A Weighty Issue, Part One
June 6th, 2008(This post is the first in a two-part series on physical attractiveness and the effects of how you look. Part one will be about the data involved and some basic findings. Part two will talk about my personal experience with beauty and dieting, and how we can use this information to our advantage.)
Recently I finished reading an interesting book called “Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined”, by Gordon Patzer. (I found out about this book from The Brazen Careerist, a blog about getting ahead at work that’s featured in my sidebar.) The title is fairly straightforward, so you can imagine what the book is about. The book’s basic premise is that looks are important. No revelation there. But the interesting part is how important looks are. In many real-life situations, Patzer asserts that looks is one of the most important factors, if not *the* most important.
To show you what I mean, here are a sample of claims from the book jacket:
- Nurses spend more time with high Apgar scoring (i.e. attractive) infants
- Mothers give more and better attention to attractive children, who in turn benefit from the extra attention
- Teachers expect more attractive children to perform better, and they give the better-looking kids more attention, less punishment, and higher grades
- Employers will hire and promote the best-looking candidates much more often
If you know or suspect you have low Physical Attractiveness (PA), as Patzer calls it, you might already be hot under the collar after reading that list. And that’s precisely the point. Patzer isn’t pulling any punches here. Despite what our aphorisms and literature have told us, we do indeed judge books by their covers all the time. Patzer calls this “lookism”, or discrimination based on looks.
But unlike racism, sexism, and other “-isms”, we don’t already have a common word for it. Patzer has to dig one up. That’s telling. People are not often prosecuted for engaging in “lookism”, at least not directly. In fact, in some jobs we openly tolerate or encourage lookism. No one seems to want an ugly salesperson, or a fat flight attendant. Even if you missed the memo on this, chances are you won’t get hired for those jobs if you have low PA. I don’t hear a lot of complaints about this; there seems to be a tacit acceptance of the status quo here. (Plus, “You’re a lookist!” doesn’t have much of a sting to it.)
Thus, in some ways lookism is entrenched in our culture. But the bias is extremely pervasive. (Full disclosure: I am quite skinny, taller than average, semi-muscular, and at least average in PA.) If you turn on the TV or watch a movie, you can easily see this. As Patzer describes, most actors are much skinnier than the population at large (pun somewhat intended). That’s no accident.
But Patzer also cites study after study where they show the benefits of being attractive. Most people will be more open and lenient in negotiations with you. You will probably be convicted and punished less for most crimes. If you’re on the other side of the courtroom and easy on the eyes, you stand a better chance of defending your client or gaining a conviction. If you’re a parent, your kid will likely look at you more often and be more affectionate. You’ll probably be paid a lot more. And you’ll even likely end up with a better mate.
In short, during every phase of your life, you’ll have an advantage (or disadvantage) that is strongly correlated with your PA. What’s worse, in many cases where people are extremely attractive or unattractive, this correlation is exponential, not linear. That is, the most beautiful are much more favored than you would expect, and the least beautiful are much less favored.
How much so? Patzer says that in the U.S., Canada, and China, studies conducted from 1994 to 1999 show that highly attractive employees make between 7.5% and 15% more than average-looking workers. (Patzer mentions that every inch in height a man has over the average (5 foot 9 inches) is worth $789 a year.) Since wage increases compound over a lifetime, this can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) in extra income. Just imagine what the difference is between them and the unattractive ones. Patzer says short men and fat women experience an actual “pay penalty”, on top of everything else. And politicians can boost their ratings by 17-18% just by looking better, regardless of political party or policies. (Who said image doesn’t matter?)
This is sobering, if not disturbing, reading. There’s a part of me that revolts strongly against claims like these. After all, that’s why we have sayings like “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover”, “All that glitters isn’t gold”, and “Beauty is only skin deep”, right? Turns out all those sayings aren’t true, in lieu of PA studies.
In 1996, men ranked PA eighth out of seventeen factors in what they found important in a mate, up from fourteenth in 1939. Women ranked it thirteenth, up from seventeenth in 1939. So obviously people admit that PA is increasingly important these days.
But these people are most likely mistaken, because, surprisingly, they don’t go nearly far enough. Other studies show that PA is the most desirable thing (by far) that people in fact look for in a mate, especially if they’re only looking to have sex. Despite what women say, in practice PA often trumps even the perenially-cited favorite, socioeconomic status, when it comes to mates, even when selecting marriage partners. (Guess that’s why the saying isn’t “Tall, dark, and rich”.)
