Handsome men and women often appear to be blessed with lucky lives. Now research has shown they are cleverer than most people as well.

Studies in Britain and America have found they have IQs 14 points above average.

The findings dispel the myth of the dumb blondes or good-looking men not being very bright.

It appears that those already physically blessed attract partners who are not just good looking but brainy too, according to research by the London School of Economics.

The children of these couples will tend to inherit both qualities, building a genetic link over successive generations between them.

LSE researcher Satoshi Kanazawa told the Sunday Times: "Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence, both with and without controls for social class, body size and health.

"The association between attractiveness and general intelligence is also stronger among men than among women."

In other research on social standing, he found that middle-class girls tended to have higher IQs than their working-class counterparts.

Among the millions of examples of beauty and brains, there's supermodel Lily Cole who went to Cambridge University, actress Kate Beckinsale, an Oxford graduate, and physicist Brian Cox, one-time keyboard player with D:ream.

In Britain, the study found that men who are physically attractive had IQs an average 13.6 points above the norm while women were about 11.4 points higher.

Kanazawa's findings were based on the National Child Development Study which followed 17,419 people since their birth in a single week in March, 1958.

Throughout their childhood up to early adulthood, they were given a series of tests for academic progress, intelligence and marked on appearance.

The American research was taken from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health which involved a similar study of 35,000 young Americans.

Kanazawa, whose paper was published in the academic journal Intelligence, said: 'Our contention that beautiful people are more intelligent is purely scientific. It is not a prescription for how to treat or judge others.'

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)