The Attractive Bias: How Looking Good Is Connected to Being Good

It is a widely conceived notion that physically attractive people are superficially viewed in a relatively positive light when compared to others. Vast research done in the past has proved the existence of the physical attractiveness bias in society (Dion & Berscheid, 1974). Apart from the perceptions of the society in general, mock criminal case presentations have also found that people generally tend to rate unattractive individuals as committing more serious crimes (Saladin, Saper & Breen, 1988). There have been a number of studies conducted on attractiveness bias all further explained hereafter, but one important consideration that most courtroom replication studies seem to have lack of is the actual involvement of the nature of the crime conducted. Izzet & Fishman studied the effect of attractiveness and the defendants’ justification of their actions, and found that attractive individuals were judged harsher if they blamed their doings on external factors. This piece of research will look for an interaction between the nature of the crime which may be blue collar or white collar, and the attractiveness of the criminal in question.

Dion, Berscheid, & Walster studied this bias in 1972 and found that physically attractive individuals are viewed as having a better future and positive personality characteristic in general. Physically attractive people are also perceived to be more sociable, happier, and more successful in life compared to unattractive individuals (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo 1991). Bias towards the physically attractive have been seen to manifest in a number of situations such as student judgments made by teachers (Clifford & Walster, 1973), performance ratings for pianists (Ryan & Costa-Giomi, 2004), voting choices for election candidates (Efran & Patterson, 1974), and examiner biases towards scoring children’s intelligence scales (Wheeler et al, 1987). In a study done by Chaiken in 1979, it was also found...