If You Look Good You Also Look Smart!

Looks can be deceiving, right? I mean look at the morning news team of Dave and Lance. To look at us you would think “wow, these guys look so good they must be really smart”, right? Scottish researchers say that’s true. But again, looks can be deceiving.

University of St. Andrews researchers showed photos of 100 students to a group of strangers and asked the observers to rank the people in the pictures by estimated intelligence. You can see where this is going.

In the end, the better looking the student was, the more intelligent they were thought to be. So you can only imagine the misconceptions about Dave & Lance!

Study leaders say that previous layers of research would suggest there are some real facial indicators to help us determine another person’s health or intelligence but some of that real science can be lost by virtue of what is known as the ‘attractiveness halo’ . The halo means all the good attributes get automatically associated with “pretty people” just because they ARE the pretty people, when in truth they could be jerks.

That can be a problem for employers who can be influenced

by appearance rather than a true measure of professional competence. Again, look at the morning news and Dave & Lance! (Telegraph.co.uk)