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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 15213 olivola@cmu.edu https://sites.google.com/site/chrisolivola/
Alexander Todorov
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540.atodorov@princeton.edu http://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.

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

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