Is Pretty Privilege Real? The Latest Research On “Beautiful Is Good” Effects

-Analysis-

BERLIN — Girls buy luxury makeup and anti-aging creams. Young men hit the gym to bulk up. The kid isn’t even old enough to drink beer, yet he’s chasing a six-pack. Why? Because these days, everyone who’s successful seems to have one. And everyone who’s successful posts pictures of themselves online. Dubai. Pool parties. Flashy cars. Sexy women. Tough guys. Bling. Glamour. Money. Apparently, you can’t have a happy adult life without loads of cash and a perfect body.

To understand how physical attractiveness and economic success are connected, you could tune into the 20th season of “Germany’s Next Topmodel.” Or wade into the dense research fields of cognitive science, behavioral biology, sociology and psychology.

The so-called “beautiful is good” effect has been studied for more than 50 years. Sometimes it’s referred to as the halo effect, sometimes as “pretty privilege.” And it keeps popping up: Attractive people have it easier because they’re treated better. They go through life with a glow around them. “Baby, I can see your halo.”

The beauty premium

A recent study published in Scientific Reports explored the career benefits of good looks across cultures. What makes this study stand out is the method: An economist from the University of Mannheim and a data scientist from ETH Zurich used artificial intelligence to analyze 68 languages for semantic links between “beauty” and “success.” Anyone familiar with economics, literature or politics knows that a society always reveals itself through its language. Using AI to study so-called word embeddings is particularly effective in identifying cultural stereotypes that are embedded in language.

The study puts it plainly: “Beauty is more strongly associated with competence, trust and confidence, while ugliness is linked to incompetence, mistrust and doubt. Overall, these findings — for English-speaking cultures — support many of the classic theories behind the beauty premium.”

For early humans, health and the survival of the species were the ultimate career goals.

This beauty premium, the social and psychological advantage attractive people enjoy, is at the heart of the beautiful-is-good effect. It even influences our perception of babies. We automatically respond more positively to pretty people. We tend to assume they’re smarter, nicer and more trustworthy. We give them better jobs, more attention and higher salaries. We let them get away with more until we eventually realize what lies beneath the surface.

For early humans, health and the survival of the species were the ultimate career goals. Conversation didn’t get you far, so a quick first impression could mean life or death. Someone in good shape and not likely to carry disease was considered okay. But in modern societies, this kind of snap judgment causes more harm than good. We have to make a conscious effort not to fall into the same trap over and over, discriminating on looks. And still, the halo effect has been observed in many countries and is considered an anthropological constant. Which means it shapes behaviors, languages and cultures.

Language and culture

The new language analysis found a few cultural differences. The beauty premium tied to language is relatively weak in Vietnamese and Burmese, but quite strong in Japanese and Finnish. English and German fall somewhere in the middle. Of course, this doesn’t mean that in Finland only the stunningly beautiful get ahead, or that in Vietnam a person who looks like a turtle can rise to the top.

The study only identifies correlation, not causation. Why beauty and success are more closely linked in the language of some cultures than others is something future research will need to explore.

With any study that draws conclusions about a person’s inner character based on their appearance, we need to keep in mind that our first impressions are mostly instinctive. Whether someone is truly as smart, kind, or trustworthy as they seem at first glance only becomes clear after we get to know them. Studies based on photos merely confirm our gut reactions. And today’s digital media, filled with filtered videos and staged pictures, reinforces the same patterns.

If we instinctively trust good-looking people, it’s no surprise that influencers need that polished, flawless look to convince us to buy heart-healthy handbags, apps, shakes, dumbbells, or flat irons. That they cheat a little with filters to make themselves more attractive doesn’t bother us at first. But then, a large Spanish study recently discovered something interesting.

Photos of 462 people were shown to a large test group, once in their original form and once with a mild beautification filter that smoothed skin tone and slightly altered jawlines, lips, cheeks, eyes and noses. Participants were asked to rate the people’s assumed intelligence, trustworthiness, sociability and happiness. All these qualities scored higher the more attractive the filtered face appeared. But here’s the twist: the halo effect has its limits. Being too attractive doesn’t help either.

