7 ms·

I wonder why the beauty premium remained for males after the switch to online but not in females?

jdthedisciple 7mo ago
Perhaps some other (hidden) premium that only shows in males, like a confidence premium?
CodeyWhizzBang 7mo ago
The article says: Why is beauty a productivity-enhancing attribute for males in non-quantitative subjects? Generally, it is difficult to disentangle the reasons behind why beauty improves productivity (Hamermesh and Parker, 2005). However, relative to other students, attractive men are more successful in peer influence, and are more persistent, a personality trait positively linked to academic outcomes (Dion and Stein, 1978, Alan et al., 2019). In addition, attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks, and are more popular vis-à-vis physically unattractive peers (Feingold, 1992). Importantly, possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021). In our setting, the tasks faced by students in non-quantitative subjects, for instance in marketing and supply chain management, are likely to be seen as more ”creative”, and significantly contrast the more traditional book-reading and problem-solving in mathematics and physics courses, the latter presumably perceived as more monotonous. Together with the large use of group assignments in non-quantitative courses, these theoretical results imply that socially skilled individuals are likely to have a comparative advantage in non-quantitative subjects.
- cubefox 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - atwrk 7mo ago
    And have you tried to find out why IQ associations are "taboo" in academia?
    - cubefox 7mo ago
      Yes. Have you tried to find out why making certain pieces of scientific knowledge taboo has had very bad consequences in the past?
      - atwrk 7mo ago
        Well I happen to have a phd in that broader domain. It's not censorship, as you imply, but IQ is just way fuzzier a concept than people outside of this area of research think. The popular view is IQ is an objective thing, exactly measurable and so on (the metaphor of brains being computers, essentially). In reality you can put a 14 year old from a bad environment into an optimal environment and their IQ increases by up to 20 points over a view years.
        cubefox 7mo ago
        IQ is highly heritable, so I don't think there is any environmental factor that has this big an impact, except in extreme cases like severe malnutrition. Also note that IQ increases with age roughly into early adulthood independently of environment, so the IQ of a 14 year old increasing is a perfectly normal part of the heritable parts of development.
        tptacek 7mo ago
        What's "highly"? It's likely somewhere between 15%-50% --- weak-to-medium, if you read it as a correlation coefficient.
        cubefox 7mo ago
        IQ is about as heritable as body height. > The results show that the heritability of IQ reaches an asymptote at about 0.80 at 18–20 years of age and continuing at that level well into adulthood. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-genetics/article/wilson-effect-the-increase-in-heritability-of-iq-with-age/FF406CC4CF286D78AF72C9E7EF9B5E3F https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-hu...
  - fn-mote 7mo ago
    That's an interesting take given that the previous sentence specifically lists "these traits" and none of them sounds like "IQ": > attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks I'd say you need different evidence if you want to grind that axe.
    - cubefox 7mo ago
      Among the Big 5 personality traits, Openness to Experience is the one most correlated with IQ.
  - nathan_compton 7mo ago
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=IQ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=IQ Yes, crickets.
    - cubefox 7mo ago
      https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-to-lose-tenure-with-one-sentence https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-to-lose-tenure-with-one...
      - nathan_compton 7mo ago
        "How to lose tenure with one sentence": "Maybe it will be fine to pursue my career in Florida." Anyway, my point stands - there is plenty of research on IQ. Only if you are specifically interested in correlating IQ with genetics have ethicists at large determined your research may be harmful. We can debate about that, I guess, but the idea that one cannot use IQ in research is a hyperbole.
        nathan_compton 7mo ago
