Do good looking people have it better in life?
Substantial evidence indicates that good-looking people have an easier time in society. Society perceives beautiful people as happier, more successful, wealthier, healthier, and more intelligent.
Experiments have shown that we consider attractive people “as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled” than unattractive people. By the time cute kids become attractive adults, they've benefited from this bias for years, giving them higher levels of confidence.
The top 15 percent of people ranked by looks are over 10 percent happier than people ranked in the bottom 10 percent of looks, researchers say.
Key points. Research suggests that good looking people enjoy a range of preferential treatments in life. However, research also reveals some downsides to being good looking. We summarize some important pros and cons of being good looking, and see if good looking people really do "have it easy in life."
Previous research has broadly shown that good-looking people tend to have an easier time of it in life. They get paid more, receive better job evaluations, and are generally more employable.
Beautiful people experience loneliness too, like everybody else. Just because they were blessed with beauty doesn't mean their life becomes blissful and great. They experience sadness and suffering just like everyone else.
Good-looking people are also less likely to be judged as guilty in legal and courtroom settings, not to mention the obvious advantages they possess in the relationship and dating departments. Even in childhood, kids who are cuter are often treated more favorably.
In a new study, individuals rated as attractive had higher rates of phagocytosis of E. coli bioparticles, higher basophil white blood cell counts, and lower neutrophil white blood cell counts. Female participants rated photos of males with high functioning natural killer (NK) cells as being more attractive.
More objectively attractive adults were also slightly less likely to have a mental illness, according to clinician-based measures of mental health (Langlois et al., 2000).
No matter how old you are or what your gender preference is, whether you're single or married, looking pleasing and feeling good will always be for your benefit. This may sound superficial, but studies show that if you're attractive, you're more likely to be happy.
Do attractive people have advantages others don t?
Simply put, the answer is yes. The advantages that attractive people have is proven through science. According to Psychology Today, we tend to attribute a number of positive characteristics to attractive people. Also, we perceive them to be more competent, happier, and more successful than the general population.
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