The Moral Hazards of Being Beautiful

Research shows that attractive people tend to receive unearned esteem from others and cultivate self-serving beliefs

By Emily Bobrow of The WSJ. 

When economists use the term "moral hazard" they mean the fact that when people buy insurance, they might not be as careful as they were before. For example, if you don't have fire insurance for your house, you will be very careful not to create fire hazards. But once you buy insurance, you might not go to as much effort to make sure everything is safe. But that increases the chance that fires will happen. This seems to be about something different but it is still interesting.

Excerpts:

"Studies reliably show that the most physically attractive among us tend to get more attention from parents, better grades in school, more money at work and more satisfaction from life. A study published in January in the Journal of Economics and Business found that good-looking banking CEOs take in over $1 million more in total compensation, on average, than their lesser-looking peers."

"comely managers of mutual funds lure more investments and enjoy more promotions than their homelier counterparts, even though their funds don’t perform as well."

"this performance gap may be because handsome managers approach risk with hubristic levels of confidence."

"most people prefer smooth skin, thick shiny hair and symmetrical bodies, as well as height for men and curves for women. We are suckers, basically, for signs of youth, good health and reproductive fitness. “Look, if there were no standards, then beauty would have no impact,” says economist Daniel Hamermesh, author of the 2011 book “Beauty Pays.”"

"halo effect. Basically, we tend to assume that good looks are a sign of intelligence, trustworthiness and good character and that ugliness is similarly more than skin deep. “Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference,” Aristotle observed."

"attractive people are less likely to be arrested or convicted, even after controlling for criminal involvement"

"Xijing Wang, a social psychologist at City University of Hong Kong . . . After giving people money and raffle tickets and asking them to share, Wang and colleagues found that those who rated their own looks highly were more likely to keep the items for themselves. Participants who were primed to feel more attractive were also more likely to agree with the statements “I demand the best because I’m worth it” and “I feel entitled to more of everything.”

“Due to their great bargaining power, attractive individuals may have learned that they deserve better,” Wang writes. Yet this sense of entitlement was apparent only when participants knew their actions and responses were anonymous. When their choices could be seen and noted by others, even the comeliest curbed their selfishness."

"physically attractive people often cultivate self-serving beliefs. A 2014 paper in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, for example, found that those who saw themselves as good-looking sensed they had more power and higher status than their plainer peers. They were also more likely to attribute growing economic inequality in the U.S. to the hard work and talent of those at the top."

"“If people win the genetic lottery, they get many societal advantages, and this in turn affects their views of the world,” says Andrea Fazio, an economist at Tor Vergata University of Rome. Fazio analyzed a nationally representative survey of Germans who rated how much they agreed with statements about money and fairness, such as “Income and wealth should be redistributed towards ordinary people.” The results, which he reported last year in the journal Economics & Human Biology, showed that the respondents who were seen as physically attractive by interviewers were also more likely to say that efforts to redistribute wealth were wrongheaded because everyone gets what they deserve."

"A paper in PLOS One in February, for example, reports that people found faces in photos more attractive when they learned the subjects were honest, kind and not aggressive. The results suggest that “facial attractiveness is malleable,” the authors write. Or as Sappho observed: “What is beautiful is good and what is good will soon be beautiful.”"

Related posts:

Better Looking Real Estate Agents Make More Money (2014)
 
Do looks matter? (2011)
 
Do Good Looking People Get Better Loan Terms? (2014)
 
Do Looks Help In The Job Market?  (2012)
 
From The Life Is Not Fair Category: Better Looking, Tall, Thin People Make More Money (2011)

The Unfairness of Unattractiveness (2016)

Higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women (2017)

Do looks matter for an academic career in economics? (2021)

Attractiveness is associated with the belief that economic success is dependent on individual effort, rather than external circumstances (2022)