Originally posted by: dullard
I watched this last night on the news and from what I heard, there just isn't enough data to support their theory.
How many families do you know where some children are attractive and others are homely? For me, not very many. Usually all of the children are attractive or all of the children are homely. So I assume that ~10% of the families have a significant difference in children attractiveness (if you know this assumed number is wrong, post a link and we can change the numbers).
Thus they had 10%*400= 40 observations. I also assume that is 40 children, or ~20 attractive ones and ~20 unattractive ones. I don't think that is a sufficient sample size to reach any meaningful conclusions.
Instead, what I think they measured was that the unattractive adults generally have a different outlook on life than attractive adults. Since attractiveness runs in families, the unattractive parents generally have unattractive children; attractive parents generally have attractive children. Thus it is not surprizing at all that unattractive parent treat their children differently.