# Princeton report says short people is dumb
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [August 29, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710 "2006-08-29T20:33:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/1 "2006-08-29T20:33:05Z")
Economists Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University made headlines this week when they announced the publication of a paper in which they concluded that
> [@](#):
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> On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter
Wonderful.
The paper in its entirety can be found at [http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12466.pdf](http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12466.pdf)
The gist of this piece of scholarship is that short people are the result of inferior circumstances beginning at birth and continuing through childhood which eventually lead to weaker cognitive skills, an aversion to intellectually challenging work and finally, lower wages.
The paper attempts to rationalize discrimination against the short, or in the paper’s own words
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> Together, this evidence supplies a rationale for why economic returns to height continue to be observed, even in wealthy countries where increasingly small fractions of workers do physically demanding work. It also provides an alternative to explanations for the height
> premium that rely on pure discrimination or social stigma against shorter individuals.
So we have a cause for the correlation.
The paper presents conclusions that taller people outperform their shorter rivals in a variety of tests (including drawing) at various age points beginning with three-year olds. They go on to earn higher because they seek out the higher paying jobs. They have charts and everything to prove this.
They also point out that within certain professions, taller people earn better wages.
> [@](#):
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> bishops are taller on average than preachers in small towns, and sales managers are taller than salesmen, with similar results for lawyers, teachers, and railroad employees.
So, it would seems that being a bishop makes one smarter than a small town preacher. Maybe they took to heart what the Bible says in Leviticus.
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> Then the LORD said to Moses… No one who has a defect may come near to me, whether he is blind or lame, stunted or deformed, or has a broken foot or hand, or has a humped back or **is a dwarf** , or has a defective eye, or has oozing sores or scabs on his skin, or has damaged testicles. Even though he is a descendant of Aaron, his physical defects disqualify him from presenting offerings to the LORD by fire. Since he has a blemish, he may not offer food to his God… Yet because of his physical defect, he must never go behind the inner curtain or come near the altar, for this would desecrate my holy places. I am the LORD who makes them holy.
Perhaps we need a study showing the bishop vs. small town preacher levels of people with damaged testicles.
But really, don’t the examples of teachers, railroad employees and such undermine the thesis of Case and Paxson? Since these people ended up in the same profession wouldn’t they have similar educational backgrounds and abilities at the oneset of their careers? The greater success of tall people within the same careers would seem to be more indicative of height discrimination to me than inferior intelligence. After all, if these tall folks were so damned smart in the first place why are they only railroad employees? Shouldn’t they be doing more cerebral things while the short guys do the grunt work?
I seem to do okay with my putrid 66 inches. (It seems 69 inches was used as the short cut-off in this paper, but that’s not real clear). I scored in the ninty-somethingth percentile on my GMAT. I even won on Jeopardy! a couple of times. All the guys I beat were taller than me. I did this being short! What a miracle. But, of course, I could just be an anomaly. Rigorous research looks at the big picture. So here are a few “big” picture thoughts.
Women are normally shorter then men. Would it not follow (by the paper’s logic) that women are therefore dumber than men? The study sort of dodges that question, but authors (both tall women) do state
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> the height difference between men and women does not explain women’s lower earnings.
So it’s justifiable to discriminate against the short, but don’t do the same with women. Well, tall women anyway.
Asian-Americans do very well on cognitive tests and Asian-Americans tend to be shorter than other Americans by quite a bit. This flies right into the face of this report’s conclusion.
If height is such a reliable indicator, we should expect the Maasai and the Dinka peoples of east Africa to be smarter than the inhabitants of places like Japan and Costa Rica. Where is the evidence of this?
It would have been useful to see comparisons of height and intelligence amongst people in the same social class. Guess what’s not in this paper? They have lots of data showing correlation of “upper”-class and height, but nothing showing that people of different heights within the same social class have different intelligence levels.
The Dutch have experienced astounding gains in height over the last fifty years. Should they not have also experienced corresponding gains in intelligence? And should not the Dutch be the smartest people on earth? Way smarter than, say the relatively short South Koreans (who are rated #1 in the world in classroom achievement)?
Little people can be well under five feet tall, yet I have never noticed any intellectual deficiencies in these people.
So it would seem this paper is little more than a bunch of horseshit that is somewhat reminiscent of The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray that purported to show that intelligence is influenced by race.
This report is filled with (ahem) shortcomings yet it has the weight of an Ivy League institution to give it “stature” and few people will read past the short = dumb headlines it generated.
