Economists have written a lot about the so-called ‘beauty premium’ and ‘ugliness penalty’ when it comes to salaries. But is the phenomenon real?
The answer is not clear-cut. Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, from the world-famous London School of Economics and Political Science, says that people’s salaries are influenced by more than just good looks (or lack of),
“Physically more attractive workers may earn more, not necessarily because they are more beautiful, but because they are healthier, more intelligent, and have better personality traits conducive to higher earnings, such as being more conscientious, more extraverted, and less neurotic.”
Population surveys in the US and Canada have previously shown that people who are physically attractive earn more than the average Joe or Jane Doe, while those who are less pleasing to the eye earn less. More attractive lawyers and MBA graduates have also been said to earn more.
Kanazawa and his research colleague Mary Still from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, studied a sample of individuals in the US using very precise measures of physical attractiveness. Their results have dispelled claims that workers are discriminated against because of their looks. However, they did find some evidence for an ‘ugliness’ premium – which pays to NOT be on the supermodel level.
Kanazawa and Still say that those who fell into the ‘very unattractive’ category always earned more than those rated as just ‘unattractive’. This was even the case when the income of the ‘very unattractive’ was measured against their ‘average-looking’ or even ‘attractive’ colleagues.
Dr. Still, who is an assistant professor of marketing and management, says that the majority of previous research has failed to take health, intelligence (as opposed to education), and personality factors into account. In addition, Still says that most other studies grouped the so-called ‘very unattractive’ and ‘unattractive’ categories together to form a ‘below-average’ category,
“They failed to document the ugliness premium enjoyed by the very unattractive workers.”
Hmm. I can’t say the extra cash would be worth being put in any of those rather unflattering categories.
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