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The biasing effects of appearances go beyond physical attractiveness and mating motives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2017

Christopher Y. Olivola  and
Alexander Todorov
Christopher Y. Olivola
Affiliation:
Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213olivola@cmu.eduhttps://sites.google.com/site/chrisolivola/
Alexander Todorov
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540.atodorov@princeton.eduhttp://tlab.princeton.edu/
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Abstract

The influence of appearances goes well beyond physical attractiveness and includes the surprisingly powerful impact of “face-ism” – the tendency to stereotype individuals based on their facial features. A growing body of research has revealed that these face-based social attributions bias the outcomes of labor markets and experimental economic games in ways that are hard to explain via evolutionary mating motives.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e38
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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