Blinded by beauty: attractiveness bias and accurate perceptions of academic performance
Talamas, Mavor and Perrett used the faces of 100 university students to ask how an attractiveness halo affects perceptions of actual academic performance. Perceived conscientiousness predicted actual academic performance better than perceived intelligence or perceived academic performance did, and accuracy improved when the influence of attractiveness on the judgements was statistically controlled. The authors conclude that attractiveness can distort first impressions of competence, with possible consequences in education and hiring.
Talamas, Mavor and Perrett used the faces of 100 university students to ask how an attractiveness halo affects perceptions of actual academic performance. Perceived conscientiousness predicted actual academic performance better than perceived intelligence or perceived academic performance did, and accuracy improved when the influence of attractiveness on the judgements was statistically controlled. The authors conclude that attractiveness can distort first impressions of competence, with possible consequences in education and hiring.
Written from the abstract, University of St Andrews repository record, 2026-11-03.
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Talamas, S., Mavor, K. I., & Perrett, D. I. (2016). Blinded by beauty: attractiveness bias and accurate perceptions of academic performance. PLoS ONE, 11(2), e0148284. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148284 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148284