6 Types Of Pretty Privilege

Have you ever experienced the favoritism or discrimination that ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender can often entail? But what about pretty privilege? Have you ever heard of the idea that people are favored just because they're attractive? In fact, there is a term that describes this phenomenon very well: lookism, or appearance-based discrimination. It's a matter that's actually well documented in economic, psychological, and sociological research papers. Similar to racism, sexism, or agism, lookism is considered a form of discrimination based on looks. As described by Warhost and colleagues, this is the first type of pretty privilege we're going to talk about, and it forms an umbrella that encompasses all of the other following types. Leal goes so far as to link increased and repeated incidents that form from this type of discrimination with higher odds of poor self-reported health, with women especially reporting more repeated experiences of appearance-based discrimination, especially in early childhood. This form of discrimination can really impinge on one's social life and development, just like any other form, but with a more significant effect on social ability.

Today, we're going to learn about what is commonly known as pretty privilege. This refers to a social advantage, like having a high educational or socioeconomic status, that stems from being attractive. In this video, we're going to explore the six types of pretty privileges as defined in the psychology papers, and we're going to also look at its causes and consequences.

In later development, we tend to believe that attractive individuals possess desirable social traits. Conversely, there is an unconscious negative view of unattractive individuals. For example, we often assume that they are more likely to commit norm violations or engage in socially unacceptable, undesirable behaviors. In psychology, this is known as the halo effect. The halo effect is a cognitive bias—meaning it's something that influences the way we look at the world on the outside—and it's often something that we're not even aware of doing, where people generally form opinions about something or someone based on their positive or negative predispositions. For instance, you might assume that a modern or attractive car is safer to drive than an older or unattractive one, although the data may not back that up. When it comes to people, forming an accurate impression of an individual requires considering the dynamic interactions of many various traits. This means that different characteristics influence each other to create a final impression of a person. The halo effect leads to the formation of a positive general impression based on limited information from isolated physical traits; typically these are revolved around attractiveness, since that's what we can first judge about a person when we see them initially. In other words, certain traits act as a halo, casting a positive light on other completely unrelated attributes. For instance, being physically attractive—which is the first thing you see about a person—may also cast a positive light on your impression of how intelligent they are, or how warm they are, how charismatic they are, how capable they are—completely unrelated traits.

The opposite of this phenomenon has been referred to as the devil effect by Gibson and colleagues, and in one such podcast episode, we actually went into depth talking about something called the double devil effect, where being physically unattractive has a double negative effect, rather than being physically attractive, which has a single positive effect. In simple speak, it's worse being physically less attractive than the benefits of being physically more attractive; where generally this means we judge less attractive individuals as less competent or less socially skilled. Because this is the reverse of the halo effect, this is particularly important because the overall evaluation of someone as good or bad influences our future judgments of that person. Therefore, the halo effect lies at the core of pretty privilege. Being considered attractive or unattractive by society standards influences most aspects of our lives, at least to some extent. Beauty also affects quality of life. For instance, attractive individuals tend to enjoy a higher quality of life, which is repeatedly reported in scientific papers, but also this one's pretty much common sense. This includes earning higher salaries, experiencing more fulfilling relationships, receiving better treatment from others, and having an overall sense of well-being.

The most notable social consequence of being attractive is having higher self-esteem, which in turn leads to positive outcomes in various aspects of life. According to Lian and colleagues, self-esteem is influenced by how we perceive our value to others. This means that our self-esteem is tied to how others view us, evaluate us, and subsequently interact with us, which in turn forms if we have high or low self-esteem. In other words, our appearance determines how society treats us, which in turn shapes our self-image. As a result, it's easy to understand how attractive individuals tend to have higher self-esteem, and as a result, they are treated better; they see themselves being treated better, and so they view themselves as being better. On the other hand, individuals who are perceived as less attractive often face rejection in various areas of life, for seemingly inexplicable reasons. While it is evident that physical appearance plays a role in romantic rejections, and romantic rejections have a significant impact on self-esteem, that is not the only aspect for how this negatively impacts less attractive individuals. They also experience rejection in other forms, such as platonic friendships, workplace relations, or just being considered less capable by teachers, as is an example.

Beauty is also very highly valued in the labor market, primarily for the two reasons we mentioned above. There are significant benefits to being physically attractive, and economists theorize this effect called the beauty premium, where basically brands, colleagues, workers, and companies want to capitalize on your beauty by essentially turning looks into money. Attractive individuals earn higher salaries compared to those considered less attractive. In one such groundbreaking study on the topic, HR Mission and colleagues demonstrated an average wage penalty of up to 10% for individuals perceived as plain or unattractive, and an average premium of up to 10% for those deemed very attractive. The challenge is that, unlike other forms of discrimination, lookism is actually not considered legal. Does the beauty premium apply universally, or is it a bias, then you might ask? Well, for instance, one might expect that being attractive as a salesperson or waitress could provide significant benefits, and discriminating based on that would not be reasonable. De Euga and colleagues found that the beauty premium can indeed be task-dependent. In a bargaining task where individuals acted as sellers of electronic equipment, attractiveness strongly influenced the outcomes of the sale. In other words, attractive sellers received higher wages compared to unattractive sellers. However, they did not observe a beauty premium in tasks that were more intellectually oriented, such as, say, data entry or being a programmer. Nevertheless, other research has shown that the beauty premium extended to tasks both related and unrelated to appearances, such as credit markets, professional sports, college classrooms, and even elections—pretty obvious that one. Thus, the effect persists even in situations where beauty does not appear to play an obvious role; where we get into some examples of that in our video: why do athletes have more attractive faces, or do you get hired more because of your physical looks?

