Looks Do Matter! Good Looking People Have it Easier - Beauty Premium

6,894 views Wait, is this logic right? • Nov 18, 2023

Slog Reference: The Beauty Premium: Why Attractive People are more successful

Description

Decades of research have shown time-to-time that looks matter a lot, even at places you wouldn't expect. Good-looking people seem to get better grades in schools and colleges. Beautiful people even get shorter sentences if convicted? But is this just a random occuring in nature or is there any depth to it? Let's find out in this episode of FutureIQ about The Beauty Premium. How do good-looking people have it easier? Why do looks matter and what can you do about it?

More videos for you:
Beauty doesn't exist:
Hot = Jerk, Cute = Dumb? https://youtu.be/r4Tl1GUeVGs
Why idiots think they're smart: https://youtu.be/GtmcY3t5hB4

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Sources:
Impact of online classes: https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/social-relevance/attractive-female-students-lower-grades-online-classes-584450.html
Beauty premium among academics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775719307538
Face masks reduced beauty premium: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1096348009344234
Freakonomics - Reasons not to be ugly: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/reasons-to-not-be-ugly/
Beauty and fund managers: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4322134
Height - income correlation: https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing
Jurors penalize unattractive: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/05/unattractive-people-pay-price-court
Newborns prefer attractive faces: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces/
Cats prefer attractive faces: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566458/
Beauty and stock markets: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378426623001929
Attractive people are victim of more crimes: https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.jcrimjus.2019.101652
Ugliness and grades link: https://www.newsweek.com/link-between-beauty-and-grades-82085
Ugly laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law

Chapters:
00:00 Examples
01:35 Looks & students
02:04 Is this scientific?
03:22 Looks & adults
04:50 Beauty vs income
06:10 Why does it occur?
09:00 Should this be illegal?
10:50 What can you do about it?
12:45 Key takeaway

#futureiq #funfacts

Related Slog Matches

The Beauty Premium: Why Attractive People are more successful

Date Proximity

58.00

Transcript

- Did you know that attractive people get shorter sentences in court cases? Attractive people get more promotions even in professions like accounting and engineering where look shouldn't matter at all. Attractive people do better money-wise. They get better loans. They get better investments. They get better returns on investments. Please tell me that you have a way to combat this and you have an answer for this because this basically means I have been discriminated against all my life. Yes. Yes. Let's find out. Is it really true? Absolutely. There is decades of research. Okay. Showing that all kinds of advantages exist for handsome men and good-looking women. Okay.

0m 44s I thought it you were just okay. No, in fact, it is it it has names, multiple names. It is called the beauty premium. Okay. Or it is also called lookism. Okay. Okay. Freconomics. Freconomics calls it reasons to not be ugly. Okay. That explains the Reddit rules for success. Step one, be attractive. Step two, don't be unattractive. I mean, this is true not just for waiters and actors, but for accountants and engineers. And in a lot of cases, those are the same. But go on. politicians in Germany, in Canada, in US and UK. There is actual research showing that looks uh helps the par not many not in India. We'll come to that some right. So,

1m 34s okay. But none of you are politicians probably. Yeah. But a lot of them are students. So, let's look at students, right? Everybody of course already believes that uh good-looking students get better marks, right? They already believe that professors are biased in that way. Right? Okay. Which is why I never got extra marks right despite doing everything right. Right. And it's not just your perception. There is lots of research showing that this is actually true. But like good scientists we are going to ask the question is it correlation or is it causation?

2m 10s Yes. Luckily for us, COVID gave us some brilliant RCTs in this area because all students were learning from online. On online versus offline, right? In fact, what happened was that in some countries, there were some classes that happened online and the same class also happened in campus. Same professor, same timings, roughly same kind of students. But some students were there and some students online. Ah, of course somebody did research on these two to see what happened. And here is what happened. In the online classes, attractive female students grades went down.

