Perhaps firms should conduct "blind" interviews of potential employees in which the potential employee is interviewed while behind a screen.

Jeff may be on too something here. I remember reading that symmetrical facial features is somewhat dependent on the level of oxygenation the fetus gets in the later stages of pregnacy. Of course I may have mixed up my facts but if this is true it seems to provide something of an explaination for the possible corrolation Jeff talks about.

For example, a study of the 1974 Canadian federal elections found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as unattractive candidates (Efran & Patterson, 1976).

This does not mean what it sounds like it means. Well, it could, but it doesn't have to. Specifically, this result is consistent with the voters' claims that they don't vote for candidates because of physical attractiveness.

This is a case of "correlation does not imply causation". Just because good looks were correlated with votes doesn't mean they caused votes. There could be another effect causing both.

Such effects are easy to imagine. For example, perhaps people with good looks receive more encouragement in school and from their parents, and thus turn out smarter. Then they could have received all those votes because they were genuinely better candidates. This particular possibility may have been looked for and ruled out, but there are infinitely many others.

The important thing is that you can't find the truth purely by finding correlations. What you need are explanations. Specifically, there needs to be a detailed explanation of how being more attractive causes favoritism (and also of what causes people to be blind to their own favoritism). And when we have that explanation, then we can compare it to rival theories that explain the observed data, including the correlation, in other ways.

Paying attention to the description is probably less useful than looking at the features - the features are generally harder to misrepresent, and at the very least haven't passed through another person's mind before they got to you.

This seems relevant, though perhaps the causality is uncertain.

@roland It helps to have lots of grease marks on your jacket. No dry cleaner or washing machine should ever touch these. The mathematical mastermind is usually dressed in brown and green cords with lots of spots, while an artistic genius looks either like a colourful parrot or a dark-suited banker. On the other hand, bankers like to wear their designer-made bicycle helmets all day long. If you are a female long legged blonde with blue eyes you are more likely to get the job if your employer is a short asymmetric male. The halo effect promising a good shag and many little mini blondes. A long legged blonde tends to employ a short legged dark haired obese female and would like to marry her asymmetric male boss. Boss is going to replace the blonde model if she is older than thirty. All of them are honest and kind as well as greedy, only interested in the best possible outcome for all parties. No irony intended!

Eliezer

Just for interest - Joel Wapnick, a music education scholar at McGill University (and also, I discover from Googling him just now, an international Scrabble champ) has shown that people rate the quality of musical performances from more attractive players more highly than those from less attractive players. No surprise there. However, the effect persists even in an auditory-only condition, i.e. when the raters cannot see the performers. Wapnick has replicated the finding in different situations over a series of papers.

Sam

I am also struck by the correlation-vs.-causation issue in the canadian voters study. Moreover, how do we know that the attractiveness rating isn't actually a reflection of the qualities the voters claim to be looking for? I.e. a more confident, intelligent, eloquent candidate would probably appear more attractive than one who isn't, all other things being equal.

it would seem that a good strategy would be to always vote for the ugliest candidate and hire the ugliest job candidate -- on the presumption that their (difficult to judge) talents must be tremendous in order for them to make it this far in the process despite their looks.

Nate - that strategy can only work insofar as other groups aren't utilizing it, and to that extent, you will be punished through those groups hesitating to employ you in their capacities as clients and customers.

I'd be interested to know the "curve" drawn when physical attractiveness is plotted against level of bias - whether there is a linear relationship, or whether the effect (indeed affect) tails off (or even turns negative?!) at some point. i.e. whether things just keep getting "better" the more attractive you are.

I think that the quoted Cialdini text blurs the distinction between physical attractiveness and grooming.

I can well imagine that people react positively to a well-groomed person because of the values such care over appearance indirectly demonstrates (social intelligence/wealth/hygeine etc.).

A halo effect based on pure physical attractiveness probably has more to do with a net positive bias resulting from a complex set of sexual dynamics created by different combinations of male/female and attractive/unattractive.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10311266

"...the accumulating evidence suggests that physical characteristics do give clues about intelligence, that such clues are picked up by other people, and that these clues are also associated with beauty."

I for one would openly admit that a political candidates physical appearance would factor into my decision on whether or not to vote for them. For reasons such as, but not limited to: because I'd rather look at JFK giving the state of the union address than Nixon.

I've arrived at the conclusion that there is a decent correlation between attractiveness and intelligence, and more weakly with other positive characteristics. One might argue that such an effect stems from genetics, i.e., phenotype implies something about genotype: I see no reason why having a symmetrical face should directly improve ones fitness. Or perhaps attractive individuals have better opportunities in general, and for that reason acquire the characteristics associated with having a charmed life. That is, the halo effect validates and thusly annihilates itself.

I think all those traits correlate, even when measured independently to avoid that effect.

Which makes sense for many reasons.

One reason: who are people going to marry? People of the same worth as themselves, but not necessarily from the same category. Smart rich men get to marry beautiful women, or the kindest women, or the most honest women, whichever they prefer. So the positive traits get mixed with each other, and the negative traits get mixed with each other.

I wonder if this really one hundred percent bias? I hate saying this, but when I moved to a new school 3 years ago I immediately noticed one person that I found extremely unattractive, and he later turned out to be one of the "bad kids", and did measurably bad things with two of his friends that no one besides them did. I don't think it was hindsight, I remember the exact moment when I first saw him and thought that he wasn't that attractive.

Could there possibly be some correlation between attractiveness and some other good qualities?

It's only when reading about these sort of experimental results when the full atrocious stupidity of an education system that doesn't educate people about logical fallacies begins to hit me.

They have this much of an impact on people in such critical situations where absolute neutrality is completely vital and yet no one seems to consider making it in any way mandatory to teach children how to THINK.

Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence

The next question, of course, is do we assign good-looking individuals these traits more, or less often than nature does? For example, there is a correlation between physical attractiveness and intelligence. A pretty big one.

Beautiful People Really ARE More Intelligent

If you want to estimate someone’s intelligence without giving them an IQ test, you would do just as well to base your estimate on their physical attractiveness as you would to base it on their years of education.

This article seems to be from quite a while ago and I'm only 15 (so I may not have as much experience if my thoughts are off) but I just wanted to point out that people who know things like this can use it to their advantage as well as it being a disadvantage to some. As for the situation with the workplace or a job...If a person working there is seen often and isn't closed off in an office corner...That person is also more likely to attract more customers who are also affected by this "effect." right?

Interesting case of an evolved heuristic gone wrong in the modern world.

Mutational load correlates negatively with facial symmetry, height, strength, and IQ. Some of these are important in assessing (desirability or inevitability of) leadership, and others are easier to externally verify. So in a tribe, you could be forgiven for assuming that the more attractive people are going to end up powerful, and strategizing accordingly by making favor with them. (Bit of a Keynesian beauty contest there, but there is a signal at the root which keeps the equilibrium stable.)

However, in modern society, we're not sampling randomly from the population; the candidates for office, or for a job, have already been screened for some level of ability. And in fact, now the opposite pattern should hold, because you're conditioning on the collider: X is a candidate either because they're very capable or because they're somewhat capable and also attractive!

Since all tech interviews are being conducted online these days, I wonder if any company has been wise enough to snap up some undervalued talent by doing their interviews entirely without cameras...