        Actually, I want to add something to this. The general vibe in this research area is NOT that you cannot compare IQ with genes. Indeed, its more or less an accepted fact that some portion of IQ and measures like it are indeed heritable. The specific issue this person faced is in the use of race. I'm not suggesting that we accept all the woke orthodoxy whole cloth, but race really is a socially constructed concept. No person out there in the world is "of a given race" as a scientific fact. People have genes, they don't have races. The scientific community recognizes that genes influence intelligence, but has no interest in promulgating the frankly dumb idea that humans have distinct races, probably because the last time people got really into that idea it lead to concentration camps, apartheid, and the pointless destruction of vast swaths of human potential. The main issue with the research described is that it uses genes to construct a racial narrative. If that is the world you want to live in, you do you, I guess, but I would prefer that people not be pigeon holed on the basis of (for example) arbitrary qualities like "European Ancestry," which the person explicitly states they constructed a sort of genetic fingerprint for. In a meritocratic society people should be judged on their performance, not some inference people make about what genes they have on the basis of their level of melanin, to refer to the study this guy is talking about.
- dude250711 7mo ago
  I guess even attractive males have to work hard. One gender still has to approach, the other gender still waits to be approached.
tokai 7mo ago
Because its a small study with a biased population.
threethirtytwo 7mo ago
It's easy. For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty. They are judged by it and the core of their power stems from it. That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. That is why women "care" about beauty much more than men. They know that beauty = power. Women rely on beauty for success much more than men. It is not just in terms of "grades". Even in engineering jobs you can see it, a beautiful woman can get armies of male engineers to "help" her. I literally saw one female engineer get 2 male engineers to spend 3 weeks on a project for her just by virtue of the fact she's a woman. And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice". But men are not conditioned to ask other men for this kind of help and we can't expect 2 idiots to spend weeks on a "favor" for someone else. We live in a world that tries to deny this reality with "gender equality" but these cultural ideas fly in the face of millions of years of biological evolution. Now that being said. We very much expect that the grades of women should go down when not in person to a degree MUCH MUCH more than men. That is completely is expected. The question now is, why was there even a correlation of better grades and beauty among men in the first place? Why did that correlation exist when men do not rely on beauty? That is the anomaly here. I think part of the answer is clear. Beautiful men do not rely on beauty for success. They never did hence why when you removed it as a factor the success rate did not change. What's going on I suspect is even more controversial: Beauty correlates with intelligence. This is not an insane notion. We already know that height correlates with intelligence, but it is likely beauty does too. Edit: I looked it up, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001315 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... And it looks like my guess was true. This is indeed what's going on.
- mschuster91 7mo ago
  > That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. Oh us men also have a beauty industry - or, I should rather say, an attractiveness industry. We just get sold different, and arguably far more pricier, things... luxury watches and cars, tailor-made suits and shoes, grooming, gym memberships. And similar to how women got anorexia through unhealthy beauty standards for decades, that comes back to bite us men this time with "looksmaxxers" [1]... > Clavicular attributes his looks to, among other things, taking testosterone from the age of 14 and smashing his jawbone with a hammer to supposedly reshape his lower face - neither of which is recommended by health professionals. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28z4zypkno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28z4zypkno

