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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: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 07 2016, @04:36PM
From the comments so far it seems a blind control would have been a big help here:
1 - Have the subjects sit the test.
2 - Have the answers independently marked by different sets of judges:
- Judge group A has access to the pictures / have met the subjects, and so can assess their attractiveness.
- Judge group B are working blind. They don't even see the names on the papers.
- Just for kicks, I'd be interested to see the results of the study broken down by the sexual orientation of the judges: Does a gay man give preference to an attractive woman? Does a straight man show bias towards (or against?) an attractive man? Maybe even rate the judges attractiveness could be a factor. Do attractive people give other attractive people preferential treatment? Do unattractive people give less lenience to attractive people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2016, @04:55PM
Better make three judge groups:
Groups A and B as you said.
Group C also gets the images, but mixed up (so they get the test of person A with the name/image of person B).
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday January 07 2016, @05:16PM
But what if those results do not push an agenda! What then?!