Science confirms being good-looking is the ultimate cheat code

[jlw]

Originally published at: Science confirms being good-looking is the ultimate cheat code - Boing Boing

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[anon58741709]

It’s a slight improvement over the study’s original title, “Hotties: Why Won’t They Join My Discord Server?”

[Bunbain]

pray tell how did they quantify physical attractiveness

[rocketpj]

I have certainly witnessed some very good looking people who have become so used to everyone around them fawning and grovelling to please them that they experience anything less as a personal attack.

[gracchus]

[TornPaperNapkin]

These kinds of studies seem weird, flawed, and written primarily to get things published in ragebait articles.

[Otherbrother]

@Bunbain

pray tell how did they quantify physical attractiveness

I was curious about that too. Just found the original study. Here’s one quote from the methodology portion:

We focus on Wave I to examine teenage behavior and Wave IV, conducted in 2008, when respondents had reached adulthood (generally ages 26-32). In each wave, at the end of each interview, the field interviewer rated the physical attractiveness of the respondent according to the following question:4
How physically attractive is the respondent? with the following options: 1. “very
unattractive”, 2. “unattractive”, 3. “about average”, 4. “attractive”, and 5. “very attractive”.5
The distributions of interviewers’ responses for the male and female teenage Add Health study members are depicted in Figures 1a and 1b. Following a pattern observed in previous studies (Mocan & Tekin, 2010; Stinebrickner et al., 2019), females have a slightly higher average attractiveness score and standard deviation than males. The sample exhibits sparse responses for the “very unattractive” and “unattractive” options. We combine these responses into one category, constructing a 0-1 indicator “unattractive or very unattractive” (or “bad looks”). Similarly, we define another 0-1 indicator, “attractive or very attractive” (or “good looks”), based on the responses of “very attractive” or “attractive”. Table 1 provides summary statistics for these two variables. Figure 2 shows the equivalent
distributions of physical attractiveness scores for the Add Health study members who went on to be interviewed in Wave IV. These distributions are similar to those observed among the teenagers.6

So yeah. No real science there, they literally just had the interviewers rate the attractiveness of the subjects on a scale of 1 to 5. The whole thing seems somewhat unethical.

[Brainspore]

@Otherbrother

No real science there, they literally just had the interviewers rate the attractiveness of the subjects on a scale of 1 to 5. The whole thing seems somewhat unethical.

Well that’s just nuts, they could have at least had a pool of reviewers submitting a double-blind attractiveness rating based on a photo of each subject and then average the results to come up with some semblance of objectivity.

[douglas_stuart]

Can confirm.
I know some actual attractive people. It’s really weird. It’s like they have magic powers. People just subconsciously treat them differently.

[anon23281680]

The idea of the adult field interviewers rating the attractiveness of a bunch of underage teenagers is also pretty gross.

[Otherbrother]

@Brainspore

they could have at least had a pool of reviewers submitting a double-blind attractiveness rating based on a photo of each subject and then average the results to come up with some semblance of objectivity.

Right, and having them do the rating at the end of the interview is also likely to introduce biases based on what the interviewers had just learned about each subject. It doesn’t list all the interview questions but, as one example, if one subject had said they enjoy walks on the beach, sunset hikes, etc. as forms or recreation and another had answered that they prefer to spend free time alone playing video games, how could that not at least subconsciously affect how attractive the interviewers found each subject?

[KathyPartdeux]

I’m going to believe this because I don’t game.

[smulder]

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[bcsizemo]

@TornPaperNapkin

These kinds of studies seem weird, flawed, and written primarily to get things published in ragebait articles.

That sounds like something an attractive person would say.

[anon65652885]

“I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you’re out there and you’re cute, maybe you’re beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin’ — there’s more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out.”

― Frank Zappa