I suffer from recurrent sinus and nasal congestion, and perhaps it was during one of my recent periods of inability to breathe clearly through my nose that I reflected on the perception that people who regularly let their mouths stay open are less intelligent, or even mentally disabled.
It used to be that if one’s mouth was open (and not in the midst of being used to talk or eat) were told things like, “Whaddya doin’, tryin’ to catch flies?” Nowadays I’ve frequently heard stupid people referred to as “mouth-breathers.”
My question is: where does this association come from? Are there forms of disability that tend to lead to a default open-mouthed position? And if so, why?
Just a quick (and inevitable) anecdotal: the current UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, has the habit of breathing through his mouth, which is quite distracting once you start to notice it
In this post in the thread “Why do mentally retarded people LOOK retarded,” someone suggested that muscle tone plays a role in the physical attributes of many conditions associated with mental disability. Poor muscle tone might make it harder for someone to keep his or her mouth closed without a lot of effort, leading to a correlation between “open mouth” and “lower than normal intelligence.” It’s also possible that some of these conditions are associated with malformations of the sinuses or nasal bones, both of which might also predispose someone to mouth-breathing.
All true. I suspect less-smart people also aren’t as likely to remember various social niceties, one of which (for many) is “close your mouth if you’re not talking or eating.”
Not adhering to social niceties is about being either ignorant or just plain rude - not dumb. There are plenty of very smart profs/researchers in unversities who act incredibly rude and impolite (I know, I’ve met them). Some might even suggest that their isolated & focused work style and elevated status within the institution can encourage it.
Let’s call ignorance and rudeness “sufficient but not necessary conditions.” Children with inattentive-subtype ADHD, for instance, can be very bright and polite yet sometimes miss social cues.
>Not adhering to social niceties is about being either ignorant or just plain rude - not dumb.
This doesn’t sound correct to me. Being more intellegent can help a person do better at all kinds of things. For example, it could help a person maintain awareness of more kinds of things at all times, including the niceties. It could help a person do more things automatically while preoccupied with whatever isn’t done automatically. It could make more obvious to a person reasons to motivate that adherance. Ignorance and rudeness are not the only things that foil the niceties, are they?
We’ve heard slack jawed idiot too. It definitely refers to somebody that doesn’t know what their body is doing and just keeps their mouth hanging open as the world passes by. There are people like that, so of course it gets used in a mean way. I guess there are more people with sinus problems that are mouth breathers than mentally challenged and vacant to the world. It does take some thought with muscle control to keep your mouth shut. The default is half open.
I’ve also seen the concept associated with easy gullibility, or at least a very low threshold for being amused or interested, suggesting that the person has seen nothing of the world. In other words, not so much actual slowness of mind, but of naivete. Recall that the adjective “slack-jawed” is traditionally followed by “yokels”, as if the comment is really more about rural and small town culture, than it is about anyone’s intelligence.
FWIW Down Syndrome often presents, among other typical physical traits, an enlarged tongue as well as nasal issues, which makes the person tend to breath through his or her mouth, keeping it slightly open.
Both of the developmentally disabled people with whom I am familiar were mouth breathers.
After many long, difficult, frustrating years of dealing with their other, more important issues, a fresh young intern, with no experience in the care of the developmentally disabled, and with minimal supervision, treated them both for allergic rhinitus (or what ever the technical term for “a stuffy nose caused by boring ol’ hay fever” may be.)
They both quickly learned to breathe (mostly) through their noses. Bella forgets when she’s tired or stressed, but Mike is very proud of being able to “look smart” and tends to focus on the state of his sinuses to exclusion of all else.
Perhaps some of the stereotype stems from undertreatment of relatively minor sinus problems. Perhaps some of it comes from the assumption that people with muscle control problems have an intellectual disability.
In my experience, kids of families where the parents smoke often breathed through their mouths. I think it was a learned response from having to deal with the second hand smoke. Clearly, in this day and age, a kid that has to grow up in a house where the parents don’t care enough to smoke outside or otherwise provide ventilation while their young are about are probably a few rungs lower on the IQ ladder. Also, I would wager that education in these households has a lower priority than the average family.
This source indicates that mouth breathing can result from tooth malocclusion (a common condition).
Anecdotally, I can say that my personal tendency to breathe through my mouth almost completely ended after I finished orthodontic work to correct my overbite.