That reminds me of the study I saw where women would often choose tall hunks working menial jobs over short CEOs. (Though I certainly wouldn’t mind being a short CEO!) This same scenario, as described in “Looks”, was played out on the TV show “Average Joe”. The highly attractive bachelorette chosen for the show supposedly found the love of her life with an “Average Joe”, an overweight securities trader, age 28. That was until a 27-year-old part-time waiter who lived with his parents went on the show. He also happened to be high in PA. The bachelorette soon dumped “the one” in favor of the good-looking man with virtually no socioeconomic status whatsoever. (I wouldn’t mind being him either!)
That’s not to say status doesn’t matter. It does. It just matters a lot less than PA does, even for women. (Most men hardly care at all about their mates’ status, by contrast.) Men, you’ll have an easier time getting a date if you spend those extra hours at the gym instead of the office. You need to look good too, if you can. Courting higher status is merely a second best alternative. Besides, looking better often leads to more promotions and higher incomes anyway.
In fact, you can often predict how well a person will enjoy their date solely by looking at PA. In one study, there was a correlation of 78% for men and 69% for women between how attractive they thought their date was and how much they enjoyed the date. Matchmakers take note. You’d do much better showing your potential match a picture of your chosen date than you would by trying to figure out what kind of mate they’d want.
You might argue that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, though. Turns out that maxim isn’t true either. Studies show that people very much agree how beautiful others are, regardless of the age, gender, or race of the rater or the person being rated. Otherwise, as Patzer notes, why would websites like “Hot or Not?” be as popular as they are? And why would we bother to have so many beauty pageants? And how can we cast the same beautiful people for movies that play around the world? Because not only do we think beauty is extremely important, we also think it’s universal. And as far as I can tell, the consensus choice for women is Aishwarya Rai, an extremely beautiful Indian actress.
Aishwarya embodies many of the traits most people agree on for women with high PA. Some of these traits are: symmetrical features, long and healthy hair, thin, young, and hourglass figure (thin waist and large breasts), with thin being the most important. For men: lush and healthy dark hair (call it the Fabio effect), beards (another shocker), moderate amount of muscles (not too little or too much), thin waist, broad chest and shoulders, thin, tall, and symmetrical features, with tall being the most important. These traits constitute a lot of what most people (across the world) consider attractive in women and men.
In lieu of all this, reading “Looks” has made it clear to me that PA really is as important as Patzer suggests. As Penelope Trunk says on her Brazen Careerist blog, the best thing you can probably do to further your career is increase your PA. That is probably true in general as well. Increasing your PA is probably one of the best, if not the best, way to improve your life and how other people treat you. (Is this feeling better from the outside in?) There’s a reason that exercise is maybe the best way we know to improve your mood, and not just because some people think it feels good. Exercise often outperforms everything else, even anti-depressants in elevating people’s moods. That’s probably (at least in part) because exercise increases your attractiveness.
The catch is that, for the most part, Patzer disagrees with getting plastic surgery and changing the way you look to increase your PA (especially by artificial means). He thinks plastic surgery often reflects a poor self image, and that one surgery or treatment can lead to another, many of which do not go according to plan or have long-term side effects. And many people don’t have much control over many aspects of PA. So what should we do? What’s the overall lesson here? I’ll go over those important questions (which relate directly to my life in several ways) in part two next week. See you then!
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June 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Great article! I can’t wait for next week’s post
P.S. I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and I really enjoy it! You do great work, and pick topics that are interesting (at least, to me).
Thanks for the great feedback, Lindsey! I really appreciate it. Hearing positive comments is always great.
- Dave
June 20th, 2008 at 12:27 am
[…] post is the second in a two-part series on physical attractiveness and the effects of how you look. Part one was about the data involved and some basic findings. Part two will talk about my personal […]
June 26th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
:o) good stuff. did you know you cannot make the trial team at my school if you are not aesthetically pleasing? they say this is because a jury is more likely to be persuaded by an attractive person than an ugly person. kinda messed up that someone’s life could be in the hands of someone else’s beauty, huh?
It’s funny you mention that, Laura, because they mention trial lawyers in “Looks”. And like I said, people do in fact judge books by their covers. Thanks for the insight!
- Dave