The advantages (and disadvantages) of being excessively handsome

Beauty is a concept that is always difficult to approach. Each culture establishes the parameters of what it considers beautiful in each of the areas where beauty can play a role: not only in the world of art, but also in human beings.

Thus, certain facial, body and communication features are associated, depending on each culture and historical moment, with greater beauty. Good-looking individuals are those who, by social consensus, are seen as more physically desirable and attractive, Being able to be the center of attention of glances and comments much more frequently than other less graceful.

Related article: "Does physique matter when flirting? 3 reflections on beauty"

Beautiful people: is everything positive?

A priori, it seems that being handsome only has advantages: greater attention, the benefits of halo effect, and greater possibilities of interacting with others making a good impression. However, several investigations put some nuances and point out some negative aspects that people with above average beauty "suffer" from.

A series of scientific investigations They have tried to know what are the advantages and disadvantages of being handsome or pretty. For example, a study published in Sociology Compass which was developed at the University of North Carolina analyzed the social impact of beauty in various historical stages, to later compare them with each other.

They found several surprising results. Beauty was not only an important factor in society in general, but could predict various phenomena in people considered "very beautiful".

Advantages of being handsome

Of course, be physically attractive it has a good number of advantages for life. This is where we once again refer to the halo effect. Beautiful people benefit from this cognitive bias, which makes them, from their positive trait "beautiful", others perceive them as more generous, kind and trustworthy. Starting from a single positive trait, we tend to generalize the virtues in that same individual, even if we do not have the necessary information to reach that hasty conclusion.

In this sense, beauty is also socially perceived as a sign of social status. Although it is clearly nonsense, the truth is that we tend to attribute qualities such as kindness or generosity to beautiful people, and to treat them in a more deferential and gentle way.

Although there are no scientific data to support it, there is a hypothesis, widespread among the legal and judicial world, which says that beautiful people tend to receive lighter sentences compared to ugly people, even though the circumstances of the crime may have been very similar.

Benefits caused by cognitive biases

In the same study by Walker and Frevert, other data of interest were reported. Physically attractive college students tended to be viewed as more competent and intelligent than the less fortunate.

All this excess of attention, approval and acceptance that beautiful people receive over time has an effect on their own personality. This is also an interesting question to analyze. They tend to be individuals with more self-confidence, and they even have better salaries (statistically speaking), according to one of the study authors. The difference in wages between beautiful people and unattractive people could fluctuate between 10 and 20% in favor of the former.

Disadvantages of being handsome

Although we've discovered a few positive aspects of being physically attractive so far, beauty can actually be an obstacle or a negative factor in other contexts.

Individuals who have suffered labor harassment (mobbing), especially when it has sexual motivations, can account for it. This type of sexual harassment in the workplace especially attacks young and attractive women.

Research conducted in 1985 found that people tend to leave a greater physical distance with beautiful people when they walk down the street. This has two readings: on the one hand it can be considered a kind of symbol of respect, but it can also be understood as a tendency to exclude attractive people. It is as if the handsome and beautiful have a kind of superior halo that other people perceive as inaccessible.

In fact, psychologists and dating web programmers often explain that lThe user profiles that get the most attention and dating are not those with the most perfect and seductive photos. This could be explained by the principle of inaccessibility that we have explained above: users with more "normal" photos may benefit from this greater psychological predisposition to want to meet people who seem accessible to us, even if they are not so beautiful.

Being handsome, a possible obstacle when looking for a job

We have all faced a job interview, an essential stumbling block to access a good job.

In interviews, beauty can be more of an obstacle, especially if the interviewer is of our same sex. This could be due to a kind of unconscious protection against sexual competition, since a new worker with superior physical attributes may present some form of competition unwanted. They are attitudes and decisions that operate at an intuitive level, but it is well possible that in the business world there is some reluctance to confer credibility on potential employees with great appeal physical.

Several conclusions and reflections on beauty

As we have seen, Beauty is a cultural construct that, whether we like it or not, has a not inconsiderable impact on our daily lives..

The important thing is not to be obsessed at any time by our physical appearance, we have been more or less graced by Mother Nature. Knowing these scientific data about the advantages and disadvantages of being handsome can help us try to overcome the pitfalls that we can suffer whether we are on one side or the other.