Wearing glasses can improve job prospects

[atreides]

I thought this was interesting... Wearing glasses can improve job prospects

 

[DominiConnor]

Although everyone hear knows I am a headhunter who teaches a bit of Quant C++, I still amd registered as a journalist, doing occasional pieces for the technical press.

Thus I get press releases like this article, which was merely slightly edited by a cheap hack or maybe an intern to go in a major newspaper

I guess it's true, but given that quantnet has an international audience, I have to query how that plays across different types of people.

On a young white person, I believe this result.

On a fat old white man like me, I think they make you look older still which is probably not good.

On a man whose recent ancestry was India/Pakistan, I believe that it can easily make you look too geeky.
For a similar woman they will usually make you look less pretty which is a maximisation issue. A woman applying for a 'real job' has an optimum prettyness, too much and she risks being seen as not serious, too little and she gives up the advantage she gets from being female. That's not just a male-boss thing, women are on average more judgemental than men on appearance.

I don't think they do anything for someone who looks Chinese/Japanese, my call is slightly negative, more so for females.

Black people I think get helped by glasses most. There's still enough racism lurking about for them to benefit from anything that makes them look smarter.

But a lot goes to the glasses. Anything with a logo than can be easily seen is a bad move, and thick lenses can make people associate you with mental defectives.

Also of course, don't try and wing an interview without glasses that you need, people will misinterpret your optical squinting with dumbness.

Of course this stuff is entirely subjective.

 

[KaiRu]

Glasses: the ultimate image changer

 

[bigbadwolf]

This might be pertinent:

It has long been observed in different countries (e.g., Israel, the United States, and New Zealand) that myopic children have higher intelligence quotient (IQ) test scores. While an explanation for the association of myopia with higher IQ is lacking, it has been hypothesized that there may be a link between eyeball axial length and cerebral development, or that both myopia and IQ may be influenced by the same genes.

Singapore Chinese children aged 8 to 12 years with higher nonverbal IQ, as measured by the nonverbal Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, were more likely to be myopic, after controlling for age, gender, school, father’s education, parental myopia, and books read per week. Higher nonverbal IQ scores were also associated with greater axial lengths. Our data suggest that nonverbal IQ has an association with myopia independent of near work in young Singapore students, though the mechanism underlying the nonverbal IQ-myopia relationship is not well understood.

A positive association of myopia with higher academic performance, reading ability, and IQ test scores has long been recognized, of which only a few examples will be cited here. Cohn et al. noted a century ago that persons who were intellectually gifted or scholarly were more likely to be myopic. Observations over the past few decades include apparent increases in the frequency of myopia among intellectually able individuals, such as university and medical students.

 

[alain]

I don't buy it. I think myopia is just a consequence. People who read a lot have a higher probability to have eyesight debilitation hence, might suffer from myopia. I don't think it has anything to do with higher IQ.

If the article is true, does it mean that higher degree of myopia means higher IQ? I must be a genius then, because without glasses or contacts, I don't see anything and I mean anything.

 

[bigbadwolf]

If the article is true, does it mean that higher degree of myopia means higher IQ?

There's a definite correlation (in the sense that the higher you go up the IQ scale the greater the incidence of myopia), but the genetic mechanism -- if there is one -- isn't understood. It seems that exposure to daylight while young reduces the incidence and severity of myopia so it could be that too much reading and artificial light while young is a contributing factor.

 

[alain]

It seems that exposure to daylight while young reduces the incidence and severity of myopia so it could be that too much reading and artificial light while young is a contributing factor.

I would like to believe this as well but I was raised in a Caribbean country where daylight is what we have in abundance. Still, my brother and I suffer from severe myopia.