So thanks a lot ladies!
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### Author:  [@5que](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5que)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/2 "2006-08-29T20:38:14Z")
Cue Randy Newman…
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/3 "2006-08-29T20:41:29Z")
Has anyone informed Dr. Miguelito Loveless of this? 😛
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/4 "2006-08-29T20:42:33Z")
Lemme at 'em. I’ll blow their kneecaps off!
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/5 "2006-08-29T20:48:56Z")
I’m afraid I cannot comment on your rant until I know your height…
-Astroboy14 (6’4")
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/6 "2006-08-29T20:49:48Z")
I saw that. It’s not enough that grocery stores have now decided that vertically challenged people should be grateful w/just the stuff on the first 4 shelves. It’s not enough that the average office furniture maker has decided that I need to choose between sitting back against the chairback or having my feet reach the floor.
It isn’t enough that restaurants have recently decided that everyone and their brother want to sit at barstools that are about two feet taller than the average chair (what ever happened to the concept of “sitting **down** ”??? )
now these harpys have to chime in w/ “yea and yer dumb, too”.
it’s enough to make me stand up and
well, just stand up. Nobody will notice 'cause I’m, you know, short.
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/7 "2006-08-29T20:50:01Z")
D’Oh!!! I just re-read…
-Astroboy14 (now 4’6")
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/8 "2006-08-29T20:50:26Z")
> [@](#):
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> This report is filled with (ahem) shortcomings yet it has the weight of an Ivy League institution to give it “stature” and few people will read past the short = dumb headlines it generated.
I saw a Harvard study that tracked MP3 downloads in an effort to answer the debate about whether downloading “hurts small bands”.
Their methodology was to take _Billboards Hot 100_ album chart and track each song on each album and how often it was downloaded.
Their conclusion? Popular songs get downloaded more, therefore “smaller” bands aren’t as “hurt”! :rolleyes:
It could only take the brilliance of a Harvard researcher to find a positive correlation about “popular songs” when limiting the sample to a list of “popular albums”.
Of course, the article made no mention, and didn’t attempt to correlate data for, bands who weren’t popular enough to have an album in the Billboard top-100 (or a signed album deal). Nor did it mention data for bands who were still popular in their entirety, but not enough to place any one of their albums in the top-100 (like the Beatles, or Beach Boys, or whomever).
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### Author:  [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/9 "2006-08-29T20:55:38Z")
Alright! Now I can look down on short people both literally \*and \* figuratively!
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### Author:  [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/10 "2006-08-29T20:55:55Z")
Unfortunately the link does not go to the entire paper, just the abstract. The entire article must be purchased, it appears.
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### Author:  [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/11 "2006-08-29T21:03:57Z")
So if results of a legitimate study are disagreeable, you think it should be suppressed?
Now, I didn’t read the whole paper (I’m tall-ish but I wasn’t smart enough to figure out if I could read the whole thing for free) but I think you’re getting exercised over very little.
First, if you are upset because these people made headlines, and stupid people will draw stupid conclusions, blame the media and the stupid people not the writers of the paper.
Second, I feel pretty confident that the study says a lot about “other factors being equal”. So your comparisons between tall Africans and short Asians fall short of being relevant.
Third, I predict this study says nothing about causation but only about correlation. That is, being taller does not cause one to be smarter, but it correlates to it to a significant statistical degree. As with any such correlation, there are lots of exceptions, and in any case it isn’t about you or any other individual.
I don’t feel qualified to comment on their methodology, especially since I don’t seem to be able to read that far, so I can’t say if the study has shortcomings. If it does, I expect that others in their field will critique it in due course. Of course, by then the damage will have been done, and once again, blame the media and the stupid people (two groups that sometimes overlap).
Roddy (for the record, 6’2" and shrinking)
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/12 "2006-08-29T21:05:16Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#):
>
> Unfortunately the link does not go to the entire paper, just the abstract.
you mean it’s … shorted?
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### Author:  [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/13 "2006-08-29T22:44:12Z")
I call bullshit.
I’m 5’5" and always will be ('til I start shrinking). I’m hardly dumb. (I was smart enough to sign up here, wasn’t I?) If I was short-changed (heh) anywhere, it was in the social arena; short kids get picked on for being short, especially if no other obvious mockable flaws are visible. That creates self-image issues which prey on self-confidence, which only serve to feed one’s anxieties. I worked through them in my teen years and built up a certain level of self-confidence into my adulthood. If I was unsuccessful anywhere, it was there.
