Special: The Kanazawa Controversy. June 2011




Some Rights Reserved show

Summary: <p>Satoshi Kanazawa's recent blog post <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/why-black-women-are-less-physically-attractive-tha">“Why black women are less physically attractive than other women”</a> has ignited a firestorm of protest across the web. In this special episode, we find out if his controversial claim stands up to scrutiny. </p><p><audio><br> </audio><br> </p><p><a href="http://www.archive.org/download/PsychologyOfAttractiveness201106TheKanazawaControversy/PAP-2011-06-S.mp3">Download the MP3</a> </p><p><b>Rate me!</b><br> Rate, review, or listen <a href="http://www.robertburriss.com/itunes">in iTunes</a> or <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=63199&amp;refid=stpr">in Stitcher.</a><br> </p><p>In this special episode I talk with biological anthropologist <a href="http://www.anthro.psu.edu/faculty_staff/shriver.shtml">Mark Shriver</a>, Nanjala Nyabola, an Oxford graduate student who wrote <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/18/satoshi-kanazawa-black-women-psychology-today">a comment piece for the Guardian about Kanazawa's article</a>, and psychologists <a href="http://www.scottbarrykaufman.com/Dr._Scott_Barry_Kaufman/Home.html">Scott Barry Kaufman</a> and <a href="http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/">Jelte Wicherts</a>, who blogged about the controversy <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201105/black-women-are-not-rated-less-attractive-our-independent-analysis-the-a">here</a> and <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201105/satoshi-kanazawa-does-not-speak-all-evolutionary-psychology">here</a> and also <a href="http://web.me.com/scottbarrykaufman/Dr._Scott_Barry_Kaufman/Papers_files/attractAddHealth.pdf">reanalysed the original data</a>. You can read Kanazawa's blog post <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/why-black-women-are-less-physically-attractive-tha">here</a>. </p><img width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hREOOkHNx1k/TehRVW1QqxI/AAAAAAAAAWU/dF55hS5LtXw/s320/racegraph.png" border="0"><br> <p><i>A graph from the reanalysis of Kanazawa's data by Wicherts and Kaufman, illustrating the lack of a difference in perceived attractiveness amongst women of different ethnic backgrounds (click to enlarge). </i></p>