Thursday, May 25, 2006

Brains = Beauty ?

Seemingly according to a study (From Stumbling and Mumbling)

Good-looking people do better in exams than ugly ones. That's the message of this paper (pdf):

We examine the effects of students' physical appearance upon examination results. We fund evidence that beauty has a significant impact on academic performance, a result which is consistent with and comparable to the impact found in labour market literature.

Also
Fascinatingly, the beauty premium is greater in written exams than oral ones. This suggests the pay-off to good looks (or a lack of ugliness) comes from higher ability rather than discrimination.
Does this prove Darwin? Next time an TV add has Physicists looking geeky I will have to point this out.

hat tip: (Euro trib)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting read ... a good question would be if the written part of an examination was graded on the subjective opinion of the instructor or if it {exam} called for specific answers such as multiple choice, true or false, etc.

United Irelander said...

That can't be true. I've always done well in exams. :)