Attractive Students Get Higher Grades
Students whose looks are above average get the best grades.
A new study finds that students who are rated as more
attractive get better grades and are more likely to go to college.
The study followed about 9,000 US adolescents from high
school in the 1990s, through until they were in their 30s (Gordon et al.,
2014).
They found that students who were rated as more attractive
were also given higher grades by their teachers.
But students only needed to be somewhat above average to see
the advantage. The super-good-looking had no advantage over those who were
above average.
This may be because being more attractive had a negative
side–it was associated with more partying, dating and general social
distractions.
Interestingly, being average in appearance produced no
benefits in GPA scores against those with below average looks.
Why do
looks affect grades?
This study can’t directly tell us why being attractive is
good for your grades, but some have suggested that it is because teachers give
higher grades to attractive students.
Studies on children at elementary school, for example, have
found that teachers give higher academic ratings to those who are more
attractive.
But the real story is probably more complicated than that.
Academic outcomes are tied up with social outcomes. Students that do well
socially also tend to do well academically:
“…visible characteristics like attractiveness, as opposed to
averageness, gave students greater entrée and assuredness in initial
interactions and greater forgiveness for foibles and missteps in later
interactions, something particularly valuable in the large impersonal world of
high school. In this context, average-looking youth had relatively few chances
for standing out or opportunities to gain status in a competitive playing
field.” (Gordon et al., 2014).
Lookism
High school is likely just the first step in discovering how
important looks are.
There are some disadvantages to being very beautiful, such
as the perception that it’s all about the looks and not talent, and women can
face discrimination in some stereotypically masculine professions.
However, beautiful people get paid more, are more desired by
others and have higher self-esteem.
It’s all part of discovering that, unfortunately, as
teenagers are often heard to moan: life’s not fair.
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