LONDON — From Marilyn Monroe to Paris Hilton, “blond” has long been code for a woman who’s long on looks and light on brains.
Now, French researchers have found that the stereotype can actually affect mental performance.
A recent study showed that otherwise intelligent men performed below par on general knowledge tests after viewing photos of blond women.
The real surprise? Women’s performance also dipped in the tests.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, examined people’s ability to answer Trivial Pursuit game questions after viewing photos of women with different hair colors.
Exposure to blonds resulted in the lowest scores.
Thierry Meyer, joint author of the study and professor of social psychology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, said that the study proves a general phenomenon.
“There’s a decrease in performance after an unobtrusive exposure to a stereotype about people who have the reputation to be cognitively impaired,” he said.
In plainer language, blonds might make people act in a less intelligent manner because the people believe — whether they want to admit it or not — that they are in the presence of someone who’s not very smart.
Previous studies also have shown how information from a person’s social context can influence their behavior.
For example, when people are exposed to elderly people, they tend to walk and talk more slowly.
When people sit beside someone who is fidgeting, they tend to fidget as well.
