THE NERD DEFENSE 735
“ordinary” person, children rarely sketched a person with
eyeglasses.^48 David Chambers, Director of the Sciences in
Society Centre at Deakin University, developed the well-known
Draw-a-Scientist-Test (“DAST”), designed to determine when
children develop stereotypical images of a scientist (“a man of
knowledge”).^49 Chambers’ test was administered over an eleven-
year period to nearly 5,000 children and found that the
association between scientists and eyeglasses continues to
increase with age.^50 When Mark Thomas, a doctoral student in
the Department of Psychology at Mississippi State University,
administered a modified DAST to college-aged students (with a
mean age of roughly twenty-one years), it revealed that the
stereotype of eyeglasses correlating to higher intelligence does
not fade with age: the drawings depicted a scientist with
eyeglasses nearly seventy percent of the time.^51
Person, 12 J. SOC. BEHAV. & PERSONALITY 773, 778 (1997) (noting that
older children depicted eyeglasses more frequently than younger children and
that “eyeglasses are an almost archetypal sign of a ‘bookworm,’ a person
absorbed in mental activity”); see also Hannu Räty & Leila Snellman, On the
Social Fabric of Intelligence, 4 PAPERS ON SOC. REPRESENTATIONS 1, 2–3
(1995) (concluding that “children have captured some central value-bound
ideas of intelligence prevalent in our culture well before being capable of
understanding them conceptually”).
(^48) Räty & Snellman, Children’s Images of an Intelligent Person, supra
note 47, at 778.
(^49) David Wade Chambers, Stereotypic Images of the Scientist: The Draw-
a-Scientist Test, 67 SCI. EDUC. 255, 256–58 (1983) (noting that eyeglasses
are associated with eyestrain and therefore are associated with acute
observation). In Chambers’ study, each drawing was analyzed for seven
predetermined indicators of a scientist: lab coat, eyeglasses, growth of facial
hair, symbols of research, symbols of knowledge, technology (products of
science), and relevant captions. Id.; see also Räty & Snellman, Children’s
Images of an Intelligent Person, supra note 47, at 781 (noting significant
overlap between the results of the Children’s Images of an Intelligent Person
study and Chambers’ DAST results of children’s portrayals of the scientist as
“a man of knowledge”).
(^50) Chambers, supra note 49, at 257–58 (reporting that the number of
indicators in children’s standard images of a scientist increased from fourteen
in kindergarten-age children to 1,524 in fifth-grade-aged children).
(^51) Mark D. Thomas et al., The Draw a Scientist Test: A Different
Population and a Somewhat Different Story, 40 C. STUDENT J. 140, 144
(2006).