Study of 20,000 finds an income advantage for those judged to be very unattractive

By Alex Fradera Do chiselled features garner better pay? Researchers have previously found that income is associated with attractiveness, leading to the idea of both a beauty premium and an ugliness penalty. A common explanation is discrimination: employers seek out beautiful people and reject or ignore those harder on the eye. But in the Journal of Business Psychology, Satoshi Kanazawa and Mary Still have published research aiming to upset this. The biggest takeaway is that being perceived as very unattractive may not incur an income penalty at all. The researchers drew on a longitudinal study of 20,000 young Americans, interviewed at home at age 16 and then on three more occasions up to the age of 29. Each time the interviewer rated the person’s physical attractiveness, from very unattractive to very attractive. While previous research often collapses below-average scores into one category, this research treated them separately, which turns out to be important. Kanazawa and Still wanted to see whether the participants’ gross earnings at 29 were associated with their physical attractiveness at that or any previous age. Overall, there was a positive association between attractiveness and earnings. But there was an anomaly: very unattractive participants kept bucking the trend. Those participants who were rated very unattractive at age 29 were earning significantly more than people judged more attractive than them, including (though to a lesser extent) the very attractiv...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Occupational Social Source Type: blogs