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For being so advanced, humans still fall for the most reptilian stereotypes like this. Taken to extremes in books like "Of Mice and Men" where the short, frail guy is an untrustable genius while the tall, dumb guy has some sort of superhuman strength. I would love to know where that started because it's still a thing.

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I would think it’s innate. Being tall usually means physically more powerful, so it seems like an inherent advantage for mating.

It might be natural or innate. Even young children associate taller with good and shorter with bad. I forget where but there was a documentary where children were asked to associate qualities to stick figures. The children gave the taller stick figures the positive qualities and the shorter stick figures the negative qualities.

We know that adults definitely associate positive qualities with height. We know voters associate positive traits to taller candidate. And females do as well - assign more positive traits to the taller male.

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