Facebook and Ray-Ban launch new smart glasses 1:23
(CNN) --
Admit it: If you see someone wearing glasses, you think that person is more likely to have an above-average IQ.
As a former Bronx Assistant District Attorney and author of the legal article "Eye See You: How Criminal Defendants Have Utilized the Nerd Defense to Influence Jurors' Perceptions," Sarah Mariucci told me that glasses are "associated with reading, a significant amount of reading in childhood days, to being a "nerd", an intelligent person".
This fact has made me very envious of people who wear glasses.
I have just undergone an eye exam and, as in all previous tests, it has been proven that I have perfect vision.
But should I worry?
Does needing glasses mean you're smarter?
And where do our good and bad stereotypes about glasses come from?
That's the topic of the latest episode of my podcast, "Margins of Error," in which we go beyond the news cycle and tackle the issues we face every day.
It turns out that the history of glasses is much more complex than I imagined.
Although glasses were probably first invented in the early 13th century, they didn't really proliferate until the 18th century, when glasses with pins began to be made, so you could walk without falling off.
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At first, glasses were not fashionable, much less something modern.
Neil Handley, curator of the British Optical Association Museum, told me to look at the people in the early paintings who wore glasses: "They're moneylenders. They're misers, they're government officials...people we wish would turn a blind eye, but they don't."
Miserable?
Lenders?
According to Handley, this prejudice against glasses—often little more than thinly veiled anti-Semitism—was so pervasive that people who needed glasses simply didn't wear them.
But it wasn't just normal people who worried about how they looked if they wore glasses.
It was also a highly calculated decision for high-level politicians.
Handley mentioned that Adolf Hitler was a notorious example of someone who wore glasses but refused to be photographed with them.
He wasn't the only world leader who avoided being seen through his lens.
In fact, in official White House portraits, only three presidents are painted wearing glasses: Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman.
Glasses weren't cool at first, but nerd cool has become a recent phenomenon.
When did our perception of glasses begin to change and we began to consider them a cool nerd thing?
It's only in the last few decades, and Handley, to my annoyance, said it might as well have been because of Harry Potter.
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Of course, defense attorneys have known for years that glasses can make someone look smarter.
They've been trying the "nerd defense" for a long time.
Remember when now-convicted murderer Jodi Arias was accused of wearing glasses for the jury?
If she did it to appear less guilty, the strategy didn't work.
That hasn't stopped others from trying.
Mariucci noted that when a defendant is involved in a "violent crime and wearing glasses, he is less intimidating to the jury."
The defense attorneys are trying to get the jury to think "look how sweet and smart and peaceful the defendant looks."
All of this is trying to make the jury's "subconscious" think that people with glasses are too smart to have committed a violent crime.
And it turns out that society's stereotypes may have a real basis.
I spoke with Michelle Luciano, a behavioral geneticist and professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
She worked on a 2018 study involving more than 300,000 people that set out to examine the entire human genome and see if there is any kind of genetic marker linked to higher cognitive function.
The study found that there was some relationship between nearsightedness, or nearsightedness, and intelligence, but there are many other things as well.
(For the nerds out there, there was a +0.32 correlation between the two variables.)
Of course, I was reminded of the phrase "correlation does not imply causation".
The need to wear glasses may be related to intelligence, but it does not mean that poor vision is causing increased intelligence.
So is there a causal relationship?
Well, you'll have to tune in to find out.
I might even try on some glasses for the sake of science.
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