People Prefer More Attractive Financial Partners — Even Ones Who Lose Them Money

By Emma Young Physically attractive people are routinely judged to be “superior” in other ways — to be more trustworthy, for example, and honest, and intelligent. However, evidence for the unwarranted “attractiveness halo” effect has tended to come from studies that have involved snap-judgements with no feedback or repercussions for the people doing the judging. Gayathri Pandey and Vivian Zayas at Cornell University, US, wanted to explore how this bias plays out in the longer term, when contradicted by actual data. If, say, we’re given information that an attractive investor is actually losing us money, while an unattractive investor is securing profits, surely we’ll quickly drop that bias in relation to these individual people at least? Alarmingly, the pair’s new paper in the British Journal of Psychology suggests not. In an initial study, 91 students were each shown four photos of purported “financial partners” (all of the same gender). Two of the composite faces had independently been rated as attractive and two as unattractive. The students were given a hypothetical $2000 and told to make as much money as possible. Across 50 trials with all male partners and another 50 with all female partners, they had to click on a face to choose one with whom to invest the money, and each time, they got feedback as to whether they’d lost or gained money. Before they started, the students were informed that some of the partners...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Decision making Money Source Type: blogs