We often pretend that beauty and attractiveness doesn’t matter, but science proves that attractive people get away with more stuff than people who are considered “unattractive”, and it’s making the world less fair.
Let’s be real: If you’re considered “good looking”, life is easier. You may get paid more, get shorter prison sentences. People trust you faster. And the worst part is, we all pretend that this isn’t a problem and that everything is fair while subconsciously rewarding looks every single day. This is not luck, it’s the Halo Effect, a psychological bias that tricks us into associating good looks with goodness itself.
The Halo Effect was first introduced by psychologist Edward Thorndike, he discovered that when it comes to attractiveness, the Halo Effect is the tendency to associate good-looking individuals with additional favorable traits, not just their appearance. Many conducted studies and experiments have confirmed this bias.
In a 1972 study titled “What is Beautiful is Good,” conducted by Dion, Berscheid, and Walste showed how we automatically think good-looking people are better in many ways. Researchers showed people photos of attractive, average, and unattractive faces and asked them to judge their personalities. Even though they had no real information about these people, participants rated the attractive faces as nicer, smarter, friendlier, and more capable than the less attractive ones. This proves that when someone is good-looking, we tend to assume they have other good qualities too, even when we don’t know anything about them. The term “Halo Effect” comes from the fact that people’s good looks create a “halo” that makes us see them in a more positive light.
The Halo Effect is also seen in children movies, influencing how kids think in a negative way. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel. What do they all have in common? They all have flawless features, symmetrical faces, and tiny waists, providing an inaccurate portrayal of “good guys”. Now let’s look at the villains: Ursula the sea witch, Jafar the villain from “Aladdin”, the stepmother from Cinderella, what do they have in common? They all have physical features that are considered “undesirable”. These kids movies did not invent the Halo Effect, yet they have perfected it, showing a true example of it. For many years, these types of movies have given young children the idea that to be a good person, you must be beautiful, “ugly” people are dangerous.
Us humans are all secretly hypocrites. We all say that looks do not matter, we care about character and personality, but our brains cannot help but create quick and stereotypical judgements based on how people look. Attractiveness is subconsciously aligned with health and good genetics, so biologically, it is natural that we favor them.
The consequence of this? An unjust world. It causes systematic bias with real consequences to people who may not fit the typical beauty standards. The Halo Effect reinforces inequality, it may discriminate people of color, people who age, or anyone who doesn’t have physical traits that are seen as “attractive”.
We may not be able to directly stop our brain’s natural bias, but we are able to tone it down. A solution to unfair hiring when it comes to jobs could be to remove photos from job applications to focus on skills and personality rather than appearances. Another simple solution would just be to reevaluate and call out when someone says stuff like “they look like they’re nice”.
The Halo Effect will not just disappear, but the simplest thing that we could do is admit that it exists. Right now, we live in a society where the Halo Effect is a reality, no matter how hard someone works. True fairness would be to judge people for what they do, not how they look.
Written by Audrey Limowa