Perhaps some other (hidden) premium that only shows in males, like a confidence premium?

The article says: Why is beauty a productivity-enhancing attribute for males in non-quantitative subjects? Generally, it is difficult to disentangle the reasons behind why beauty improves productivity (Hamermesh and Parker, 2005). However, relative to other students, attractive men are more successful in peer influence, and are more persistent, a personality trait positively linked to academic outcomes (Dion and Stein, 1978, Alan et al., 2019). In addition, attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks, and are more popular vis-à-vis physically unattractive peers (Feingold, 1992). Importantly, possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021). In our setting, the tasks faced by students in non-quantitative subjects, for instance in marketing and supply chain management, are likely to be seen as more ”creative”, and significantly contrast the more traditional book-reading and problem-solving in mathematics and physics courses, the latter presumably perceived as more monotonous. Together with the large use of group assignments in non-quantitative courses, these theoretical results imply that socially skilled individuals are likely to have a comparative advantage in non-quantitative subjects.

cubefox 7mo ago
[flagged]
- atwrk 7mo ago
  And have you tried to find out why IQ associations are "taboo" in academia?
  - cubefox 7mo ago
    Yes. Have you tried to find out why making certain pieces of scientific knowledge taboo has had very bad consequences in the past?
    - atwrk 7mo ago
      Well I happen to have a phd in that broader domain. It's not censorship, as you imply, but IQ is just way fuzzier a concept than people outside of this area of research think. The popular view is IQ is an objective thing, exactly measurable and so on (the metaphor of brains being computers, essentially). In reality you can put a 14 year old from a bad environment into an optimal environment and their IQ increases by up to 20 points over a view years.
      - cubefox 7mo ago
        IQ is highly heritable, so I don't think there is any environmental factor that has this big an impact, except in extreme cases like severe malnutrition. Also note that IQ increases with age roughly into early adulthood independently of environment, so the IQ of a 14 year old increasing is a perfectly normal part of the heritable parts of development.
        tptacek 7mo ago
        What's "highly"? It's likely somewhere between 15%-50% --- weak-to-medium, if you read it as a correlation coefficient.
        cubefox 7mo ago
        IQ is about as heritable as body height. > The results show that the heritability of IQ reaches an asymptote at about 0.80 at 18–20 years of age and continuing at that level well into adulthood. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-genetics/article/wilson-effect-the-increase-in-heritability-of-iq-with-age/FF406CC4CF286D78AF72C9E7EF9B5E3F https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-hu...
- fn-mote 7mo ago
  That's an interesting take given that the previous sentence specifically lists "these traits" and none of them sounds like "IQ": > attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks I'd say you need different evidence if you want to grind that axe.
  - cubefox 7mo ago
    Among the Big 5 personality traits, Openness to Experience is the one most correlated with IQ.
- nathan_compton 7mo ago
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=IQ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=IQ Yes, crickets.
  - cubefox 7mo ago
    https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-to-lose-tenure-with-one-sentence https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-to-lose-tenure-with-one...
    - nathan_compton 7mo ago
      "How to lose tenure with one sentence": "Maybe it will be fine to pursue my career in Florida." Anyway, my point stands - there is plenty of research on IQ. Only if you are specifically interested in correlating IQ with genetics have ethicists at large determined your research may be harmful. We can debate about that, I guess, but the idea that one cannot use IQ in research is a hyperbole.
      - nathan_compton 7mo ago
        Actually, I want to add something to this. The general vibe in this research area is NOT that you cannot compare IQ with genes. Indeed, its more or less an accepted fact that some portion of IQ and measures like it are indeed heritable. The specific issue this person faced is in the use of race. I'm not suggesting that we accept all the woke orthodoxy whole cloth, but race really is a socially constructed concept. No person out there in the world is "of a given race" as a scientific fact. People have genes, they don't have races. The scientific community recognizes that genes influence intelligence, but has no interest in promulgating the frankly dumb idea that humans have distinct races, probably because the last time people got really into that idea it lead to concentration camps, apartheid, and the pointless destruction of vast swaths of human potential. The main issue with the research described is that it uses genes to construct a racial narrative. If that is the world you want to live in, you do you, I guess, but I would prefer that people not be pigeon holed on the basis of (for example) arbitrary qualities like "European Ancestry," which the person explicitly states they constructed a sort of genetic fingerprint for. In a meritocratic society people should be judged on their performance, not some inference people make about what genes they have on the basis of their level of melanin, to refer to the study this guy is talking about.
dude250711 7mo ago
I guess even attractive males have to work hard. One gender still has to approach, the other gender still waits to be approached.

tokai 7mo ago

Because its a small study with a biased population.

threethirtytwo 7mo ago

It's easy. For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty. They are judged by it and the core of their power stems from it. That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. That is why women "care" about beauty much more than men. They know that beauty = power. Women rely on beauty for success much more than men. It is not just in terms of "grades". Even in engineering jobs you can see it, a beautiful woman can get armies of male engineers to "help" her. I literally saw one female engineer get 2 male engineers to spend 3 weeks on a project for her just by virtue of the fact she's a woman. And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice". But men are not conditioned to ask other men for this kind of help and we can't expect 2 idiots to spend weeks on a "favor" for someone else. We live in a world that tries to deny this reality with "gender equality" but these cultural ideas fly in the face of millions of years of biological evolution. Now that being said. We very much expect that the grades of women should go down when not in person to a degree MUCH MUCH more than men. That is completely is expected. The question now is, why was there even a correlation of better grades and beauty among men in the first place? Why did that correlation exist when men do not rely on beauty? That is the anomaly here. I think part of the answer is clear. Beautiful men do not rely on beauty for success. They never did hence why when you removed it as a factor the success rate did not change. What's going on I suspect is even more controversial: Beauty correlates with intelligence. This is not an insane notion. We already know that height correlates with intelligence, but it is likely beauty does too. Edit: I looked it up, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001315 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... And it looks like my guess was true. This is indeed what's going on.

mschuster91 7mo ago
> That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. Oh us men also have a beauty industry - or, I should rather say, an attractiveness industry. We just get sold different, and arguably far more pricier, things... luxury watches and cars, tailor-made suits and shoes, grooming, gym memberships. And similar to how women got anorexia through unhealthy beauty standards for decades, that comes back to bite us men this time with "looksmaxxers" [1]... > Clavicular attributes his looks to, among other things, taking testosterone from the age of 14 and smashing his jawbone with a hammer to supposedly reshape his lower face - neither of which is recommended by health professionals. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28z4zypkno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28z4zypkno