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"Glasses don't make you a nerd!"
04/02/2008 - By Claudine Ryan iStock
Don't be put off by the glasses. He's likely to be an intelligent man with a wide range of interests
It's official. Wearing glasses doesn't mean you're a nerd but it could be a sign that you're more intelligent, new research shows.
The study, from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia, shows there are no links between myopia or short-sightedness and introversion or conscientiousness, the socially withdrawn and hardworking personality traits often associated with nerds.
The study's lead author Associate Professor Paul Baird says this research, which has been investigating a number of factors linked to myopia including personality, puts to rest a popular stereotype in the scientific community as well as the general population.
"I was reading a text book a couple of nights ago and it said 'we have to conclude that people who are introverted have an association with myopia' and this was written 10 years ago," says Baird.
"I found it very perplexing that people would go along with this view without having done the study."
Researchers sent questionnaires to 633 twins and a comparative group of 278 members of families with myopia.
Participants were rated on five personality traits: extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness and neuroticism.
"All those 278 people came from families with myopia so if we're going to find something that's a personality trait then you think it would be in those families," says Baird.
"[But] we couldn't find anything associated with introversion, conscientiousness or passiveness."
The research, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, did find links between myopia, agreeableness and openness, however.
Baird says the association between myopia and agreeableness was only detected in the twins and was not overly significant. But the link between myopia and openness was stronger.
Associate Professor Nick Haslam, from the university's Department of Psychology, says openness is the only personality trait that appears to be linked to myopia.
"Openness is one of the only personality traits that correlates with intelligence and people who score highly on this tend to have a wide range of interests, are often well-educated and widely read," he says.
This fits in with the long-held view that people who are better educated, read and write more and are more intelligent are more likely to be myopic.
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