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Scott Jaschik writes at Inside Higher Education that although most faculty members would deny that physical appearance is a legitimate criterion in grading, a study finds that among similarly qualified female students, those who are physically attractive earn better grades than less attractive female students. For male students, there is no significant relationship between attractiveness and grades. The results hold true whether the faculty member is a man or a woman.
The researchers obtained student identification photographs for students at Metropolitan State University of Denver and had the attractiveness rated, on a scale of 1-10, of all the students. Then they examined 168,092 course grades awarded to the students, using factors such as ACT scores to control for student academic ability. For female students, an increase of one standard deviation in attractiveness was associated with a 0.024 increase in grade (on a 4.0 scale).
The results mirror a similar study that found that those who are attractive in high school are more likely to go on to earn a four-year college degree. Hernández-Julián says that he found the results of the Metro State study “troubling” and says that there are two possible explanations: “Is it that professors invest more time and energy into the better-looking students, helping them learn more and earn the higher grades? Or do professors simply reward the appearance with higher grades given identical performance? The likely answer, given our growing understanding of the prevalence of implicit biases, is that professors make small adjustments on both of these margins."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2016, @04:11PM
How about: People who can afford to look attractive might come from socioeconomic strata where they are afforded the economies to do better in school? (The prime fallacy being "looking attractive" is something purely intrinsic and not, say, the result of being able to afford makeup / dermatologists / fashion magazines / gym membership and/or time and place to exercise / etc.) Or that the ones who are interested in doing well at school may have a greater impetus to put on make-up before having their student photo taken. Or that attractiveness is a survival factor as is doing well in school.
Sounds to me like people have fallen into correlation-causation fallacy, as usually happens when studies are published and attract media attention.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 07 2016, @04:26PM
TFS says they controlled for attractive people actually being better at stuff by comparing attractive / unattractive.
It's an interesting (if controversial) road to go down though - could pretty people actually be smarter? Maybe natural selection has paired successful but unattractive people with attractive people over generations, and so created a genetic correlation between attractiveness and success. Or maybe what we perceive as "attractive" (and I believe recognition of attractiveness has been proven to be instinctive rather than learned) is actually an instinctive recognition of success and ability, produced by evolution. Or maybe that's all bullshit and the better grades are down to flirting and/or preferential treatment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @04:51AM
Over the last several months I have been working out and getting in better physical shape. I haven't ever needed any gym membership to do it. The only money I have spent on this was to buy a cheap stopwatch; even that was not strictly necessary. The time I put into this is typically a few minutes in the morning and evening to do push ups and sit ups. I have also been doing some running which takes less than half an hour. It really doesn't take much time or money to get in shape. In fact, I would guess you probably spend substantially more time watching TV then I spend exercising. Really!