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Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#71

Post by paul7986 »

Physical attractiveness is gold ... you're life more then likely will be an easier road. You have the opportunity to experience the many positives life has to offer (more frequently too) as they are easily obtained and or they just fall at your feet. I.e. dating apps you have tons of choice .. you do not ever have to be alone... you post pics on social media and get tons of likes.. you post pics of you and the beautiful family you created and get tons of likes... you use it to climb the professional ladder..use it as a social media influencer to make money. Beauty is worth more then gold as gold is more easily obtainable!

Overall it's interesting there a study about this as it seems so obvious. Tho I looked up lookism..is there a movement suddenly happening against attractive people?

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#72

Post by bee_rider »

throw4847285 wrote: post #45

I would be cautious about confirmation bias here. Why is a random paper published in a low tier journal getting any attention? Is it especially well written? Is the data especially novel? No. This is an old data set, and a quick Google reveals multiple papers that use the attractiveness data from the AddHealth study with titles like "Gender and the returns to attractiveness" and "Physical attractiveness and the accum…

Maybe the authors were just attractive so we’re taking them seriously based on our implicit biases.

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#73

Post by ToucanLoucan »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #41
sidlls wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're engaging in a bit of humor, here, but Trump was born at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. There's nowhere for him to go but down . I don't think this study applies to people like him.

Was he actually ever considered attractive when he got "on the scene", so to speak?

Money is attractive, too. I'd be pretty flexible on my standards for a partner if it meant I could never have to work again in my entire life.

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#74

Post by no_time »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

Being someone who was both conventionally unattractive and conventionally attractive (I had a digestive disorder for years that made me terrifyingly skinny and sickly looking), I can say that the difference is astronomical. Once I figured out what was wrong with me, fixed my diet and got in shape, the way people treated me in general shifted dramatically towards positive. Rather than starting from a unreceptive low w…

>I had a digestive disorder for years that made me terrifyingly skinny

Could you elaborate? I have something similar of unknown cause

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#75

Post by skocznymroczny »

Spivak wrote: post #51
wiradikusuma wrote: post #13

There's a saying (which could be specific to my country) about men approaching women. If you're handsome it's called flirting, if you're ugly it's sexual harassment. Joking aside, I do notice that successful men (again, maybe specific to my country) tend to be attractive and they usually have an attractive and smart partner. Successful but not attractive men can still have either attractive or smart partner (or both,…

This has gotta be one of my favorite parts of HN, it's an odd glimpse into how men view the world. You've got it backwards. In both cases what makes it harassment is continuing to push when it's unwanted. Why you seem to see a difference in results based on attractiveness is because your average guy can't take a hint no matter how attractive they are. So "success" becomes literally stochastic because guys never back…

I don't think so. There is a growing movement on places like Instagram and Tiktok, currently it's mostly played as a joke but there are woman complaining about how they said to a guy "No" and he backed off instead of trying again. Many women want to play hard to get and want a guy to try multiple times. The problem is if an attractive guy does it then he "is confident and really wants her", but if unattractive guy does it he's a "creep who can't take a hint".

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#76

Post by leidenfrost »

benterix wrote: post #67
leidenfrost wrote: post #55

This relates to a criticism I have for woke and SJW people: Do they follow the same tendency? Most SJW people I know tend to be critical of the idea of a beauty standard at all, which is an interesting initiative if they can actually pull it off. And I do agree that it would be nice to stop being biased towards conventionally attractive people. Then, with that logic, we should be seeing "woke couples" who don't follo…

There is an absurd tendency to deny and reject the presence of certain traits and behaviors that are common to animals and humans. The fact that we are aware of certain tendencies doesn't make us free from them. There is a clash between how we would like the world to look like and how it is. In the real world, women in general are physically weaker than men, most of them menstruate and so on. We can consider these th…

Human nature is sometimes more malleable than we think.

Many aspects we attribute to human nature are products of a more subtle tribal instinct, yet influenced in a particular way by culture and nurture.

10,000 years ago people didn't consider other tribes as human. 100 years ago some people didn't even consider other races humans. Now, while racism still exist, we don't have those ideas anymore.

In short, let people cook and see what it changes over time.

Sometimes we see positive changes in our society.

Sometimes those movements crumble down due to its own futility.

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#77

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mindcandy wrote: post #34
mushufasa wrote: post #2

Interesting that the effect was stronger in males. It looks like the outcomes tracked were education, income, and occupation. I wonder if this is tracking the wrong things; e.g. women can marry into a higher wealth+prestige class without themselves needing to attain education, income, or a job.

Anecdotally, as a 6’0” moderately-attractive dude in SF: I’ve laughed at the statistically unlikely number of founders/CEOs/upper management who are not only taller than me, but also are not subtle when they use their imposing height in conversation to get everyone else to just go along with whatever BS they are spouting. Bonus giggles if they are part of the hoard with thick hair and a square jaw.

No wonder they are forcing everyone to RTO

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#78

Post by kkielhofner »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

Being someone who was both conventionally unattractive and conventionally attractive (I had a digestive disorder for years that made me terrifyingly skinny and sickly looking), I can say that the difference is astronomical. Once I figured out what was wrong with me, fixed my diet and got in shape, the way people treated me in general shifted dramatically towards positive. Rather than starting from a unreceptive low w…

I have to imagine the “unattractive sickly stage” is likely related to basic things like monkey brain “hmm that person doesn’t look healthy maybe I should stay away from them”. Or pattern recognition stuff like “don’t see that everyday. What’s going on here?” that could lead to the skepticism and lack of trust and confidence.

Otherwise people generally like looking at pretty things and being surrounded by pretty things. Interior, product, etc design is a thing because people will buy something for how it looks over how well it actually functions. Or all things being equal or close they will pick the “pretty” one. They are attracted to it, drawn to it. Artwork that is appealing to enough people is worth more than artwork that isn’t.

Of course it is the same with people.

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#79

Post by jameane »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #41
sidlls wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're engaging in a bit of humor, here, but Trump was born at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. There's nowhere for him to go but down . I don't think this study applies to people like him.

Was he actually ever considered attractive when he got "on the scene", so to speak?

I feel like age hurt him for sure. You see Donald Trump in Home Alone and he looks like an average white dude. But now he looks like a troll.

Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

#80

Post by francisofascii »

Spivak wrote: post #51
wiradikusuma wrote: post #13

There's a saying (which could be specific to my country) about men approaching women. If you're handsome it's called flirting, if you're ugly it's sexual harassment. Joking aside, I do notice that successful men (again, maybe specific to my country) tend to be attractive and they usually have an attractive and smart partner. Successful but not attractive men can still have either attractive or smart partner (or both,…

This has gotta be one of my favorite parts of HN, it's an odd glimpse into how men view the world. You've got it backwards. In both cases what makes it harassment is continuing to push when it's unwanted. Why you seem to see a difference in results based on attractiveness is because your average guy can't take a hint no matter how attractive they are. So "success" becomes literally stochastic because guys never back…

I agree that men should be better at taking a hint, but I think there are a few reasons why men continually push, which mostly boils down to survivorship bias. First, you have plenty of pop culture movies where the guy strikes out time after time, but then eventually is able to win the heart of the girl. There is also the family stories of how "grandpa" kept asking "grandma" out and she finally said yes. A guy who never tries will never win, so you have to try to have any hope of winning. At this point is it baked into men's genetic code for survival.
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