes the woman as the fattest he has ever seen with skin white like a grubs. Of course the woman is Sandra Prinsloo and she’s pretty attractive by our standards. I just thought that was a fantastic example of the subjective nature of beauty. From what I can recall there are really only three “universal” standards of beauty. Clear skin, symmetry and youth. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/13 "2011-05-29T21:54:50Z")
His quote is true, religious fundamentalism does not prevent any biologists from saying what he wishes, but the PC NKVD which policies all of academia will hound out anyone who utters any blasphemy against orthodoxy. At any rate, I and him and everyone else are entitled to believe whatever they want in believing who is attractive and who is not. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/14 "2011-05-29T22:08:06Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > His quote is true, religious fundamentalism does not prevent any biologists from saying what he wishes, but the PC NKVD which policies all of academia will hound out anyone who utters any blasphemy against orthodoxy. Yeah, that’s why nothing new has been discovered or taught in decades. :rolleyes: **Odesio** : That’s an important part of what “beauty” is, but it can’t be all of it. Surely there has to be an element of the human form involved and a sense of proportion. If I have a perfectly symmetrical nose that looks like a grapefruit, I’m not winning any beauty contests. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/15 "2011-05-29T22:09:33Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Here’s the original article. > > [BLACK TOKYO](http://www.blacktokyo.com/?p=7927) > > Reads more like a blog post than a scientific article. It apparently _was_ a blog post and not a scientific article. The [apology](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/201105/apology-psychology-today) on the _Psychology Today_ website refers to it as a blog post, and as far as I can tell it was only posted online and was never in their print version. And _Psychology Today_ is a magazine aimed at the general public, not a scholarly journal. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/16 "2011-05-29T22:12:26Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I will probably get flamed for this but as a personal preference (I am a white, heterosexual male) I find black women overall less attractive than white women BUT a really attractive black women, to me, trumps white women almost every time. There are some stunningly beautiful black women who are hard to beat. > > I have guessed, being white, I tend to allow for a more shades of gray when I look at white women and decide (again for myself) whether they are beautiful physically. I have found my boundaries for what I consider to be a beautiful black woman to be more narrow. That, I suspect, would reverse itself if you asked a black man. > > I also noticed on my recent trip to London that the black women I saw there tended to be faaaar more attractive than black women here. Again in my view and of course anecdotal. Seriously though, my jaw was hitting the floor. The black women there I found to be gorgeous more often than not. > > I’m hard pressed to think of a woman I’d rather have sex with than Halle Berry. Of course that is an open question as there are lots of beautiful black women and lots of beautiful white women (and Asian and Indian and Persian and whatever). > > At the end of the day I am a guy. Hot is hot and I am not choosy about race/nationality/religion. I think you have made an astonishingly true statment that solves ths “problem”. One you get out of the “hot” zone you become pickier, but less so with people of your own (perceived) group. A white women who is a 6 is better looking for me than an Asian of Black one who’s also a 6. Once you get 9 and beyond race (whatever that is) becomes less relevant. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/17 "2011-05-29T22:20:00Z")
I hate that argument with the passion of several fiery suns! Dismissing your critics as “too pc” allows you to sound all disinterested and objective while acting like they’re all about the groupthink. Actually, there are a lot of us social scientists who criticize evolutionary psychology because so much of it is unscientific nonsense. If a study’s not replicable and not falsifiable, it’s not science, period, and so much of ev psych is like that. It also tends to ignore cultural differences (as is blindingly obvious in this particular piece) and puts too much emphasis on genetics for humans, when it’s clear that behavioral flexibility is a hallmark of our species. Take this guy’s study. While symmetrical features are generally considered beautiful, there’s still a lot of variation in there, and there is no culturally-universal standard of beauty beyond that. Hell, even that gets tossed out the window when confronted with real-life people. There was a magazine article once, years ago, that had plastic surgeons show what they’d change about famous beauties. I think it was Audrey Hepburn that had the crooked eyebrows. Relatedly, there’s an entire cultural history denying black women beauty- everything from the color of their skin to their facial features is supposedly “ugly”. Who did Kanazawa question in the survey? What countries were the men from, what groups? You can’t make broad generalizations about evolved human behavior if you only talk to, say, college students in western nations, which many ev psych people do. What do men in Ghana think? How about Papua New Guinea? Or the Bushmen mentioned above? Ev psych studies are riddled with these kinds of flaws, and all they can throw back at their detractors is that we’re “too pc”. That’s a sign of a bad argument, right there. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/18 "2011-05-29T22:25:17Z")
Scientific American has a [guest blog post](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-datas-in-satoshi-kanazawa-is-a-2011-05-23) that addresses the problem with Kanazawa’s post. I forgot all about the abuse of statistics that’s common in ev psych. This is hardly the first or last study that did things that would make my stats professor glare. ---
**Author:** ![Implicit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Implicit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Implicit)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/19 "2011-05-29T22:43:39Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > At any rate, I and him and everyone else are entitled to believe whatever they want in believing who is attractive and who is not. Silly me, thinking he was presenting a study of some kind, I didn’t realize he was posting statistical data and graphs to describe his own personal preferences. > [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > His quote is true, religious fundamentalism does not prevent any biologists from saying what he wishes, but the PC NKVD which policies all of academia will hound out anyone who utters any blasphemy against orthodoxy. The who, what, where? Don’t you mean that peer review in science is an excellent way to deconstruct scientific inquiry and ensure that the data used are reliable, repeatable, and statistically significant? None of which happens to be the case with the crap posted by Kanazawa. > [@random6x7](#): > > Scientific American has a [guest blog post](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-datas-in-satoshi-kanazawa-is-a-2011-05-23) that addresses the problem with Kanazawa’s post. I forgot all about the abuse of statistics that’s common in ev psych. This is hardly the first or last study that did things that would make my stats professor glare. I linked that in post 7 of this thread and yes, the statistical problems with the study are frightening. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691/20 "2011-05-29T22:54:39Z")
Oh, shoot, I’m an idiot. Sorry about that, **Implicit**. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-women-less-attractive-is-the-outrage-due-to-flawed-researched-or-political-correctness/583691.md?page=2)