Banishing the Stereotype of the Dumb Blond

Karen Nyberg, a blond U.S. astronaut with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.

For many, many years, blond-haired women have had to put up with the stereotype that they are less intelligent than other women and far less intelligent than men. “Dumb Blond” jokes can regularly be heard on network television, around the office water cooler, and undoubtedly in fraternity houses and locker rooms on college and university campuses. A Google search for “dumb blond jokes” by WIAReport produced more than 2.1 million results.

But now, a new academic study finds that the stereotype of the dumb blond has no basis in fact. The study found that for women who were between the ages of 14 and 21 in 1979, women whose natural hear color was blond had higher IQs than women with other colors of hair. The average IQ of naturally blond women was found to be 103.2 compared to 102.7 for women with brown hair, 101.2 for women with red hair, and 100.5 for women with black hair.

The study was authored by Jay Zagorsky, an economist and research scientist at Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University. He concludes that “I don’t think you can say with certainty that blondes are smarter than others, but you can say they are not any dumber.”

The study, “Are Blonds Really Dumb?” was published in the journal Economics Bulletin. It may be downloaded by clicking here.