A beauty tipping point

The researchers suggest there’s a tipping point to the beauty premium. Past a certain level, perceived intelligence and trustworthiness actually decline. Too much good looks, it seems, makes people appear dumb. That’s probably a bias we pick up from culture. Other studies have shown that very attractive people are often assumed to be vain, self-centered, materialistic or overly sexual. Women face this stereotype especially in male-dominated industries, where any sign of femininity is seen as weakness. Which, oddly enough, brings us right back to the flashy cars and big lips, the alpha males and their women, the glam and the bling.

A lot of these hyper-styled self-promoters don’t exactly inspire confidence in their intellect. And you probably wouldn’t trust them with your pet turtle either. Are they happy in their carefully curated lives? That’s more of a philosophical question. Do they at least have plenty of friends? Well, there are always other good-looking people in the frame. And followers count as friends, don’t they?

In fact, we are more put off by unattractiveness than drawn in by beauty.

Not everyone can spot the harmful delusion behind social media’s filtered reality. If most people didn’t find it appealing or worth imitating, these trends and ideals wouldn’t have such power. But when scrolling quickly, our brains fall for the halo effect. Instagram and TikTok feed us images for instant judgment, and then wrap entire business models around them. Usually, they push the same message: If you look like this, you’ll have the money to buy everything that makes life perfect.

But overconsumption as a recipe for happiness cannot hold up forever. Not environmentally, and not psychologically either. And still, the wheel keeps spinning. The cosmetics industry, which first convinces customers they’re flawed and then sells them the fix in the next ad, is expected to reach over $700 billion in annual revenue by 2028.

A study published in the June issue of the International Journal of Research in Marketing seems almost like grasping at straws. An Israeli-American research team examined whether this obsession with optimizing one’s appearance might actually bring some social benefits. Across seven studies, they found that people who actively worked on their looks were also more aware of how they came across socially.

Outsmarting vanity

“This heightened awareness leads to more frequent prosocial actions, such as charitable donations and ethical purchasing decisions,” the authors wrote. They tested helpfulness through online fundraising campaigns. So people behaved in socially desirable ways, even alone in front of their computers, without red carpets or flashing cameras. Could it really be that vanity is this easy to outsmart?

But glam has little to do with most people’s daily lives. They just enjoy watching it online and letting it mess with their idea of normal life and right behavior. In the end, the real question becomes: What do I need to enjoy Pretty Privilege? The answer might unsettle the media and beauty industries: Average is enough. You don’t have to be a stunner to benefit. In fact, we are more put off by unattractiveness than drawn in by beauty. Positive biases about intelligence and trustworthiness kick in when a face simply matches the visual average of our population. In other words, when it looks unremarkable.

American psychologist Judith Langlois calls this “perceptual fluency”. The brain prefers things that it can process easily and quickly. A young, fresh, healthy face fits that bill. After more than 25 years of research, Langlois believes our sense of attractiveness is not just about sex appeal. It is not only about good genes and reproduction. Above all, we respond well to faces that don’t cause too much visual or mental strain. With no strings attached. People also like squares and circles, but they don’t necessarily find them sexy.

An ugliness premium

Of course, life only gets interesting when we move past the gawking crowd, put our prejudices aside, and really get to know someone. That’s why attractiveness research that looks at real personality traits instead of surface judgments tends to be more insightful. But it is also more complex. One long-term U.S. study tracked over 20,000 high school students for 14 years, up to the age of 29. They were repeatedly assessed for health, intelligence, attractiveness, and career progress. The researchers also tracked the so-called “Big Five” traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

If you are aiming for long-term professional success, you are better off investing in intelligence, social skills and strength of character than in looks or muscles.

In 2017, they used the data to examine the beauty-is-good effect in professional life, factoring in these personality traits. The result: “The limited evidence for a beauty premium disappeared completely. Healthier and more intelligent participants, and those with more conscientious, outgoing and emotionally stable personalities, earned significantly more than others,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of Business and Psychology. They even found signs of an “ugliness premium.” People rated as particularly unattractive were earning especially high salaries. Apparently, since they couldn’t rely on their looks, they had built strong inner qualities instead.

So if you are aiming for long-term professional success, you are better off investing in intelligence, social skills and strength of character than in looks or muscles. Coincidentally, that matches what the ancient Greeks believed true beauty required: A beautiful person combines a beautiful body and a beautiful soul.

Otherwise, even the halo fades fast into nothing more than the glow of a cheap ring light.