Many of us cling to the hope that, despite not having been blessed with model good looks, our intelligence will shine through. Unfortunately, a new study claims this might not be the case -- and actually, the more attractive someone is, the more likely we are to perceive them as intelligent.
Researchers found that facial cues we all use to assess someone's health or intelligence are overshadowed by an "attractiveness halo". The study by a team at the University of St Andrews, published in the journal PLOS One, noted that this halo ascribed other desirable attributes to attractive people.
So even if other facial cues are present -- ones that tell us how healthy someone is, for example, or what mood they're in -- if we find someone attractive, we're likely to think of them as intelligent too.
100 students at the university had their faces photographed, and an average exam result was calculated for each one. Participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform were then asked to rate each face on "attractiveness, intelligence, conscientiousness and academic performance". An average score was given for each category and compared to the exam result score provided by the students.
The team found that those considered attractive were also rated more highly on intelligence, conscientiousness and academic achievement -- even though there was no statistical relationship between attractiveness and academic achievement. "The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has been shown to influence students' future performance," the researchers wrote. "These findings emphasise the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring." "Facial impressions have consistently been shown to influence our opinions, as well as bias decisions in politics, leadership, law, parental expectations and punishments on children, military rank promotion and teacher evaluations."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
