Beautiful People Deserve More Success - Essay Example

? Beautiful people deserve more success than ugly people Beautiful people deserve more success than ugly people Introduction Beauty is complex to define and any attempt to define it can only be regarded as culture-specific. Every person perceives the world in diverse ways; perception of beauty can be ingrained within both the culture and in biology. Both culture and biology play a critical in the perception of beauty and can bear a positive and negative impact. One of the definitions of beauty centres on moral equation of beauty as goodness, while others have defined it in terms of qualities found within a person or thing that awards pleasure to the senses. When an individual meets someone, the initial impression rests on looks and only later do other aspects such as personality, character, and brains start to take on meaning. When perceived through the lens of economics, beauty can be perceived as a ticket to getting hired, earning more, and getting a wealthier spouse. An analysis of data across a number of countries and cultures reveal that beauty closely links to success (mostly financial success). On average, companies that place a premium on hiring attractive individuals usually report, on average, higher revenues compared to companies that fail to do so. In most cases, beautiful women are likely to get away with things that unattractive people would not; indeed, beautiful women often receive more smiles, more attractive lovers, and better treatment. In some cases, the beautiful individuals may possess bigger-than-life persona manifested by higher than ordinary self-esteem accompanied by feelings that they are special and deserves the best, and ultimately, this can turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy (Griffin & Langlois, 2006). Lookism refers to prejudice towards people based on their appearance. This area of study has received increasing attention and is increasingly becoming an equal-opportunity issue (Tietje & Cresap, 2005). In the society, aesthetic capital, like other forms of capital can be regarded as unequally distributed, and can generate what might be considered as unjust barriers to equal opportunity within the workplace. In most cases, individuals prefer attractive persons and express this preference by awarding them certain advantages. Individuals perceived as attractive may be frequently given preferential treatment while individuals perceived as unattractive are denied opportunities. According to some of labour-market research, attractiveness attracts a premium while ugliness draws a penalty (Little & Perrett, 2002). Research indicates that individuals frequently attach stereotypes to people that they perceive as physically attractive or unattractive (Griffin & Langlois, 2006). The Halo Effect Within the society, attractive people frequently tend to be more intelligent, well adjusted, and more popular. This relates to the halo effect owing to the perfection linked to angels. One of the underpinning theories behind the halo effect details that attractive people are indeed highly successful. A substitute explanation for attractive people attaining more in life details that individuals automatically categorize others prior to having the opportunity to evaluate their personalities, grounded in cultural stereotypes that suggest that attractive people must be inherently good, and ugly individuals must be intrinsically inferior (Langlois et al., 2000). Furthermore, successful job interviewers translate to rewarding jobs, good pay, and ultimately, a successful life, while, with regard to forming relationships, attractive people usually attract attractive partners characteristically with good genes and stable jobs. Being attractive appears to be rewarding, and, as such, it can be said that the accompanying factors associated with beautiful people are a point of success, but what is success? This question is subjective, and individuals possess diverse definitions of success; nevertheless, successful people characteristically, possess strong characteristics such as self-confidence, determination, and perseverance. Such claims have asserted that physically attractive individuals are highly likely to be successful in their career and mating and if this were to be the case, it implies a profound bias amongst society where the beautiful are always preferred while the ugly are left with undeserved discrimination (Langlois et al., 2000). Although, both success and ugly are subjective, success is highly likely in beautiful people given that beautiful people are more confident of themselves. An individual’s perception of beauty significantly depends on how attractive (and sexual appealing) the individual’s feel. Looking good is not merely about winning a beauty contest as research suggest that attractive people tend to be happier and wealthier compared to others. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder; nevertheless, there are certain characteristics that almost all people find appealing (Little & Perrett, 2002; Tovee & Cornelissen, 1998). Scientists assert that most individuals evaluate the attractiveness at least partially on facial asymmetry. In some cases, people frequently equate beautiful people with virtue. Studies have unearthed that individuals attribute positive qualities to people who look beautiful. Other research indicates that beauty is highly beneficial within the workplace whereby, in some cases, women perceived as more attractive than average make 8% more money annually compared to average-looking women (Hamermesh, 2011). “Beauty bonus” holds true to a wide range of professions given that beautiful workers out-earn average looking and unattractive workers within diverse fields’ right from retail to education, professional athletics to prostitution. Remarkably, the premium for beauty is higher is higher for beauty if one is smarter, in the same way as the penalty for being unattractive (Hamermesh, 2011). In politics, studies across the world have unearthed that attractive candidates persistently win most votes. The