That’s not to say that I’m eminently successful now – I make a living wage at an average, relatively unskilled job. It’s not that I don’t enjoy challenging careers, but rather my social inadequacies sapped my professional ambition early on. But I still liked to challenge myself. I was learning to program my first computer the day I got it home. I released several software packages in the 80s and 90s. Hell, I was working on my first big game before I left the platform I was programming it on to buy a PC.
During my school years I was alway shoved in the advanced classes due, presumably, to high aptitude test scores. (I barely remember them and never paid attention to the scores; the tests were just more schoolwork to me) My education foundered when I hit puberty and peer pressure started factoring in to my daily life, leading to the social ineptitude I experienced thereafter. This doesn’t make me dumb, however. Just unmotivated.
I suspect I’m far from the only one, too.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/14 "2006-08-29T23:48:19Z")
> [@Mindfield](#):
>
> I’m 5’5" and always will be ('til I start shrinking). I’m hardly dumb.
I don’t know whether this study is accurate or not, but I’m sure you realize that the fact that you’re both short and smart doesn’t disprove the study. It’s possible for short people on average to be dumber than tall people and, at the same time, that you’re both short and smart.
Of course, there’s a really simple factor that I’m hoping they controlled for, but, if they didn’t, could explain it. That is, of course, that poor early childhood nutrition both stunts growth and affects cognative skills. Children who have enough to eat are, on average, both taller and do better on tests of intelligence than those who don’t. I’m hoping they controlled for this factor, but if they didn’t, there you go.
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### Author:  [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/15 "2006-08-29T23:56:38Z")
Hasn’t it been discovered that we are taller than our ancestors due to better nutrition and medical care? If so, couldn’t the short population include the genetically tall, but malnourished?
I find it hard to beleive that genetic height has any close association with intelligence, but I have no trouble believing that malnourishment could stunt growth both physically and mentally, and be a potential cause for the observed difference, since most such malnourished people would be averaged with the short population, lowering their scores.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that the malnourished population is too small to be significant, or the reasearchers controlled for its effects.
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### Author:  [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/16 "2006-08-29T23:58:08Z")
or, what Captain Amazing said.
Preview good, Taber bad
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2006, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/17 "2006-08-30T00:03:39Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> I don’t know whether this study is accurate or not, but I’m sure you realize that the fact that you’re both short and smart doesn’t disprove the study. It’s possible for short people on average to be dumber than tall people and, at the same time, that you’re both short and smart.
He’d have already known that if he were four inches taller.
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### Author:  [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/18 "2006-08-30T00:10:17Z")
Based _on your own summary_, it seems clear that the study’s authors are basing their conclusions on the impact of nutrition on height and intelligence. Do you disagree that such an effect might possibly exist? Obviously, then, if you are short but didn’t suffer from poor nutrition as a child, you wouldn’t be expected to be dumber than average. And your comparisons between different ethnic groups with different inborn tendencies to be tall or short are not really relevant - after all, it’s not nutrition that makes the Maasai taller than the Mbuti. Obviously they’re only describing the sort of effect that can be seen by examining populations, not individuals, and it obviously doesn’t work when comparing people from ethnic backgrounds that tend to have different average heights. None of the arguments you make are grounded in what the study itself claims - none of them address the point of the researchers at all.
Perhaps if you were tall, like me, you would have been able to figure this out on your own.
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### Author:  [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2006, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/19 "2006-08-30T00:52:54Z")
> [@5que](#):
>
> Cue Randy Newman…
Tonight- Short people. Do they have a reason to live? Find out at 11.
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### Author:  [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princeton-report-says-short-people-is-dumb/370710/20 "2006-08-30T00:54:14Z")
Correlation does not equal causation. This paper is not arguing that short height _causes_ lower intelligence, it’s arguing that short height is _correlated_ with lower intelligence.
> [@Captain Lance Murdoch](#):
>
> The paper attempts to rationalize discrimination against the short
It does no such thing. The quote you provided shows that the paper is claiming to provide an explanation for the correlation _other than_ discriminatory practices.
Whether or not the authors are denying that discrimination against short people exists is an interesting question in and of itself. But you’re not doing yourself any favours by misrepresenting their position in an inflammatory manner. Denying that discrimination is the cause of something is not the same as trying to “rationalize discrimination”.
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