2m 54s Oh, but not for inerson classes. Okay. So, for some reason it didn't go down for males. I don't understand that part. Right. So, beauty premium is for in person. doesn't quite work over Zoom and for females not for males. Correct. So, but this doesn't affect just students. Even the profs are affected. Okay. The better-l lookinging profs get better evaluations from students. I understand randomly. Why should the students only suffer? The props should also suffer. But hold on, that's students. What about uh what about adults? Like employees? You said something about employees getting better promotions and whatnot.

3m 29s Correct. Again you know there is a lot of research showing that but let's take a smaller simpler example. Okay in freconomics in their reasons to not be ugly what they found was that when you're applying for loans the least good-looking people the ugliest people have the highest chance of being rejected. Okay. But and here is the fun part right they are the ones who are least likely to default on the loan. Yeah. Again, uh they are they are more Never mind. Sorry. Again, co what happened? Everybody had to wear face masks. Beauty premium disappeared.

4m 10s Oh, right. Because I mean for some reason seeing the full face is necessary for the beauty premium to work. That's fascinating. So, and then face masks came off and again we're back to the beauty premium, right? Yeah. And like I said, mutual fund managers, um, there is research showing that mutual fund managers, better-l lookinging ones, get favorable treatment even though their results returns are lower in an industry where money is so important and returns are tracked so closely. Right? Yeah. Now, here is the best part, not best, worst, best, worst one of the two. recent research that came out just recently.

4m 52s Just try to plot it. Okay? Beauty versus income. Okay? In fact, forget beauty, just simple thing. Height. Okay? And they found that every extra inch of height increases your income. What? But that's genetics. I can't do anything about my height. It's not like I can suddenly grow 6 feet out of the blue. I have lost so much income because of being shot. Naven, don't do this to me. But uh wait, you said something about attractive people getting off lightly in court. Yes. Seriously? Again, decades of research showing that jurors in court cases are favorable towards attractive people and unfavorable towards the ones who are not attractive. Okay.

5m 44s Yeah. Attractive serial killers get entire Netflix series on based on them with Zack Efron acting their part. Man, one of things anyway are not important, right? I mean, somebody getting a serial can be many different things. But how many serial killers do you know that actually got a series? Did Rangabila get a series? No, Rangabila didn't get a series. Jeffrey Dmer got a series. Ted Bundy got a series. Okay. All the Una Bomber gets a series. Why do I know so many serial killers? Other than you, nobody here is a serial killer. So let's stick to normal people.

6m 15s Okay. And for normal people this is a problem. In fact they went one step ahead. They tried to figure out why is this happening right? Because everybody listening to it says I'm not going to behave like this. Who behaves like this? It turns out that there are two kinds of people. Okay. The ones who are thinking rational kind of people. They are usually fair in this particular case. And then there's a whole bunch of emotional people who decide based on emotions and they are the ones who don't realize that their emotions are controlled a little bit by the looks of the person and they are the ones who end up being biased in this particular.

6m 56s So system two versus system one applies here also but on an individual level rather than just a thought level or a analysis level. There is an exception though. Okay. Okay. If there is a case of swindling, huh, right, the person being sentenced is a con man, then beauty premium is negative. Yeah. Because the jurors assume that good-looking means he must have conned. So for them it is worse. But so if you want to ever commit a crime and you're good-looking, don't be a con man. Yes.

7m 32s Okay. That was a stupid suggestion. It was not a suggestion. Do not take it as a suggestion. Why? Why does this happen? Well, on this channel, we explain everything using evolution. Okay. So, that's what we are going to do. Evolution. Yes. This of course. How does this get explained by evolution? Just basically in the African savana, good-looking people were the ones who were healthy and the ones who were more likely to have reproductive success. Okay. Okay. Now, our system one brain. Okay. It has very simple dumb rules.