significance of attractiveness differs across various regions within the world. Some research suggests that beautiful women are highly likely to manifest strong social connections and report positive wellbeing. Nevertheless, beauty and attractiveness is not a component that people can control given that individual’s perception of beauty relies largely on the shape of the face and body (Dion, 2002). A possible explanation on why attractive people are readily hired details that beautiful workers are perceived better workers owing to their confidence and high self-esteem, which makes them cheerier and sweet-tempered compared to their hostile, depressed ugly colleagues; nevertheless, there is not much literature centring on whether attractive people are effective team leaders or managers whom clients and employees can trust and obey. Furthermore, studies have been unable to determine whether beauty yields to differences within productivity that generate differentials within earnings. This is a critical issue among economists as they perceive that a beauty premium might be justified in instances in which beauty related to enhanced productivity. There is disparate treatment of looks within numerous spheres of life, which remains a matter of simple prejudice. Most individuals, irrespective of their professed attitudes, frequently prefer as clients to purchase from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys, as voters to be led by attractive politicians, as students to learn from attractive tutors. Being ugly possesses its own strengths that most people miss out arising from the fact that beauty does not translate to pleasant personalities. As in most aspects of life, beauty has its downsides; the way that some attractive women view themselves may border on obsessive (Hill, 2002). Since most attractive persons cherish their looks, a blemish or a flaw can throw them into a panic. Some of the beautiful individuals may possess a distorted self image as they depend on the generated first impression in defining who their identity (they may perceive themselves as lacking talent or intellect-with no redeeming qualities apart from her looks). Although, beautiful people are highly likely to be successful, most beautiful people are not taken seriously (Hill, 2002). Research has revealed that when men and women look at attractive people’s success, they out rightly tend to credit their success to their looks, rather than the brains and talent that they may possess (Bazzini, McIntosh & Smith, 1999). Overall there is no reason to reinforcing the thought that beautiful individuals deserve the advantages accorded to them since they are not characteristically more intelligent or productive than their unattractive counterparts. Beauty heralds a degree of self-confidence, which may persuade employers, correctly or incorrectly that with enhanced self-confidence comes increased productivity. As such, beauty can be regarded as a bias against women. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and despite the fact that one may be labelled as ugly by some, or the majority, there may still be other people who may hold other views concerning oneself (Little & Perrett, 2002). When institutions sanction a universal scale of beauty, then the world may be headed down a dangerous route since this can harden opinions regarding beauty and yield to more discrimination (Manning, Trivers, Singh, & Thornhill, 1999). Conclusion Whatever the rationale, the idea that attractiveness correlates with success still holds true, yet beauty is not automatically advantageous since beautiful people, especially women, tend to be considered as more materialistic, vain, and snobbish. For better or worse, the underlying notion is that beauty matters; it pervades the society and impacts on how individuals select loved ones. Hence, striving to appear more attractive cannot be perceived as such a vain endeavour. Within the workplace, beauty buys better pay and enhanced chances of being hired and promoted, as well as access to more opportunities to construct skills, meet clients, favourably impress the boss, and so on, compared to ugly-looking individuals. The beautiful workers possess enhanced chances of building skills with minimal investments in time as skills are created via beauty (which necessitates nothing to create the additional power). As such, beautiful people deserve more success compared to unattractive people. References Bazzini, D., McIntosh, W. D. & Smith, S.M. (1999). Are the beautiful good in hollywood? an investigation of the beauty-and-goodness stereotype on film. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21(1): 69-80. Dion, K. (2002). Cultural perspectives on facial attractiveness. Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives. Eds. Rhodes, Gillian, Zebrowitz, Leslie. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing. Griffin, A. M., & Langlois, J. H. (2006). Stereotype directionality and attractiveness stereotyping: Is beauty good or is ugly bad? National Institute of Health, 24(2): 187-206. Hamermesh, D. E. (2011). Beauty Pays. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Hill, M. (2002). Skin color and the perception of attractiveness among african americans: Does gender make a difference? Social Psychology Quarterly, 65 (1): 77-91. Langlois, J. H., et al. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? a meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (3): 390-423. Little, A. & Perrett, D. (2002). Putting beauty back in the eye of the beholder. Psychologist 15 (1): 28-32. Little, A. C., & Perrett, D. I., (2002). Putting beauty back in the eye of the beholder. The Psychologist, 15(1): 28-32. Manning, J. T., Trivers,R. L. Singh, D. & Thornhill, R. (1999). The mystery of female beauty. Nature 399 (1): 214-215. Tovee, M. J. & Cornelissen, P. L. (1998). Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Nature 396 (1): 321-322. Tietje, L. & Cresap, S. (2005). Is lookism injust? The ethics of aesthetics and public policy implications. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 19 (2): 31-50. Read More