Five {5} Pleasures of Being Beautiful

We may associate beauty with truth, but beauty is also threatening and sparks our defences.

Beautiful people are all around us: on billboards, on TV and at the movies—some of them even inhabit our everyday lives.

Great beauty in another person inspires all kinds of emotions: admiration, desire, hope, despair and sometimes envy.

So what is the psychological effect of beauty and how do other people react to it? In fact being beautiful isn’t all good, or so the psychological research suggests. Here are both sides of the coin, first five pleasures and then five pains of being beautiful.

Five pleasures of being beautiful

1. What is beautiful is good

In many situations we automatically defer to beauty, assuming that along with beauty come all sorts of other positive characteristics. We have a tendency to think beautiful people are funnier, more friendly, more intelligent, more exciting, in possession of better social skills, are sexually warmer, are more interesting, poised and even more independent.

These sorts of judgements have been tested over-and-over again in the laboratory and elsewhere. This is a great example of the so-called ‘halo effect‘: when global evaluations about a person bleed over into our judgements about their specific traits.

2. More desired

There’s a whole stack of research on mate selection and attractiveness. You won’t find the headline result at all surprising: on pure looks alone we prefer partners who are more beautiful.

Of course that assumes that everything else is equal, which it normally isn’t.

3. Better persuaders

Good-looking people make better persuaders (Chaiken, 1979). This may be because attractive people tend to be better communicators and possess more confidence or just because we believe in beauty. Whatever the reason, beauty can persuade us to change our minds.

4. Get paid more

At work attractive people can receive all kinds of benefits. First of all they may get higher starting salaries, perhaps because their qualifications are perceived as more solid and their potential as greater (this is the halo effect workings its magic). Then, later on, they have an advantage in promotions.

5. Higher self-esteem

Not surprisingly, given all the above advantages, good-looking people also have higher self-esteem. What with all those dates and the extra money, is it any wonder they think better of themselves than their less fortunate peers?