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According to Gordon Patzer, who has concluded three decades of research on physical attractiveness, human beings are hard-wired to respond more favorably to attractive people. “Good-looking men and women are generally regarded to be more talented, kind, honest, and intelligent than their less attractive counterparts.” he contends. "Controlled studies show that people go out of their way to help attractive people — of the same sex and opposite sex — because they want to be liked and accepted by good-looking people.” Even studies of
babies
show that they will look longer and more intently at attractive faces, Patzer argues.
Rice University professor Mikki Hebl’s research shows that “how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview.” Further, he found that “good-looking bosses were found to be more competent, collaborative, and better delegators than their less attractive counterparts.”
Today, science has demonstrated that symmetry has been proven to be inherently attractive to the human eye, in terms of the similarity between the left and right sides of the face. Victor Johnson of New Mexico State University used a program called FacePrints, which shows viewers facial images of variable attractiveness, and the images which viewers rated as a perfect 10 out of 10 in attractiveness were those of almost perfect symmetry.
Elaine Wong and her team at the University of Wisconsin analyzed photos of 55 male CEOs of large companies and the companies’ return on assets. The study found that companies with CEOs who have a higher facial width relative to facial height perform better financially. The group included former CEOs Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and Bob Allen of AT&T. Similarly, researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of California found that female faces were deemed most attractive if the vertical distance between the eyes and the mouth was 36 percent of the face’s length and the horizontal distance between the eyes was 46 percent of the facial width.
And contrary to expectations, the professional advantages enjoyed by attractive individuals persist
throughout
their careers. A longitudinal study of MBA graduates revealed that the earnings gap between attractive and unattractive employees only widens over time: For every additional unit of attractiveness on a five-point scale, men earned on average an extra $2,600 annually and women an additional $2,150 over their peers. Another study found that “an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks . . . earned 10 to 15 percent less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third — a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $230,000.”
