Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance

Abstract

Despite the old adage not to ‘judge a book by its cover’, facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone’s health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an ‘attractiveness halo’ whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students’ future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize 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. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli.

Testing the validity of value‐added measures of educational progress with genetic data

“…Using genetic data to examine value added measures 737 factors such as attractiveness, which could lead to confounding bias (Clifford & Walster, 1973;Talamas et al, 2016). Furthermore, teacher-rated ability is likely to be a less precise measure of ability than end-of-key-stage point scores, due to its reduced richness as a measure of attainment and therefore reduced imposed variability.…”

The Heredity of Beauty

“…However, a person's attractiveness can bias people's first impressions about them and make them seem more or less capable than they really are. This has the potential to considerably affect a person's chances of getting a good education or job considerably (Talamas, Mavor, & Perrett, 2016). This is called the Halo Effect.…”

The Relationship Between Extraversion and Listening Comprehension Under High- and Low-Salience Visual Distraction Conditions

“…More attractive people have higher ratings of selfconfidence and often display an extroverted personality (Talamas, Mavor, & Perrett, 2016). Surprisingly, this extroverted trait can be determined after only 50 ms of exposure to a face (Talamas et al, 2016). Although many factors influence attractiveness, the current study focused specifically on facial attractiveness.…”

“…Recent research has identified important social consequences of attractiveness such as higher career success rates, more romantic interactions, and others' subjective views of the attractive individual as possessing other positive, high quality traits (Little, Jones, & DeBruine, 2011). More attractive people have higher ratings of selfconfidence and often display an extroverted personality (Talamas, Mavor, & Perrett, 2016). Surprisingly, this extroverted trait can be determined after only 50 ms of exposure to a face (Talamas et al, 2016).…”