Ugly people make more money | Hacker News Reader

Ugly people make more money

businessinsider.com

21 pointsanielsen7 comments

It's worth noting that the Satoshi Kanazawa, the author of the study this article cites, is not considered a good scientist by most other scientists. He's known for producing "click-bait science" that grabs headlines due to its controversial nature, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

https://www.scribd.com/document/231350957/Kanazawa-Statement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavio_Briatore#Personal_life

From the paper:

> It appears that more beautiful workers earn more, not because they are beautiful, but because they are healthier, more intelligent, and have better (more Conscientious and Extraverted, and less Neurotic) personality.

But that makes me wonder, isn't health, intelligence, or personality usually how we qualify "beauty" anyway? The paper is pay-walled so I didn't get a chance to see how they quantified "beauty" in this study.

> that makes me wonder, isn't health, intelligence, or personality usually how we qualify "beauty" anyway?

No, you're thinking of "attractive". "Beautiful" generally refers to having a pleasant physical appearance, and studies on the topic usually measure it through having people rate photos. Health is the only one of the three that has a direct effect, since it's obviously correlated with physical attractiveness.

I always interpeted "attractive" to refer to how much attraction one feels to another person, for any arbitrary reason. For example even if some fashion model is traditionally beautiful, she might be less attractive to me than an ordinary looking girl who is more my type.

I'm confused, you start with no but then basically validate what I said? Sure, in the case of this study health might be the only relevant one if they were only shown photos of the subjects and nothing else to quantify "beauty". But, in the applicable case of people actually being in and applying for jobs/promotions/what-have-you, a good personality and intelligence surely affect that perception as well.

It also protects against STDs.

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