8m 04s Okay. saying that if I hang out with fit people then my chances improve so it wants to hang out with beautiful people so that's why you want to associate with the winners and how do you identify winners those are the good-looking ones the fit ones who happen to be the good-looking ones and therefore yeah so in fact how do we know any of this right am I just guessing studies on newborns huh show that 14 hours after birth newborns can tell the difference between good-looking people and plain. They prefer looking at the attractive people.

8m 41s That's why no newborns will ever look at me. They just don't refuse even my newborn. No, my newborn actually. Even cats. Cat cats are cats are a different thing entirely. I like them. [Laughter] All right. Uh can we make this illegal, please? Can we please? No. Okay. No country has but beauty premium should be illegal. Yeah. People like me suffer. A lot of countries in the world have laws against discrimination. But nobody has laws against discrimination by looks. Okay. There's a reason. There are some roles where having an attractive person in that role is going to improve their outcome, improve their effectiveness.

9m 26s Like what? Actors for movies, theaters and no more basic than that. Imagine a saleserson. Oh, a better-l looking salesperson goes to someone and that person's system one starts working saying you know better let us be nice to this good-looking foot person and the sales are going to work better. Yeah. In my case my system one tells me good-looking person might be a con man be careful but again yeah right yeah I get your point. But there is another more important thing. The way the world treats good-looking people, they end up being more confident.

10m 03s True. As a result, they end up taking more risks. True. And usually more risk, a little bit more risk works out well. Correct. Okay. So, as a result, good-looking people have better outcomes because of their confidence and risk-taking ability. Right? Okay. In fact, there is some research showing that amongst lay people, better looking people get better returns on their investment because they are the ones putting in slightly risky stock market whereas the plain looking ones are going to fds, right? I feel so attacked, man. The world is really made for good-looking people entirely.

10m 42s Not necessary. Okay. Good-looking people are also the targets of more crimes. So it's not all. Yeah, that's that's the sad part. I agree. That's the sad part. I agree. But I remember you said that there was a way to combat all of this and I'm going to hold you to Now let's go back to the study of classes during COVID, right? Same class being online versus offline. Yes, they did an extra detailed study of the link between beauty and grades. And in fact, they broke up the beauty into three parts. Okay.

11m 16s Physical attractiveness grooming and personality. Okay. Here grooming means uh you know taking care of your skin and your hair and combing it properly and using all the products and all of that. Right now amongst these the good news is that the biggest impact was not from physical attractiveness. Okay. For male students, the biggest impact came from better grooming. And for female students, the biggest impact came from better personality. Interesting. Yes. So just because physically you are short doesn't mean you are in trouble. You just have to work harder on your grooming and of course on your personality.

12m 01s Listen, I know I'm a little unckempt, but that is supposed to be a look, okay? So don't don't accuse me of not being groomed. This is a look. Yes, fine. I'll refine this look a little bit. But I do agree that and a and a better t-shirt. There is nothing absolutely nothing wrong with this t-shirt. Wear a jacket the next time. Okay, that's a bit much. But I I agree. There are certain grooming standards that need to be matched. Although I think the world is becoming more acceptable of less formal grooming.

12m 32s Let's just say I'm not saying you don't need to groom. I'm saying you don't need to be as formal. the standards of grooming are changing. The fact that you need to put effort into grooming that doesn't go away, right? Good point. And I absolutely agree. U but in general, I think the important thing I want to get at is that beauty plays an important role in our lives, right? And we have done an entire video on why are all hot guys jerks and why are pretty women dumb or it appears. So check out that episode. You will learn something interesting there also.

13m 07s You do realize that in both the episodes u we have basically condemned ourselves. No, we are giving solutions. We are always giving solutions. No, it also explains why people might not immediately decide to watch episodes on this channel, but maybe our podcast will do the audio only podcast will do better. Go check out the video on why are all hot guys jerks and all pretty women dumb. There is a surprise for you in it. Sri Kant Naven, Future IQ.