The beauty premium is primarily a result of the halo effect. Employers tend to assume that attractiveness is indicative of skill relative to the job performance, which leads to them being willing to pay more for attractive individuals. But it is also true that attractive individuals do have the ability to sell more, simply because of how humans have cognitive biases towards other attractive individuals.

One very understated advantage of being physically attractive is the ability to get away with norm violations much more easily. Norm violations can range from minor infractions, such as cutting the line, to more severe violations of the law, where, say, in a two-way car crash, the person who is at fault may just depend on who is physically more attractive. If the answer isn't obvious, the greater the deviation from the norm, the more society tends to dislike the individual involved. When encountering someone engaging in suspicious behavior, quick and critical decisions need to be made, such as whether to approach the individual or alert the authorities. Attractiveness plays a crucial role in those kinds of scenarios, but as we've seen, it can also lead to inaccurate judgments and predisposed decisions. There are three dimensions in which attractiveness influences this type of dynamic: the likelihood of committing a norm violation, the perception of intentionality, and the extent of social punishment. Attractive individuals are viewed as more likely to conform to societal norms. On the other hand, individuals perceived as less attractive are seen as more inclined to commit norm violations. This perception arises because attractive individuals are expected to behave predictably and to be well socially adjusted, which makes sense because attractive individuals are treated better, so they have no reason to rebel against the society that treats them better. In contrast, less attractive individuals are regarded as unpredictable due to potential mistreatment or resentment towards society. Attractive individuals are also perceived as more likely to commit norm violations involving positive behaviors. This means that their intentions often mitigate the perception of their wrongdoing. For example, if someone who is attractive steals food from a store, we may justify that act as being driven by hunger or trying to feed a family of five. However, if the person is less attractive, we are more inclined to perceive it as robbery. Another example is the act of forgetting to flush the toilet: for an attractive individual, it may be seen as a simple mistake; however, when it involves a less attractive person, it can be viewed as a sign of unhygienic behavior. These examples serve to illustrate the general idea that, regarding attractive individuals, we tend to excuse norm violations as exceptions rather than indicative of their typical behavior. Finally, being attractive provides individuals with a certain tolerance when it comes to violating social norms, resulting in fewer potential consequences compared to their less attractive counterparts. For instance, research has shown that attractive individuals often receive less severe punishment in legal trials. The perception of a norm violation as either creepy or innocent is influenced by the halo or the devil effect. We tend to attribute positive intentions to attractive individuals and negative intentions to less attractive individuals. As a result, attractive individuals face fewer consequences for both minor and severe norm violations, which in turn contributes to a better quality of life for them.

Overall, generational effects are the making decisions that we make that affect the reproductive success of our offspring later on. These are often influenced by physical attractiveness. The existence of these ideas in humans is debated but worth exploring nonetheless. According to evolutionary biology, a female's ideal mate is one with good genes, which in turn produces males with the best chance of reproductive success. We see this in most organisms, and there is good theory that this also applies to humans too. Therefore, other benefits that the father can offer are less relevant, including, for example, his capacity as a parental caregiver in comparison to his genetic strength. Therefore, what matters most is the future success of her sons rather than the success of her daughters, which in turn will have somebody quoting them no matter how they look, more or less. This is called the sexy son hypothesis, which is pretty interesting, and we have covered this two other times. This was proposed by Patrick J. Weatherhead and Ray J. Robertson of Queens University in Kingston. Therefore, to guarantee that success, they need to trade off for highly masculine fathers, which are often poor long-term partners. This in turn produces very attractive sons, which in turn can chase after a number of women and be successful, whereas daughters in general would be chased after by other men, so it doesn't really matter in prioritizing the looks of the daughter as opposed to prioritizing the looks of the potential son. This is just one of the many evolutionary theories we've covered on the podcast and on our channel in the past with Simon Groom, a biologist, and we have seen many of these fall more or less in trend. Therefore, we do see a tendency for resource-poor men and looks-poor men to go invisible off the sexual market, more particularly men without these highly masculine or dimorphic features who find it tougher and tougher to compete as there is an inflation of physical looks. This is the last form of pretty privilege: one where being an attractive person, man or woman, you will possess a likely higher reproductive benefit that ripples through generations.

With that being said, this is not entirely all doom and gloom. There are still multifaceted aspects to explore, such as wealth and status, which do have confounding effects for both men and women and can increase or decrease desirability. But there are also other ways that we have to look at that: one can make themselves more desirable without resorting to just physical attractiveness. With that being said, if you'd like to learn more about your own physical attractiveness—if that's a curiosity of yours—if you'd like to learn about your aesthetic, your facial features, your characteristics, and how you can improve the way that you look, well, you're in luck because that's what we do. You can head over to the C's website and have an assessment commissioned by our team of doctors and dentists and have them take a look at your features and give you step-by-step advice on what you can change, work on, or do to get a second opinion that interests you. That's over at the K's website, and I'll catch you all in the next one.