I was interested to see the section, "A lawyer's physical attractiveness" -- it reminded me of a few years ago when my wife was supporting a friend during a messy divorce by being present in court with her. Both parties' lawyers were women, but the husband (who had a lot more money) had hired a very sharp, very expensive, dressed-to-the-nines Manhattan lawyer. But the wife's lawyer was a relatively inexpensive lawyer from Long Island, comparatively unattractive and frumpily dressed. Obviously it helped that the Manhattan lawyer was very quick on her feet, but my wife commented at the time that "even from the way she was dressed, the Long Island lawyer didn't have a chance". It makes me sad how much of an influence money and appearances are in the justice system. Maybe all the lawyers and jurors should be literally blindfolded, like Lady Justice.
> Obviously it helped that the Manhattan lawyer was very quick on her feet, but my wife commented at the time that "even from the way she was dressed, the Long Island lawyer didn't have a chance".
This is one of those veeery subtle class things. People don't realise how much they signal to establishment institutions that they don't belong through through things like how they dress. And because they don't realise it they don't even know they're being disadvantaged.
I've seen people turn up to social events with what is very clearly to an insider the 'wrong type' of suit (wrong fabric, wrong cut, buttoned incorrectly, wrong shirt, wrong tie, wrong type of shoes), with people silently judging them, but they would have absolutely no idea how much they stand out and how they're being disadvantaged by it.
Hard to tackle because it's all silent, the victims are oblivious, and there's not really any concrete action you can point to and criticise.
Part of why I always used to try to dress significantly different than whoever I'm going to be around. I know I'm not part of the group, so I'd rather not have the uncanny valley
That very much depends on the power dynamic. Dressing appropriately is - among other things - also a statement that you want to belong to this group. But if you're a startup founder meeting with lawyers, it might pay off to be "that super nerdy tech guy" instead of "the cool just-like-us banker doing tech".
Over the years, I've read a lot about social stuff, including clothes. Your comment makes me think of a piece I read about some guy trying to do all the power dressing, take control of the situation with body language stuff and it didn't work at all on the self made man in jeans he was meeting with. The guy either didn't recognize any of it or flat out didn't care -- and didn't need to.
Indeed. I always remember that when GW Bush nominated Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court, there was quite a bit of sniggering in the media about how her outfits looked like they’re out of a Talbot’s catalog. Of course she was also woefully under-qualified for a SCOTUS appointment, but the way she dressed certainly further made her stand out as an outsider, even though she was working in the WH at the time and not exactly some random lawyer from podunk.
It's not that simple though. I see it can help us cope better if we label them as assholes, but the fact remains that the filter is there and it is silent. Nobody will tell you these things to your face, you just go through life and never get told the insider infos that people with the right background get access to. And as others have written, faking it is almost impossible anyway. Even if you have your clothes perfectly, you won't have all the right manners and mannerisms, tone etc. As someone coming from Eastern European village folk I know I will most likely never be an insider to those circles in Wester Europe or America (lawyers, doctors, professors, intellectuals etc). I feel it in every little bit fancier dinner event (academia or industry) or other similar stuff that I'm a bumbling outsider. It's not just "assholes", normal people to whom these things come naturally judge you too.
But it's ok. I did learn in my upbringing that my only value will come from studying and skills and being useful. While rich upper class people are seen to have intrinsic value by belonging to the elite tribe, through a deep web of generation-bridging connections, us plebs must deliver and are only valuable as long as we produce.
Software development and CS are good areas for this, as it requires a lot of effort beyond theatricals and signaling and there is a lot of demand so the elite does pay us through their teeth because they have to, even if they resent our nature in their bones. Although there are definitely restrictive interpretations of "cultural fit" at certain tech companies. But even as an immigrant, work in tech is one of the best ways to a comfortable life. It can be materially comfortable, but integrating to the high circles is practically impossible. We must learn to embrace and find pride in who we are I guess and stop pretending. Being authentic may be a better choice even if it goes with sacrifices.
But overall, dismissing it as just assholes does not reach deep enough. It is an issue to grapple with and process. There is a silent glass ceiling for most of us and it's definitely even a lot lower than mine for many others.
Upon re-reading my post I think I have add that the concept of "elite" is tiered. I myself am part of a circle of white collar workers and get at least sometimes to fancy dinners where I'm not quite confused with the janitor etc. And even if I was born into the next higher class, there would be next higher circles I couldn't reach. Being, say,in a lawyer dynasty doesn't may not be enough for certain things, but I have to admit I don't know the distinguishing signals at those levels.
The point is that it may feel frustrating to feel excluded, but everyone feels that except multi-billionaires. I'd say therefore that after ensuring a Western middle-class level of comfort, the rest is mostly a mental game of accepting one's place, as there's always something higher that you can frustrate yourself over.
> The point is that even a Western middle class level of comfort is beyond the reach of most of the population
Depends on the country, and I'm not sure it's the same effect, ie not being able to pass culturally due to upbringing mismatch. Probably true for those growing up in very poor, crime ridden places where they can't learn the basic hygiene, punctuality etc needed for work.
As for social mobility, anecdotally, from who went where in my circles, tech and engineering are definitely higher in this than law and economics. Whatever is more concrete and harder to muddle the waters, is better suited for outsiders as a ladder. But the really big money is always in softer things but they a better gate-kept. I don't really think anyone tries to gatekeep the hard fields or trades too much. It's also why "the Polish plumber" is a meme. Easter European immigrants can take up such jobs and often reach a middle class income. I know many simple hardworking people who couldn't progress much due to cultural fit, but do make decent money in England/Germany etc. with physical work (like transporting stuff, setting up stages, cutting trees). Their kids do have a chance to enter the cultural middle class then.
Yeah, the elite pay us through their teeth because they have to, and they inject billions into AI research aiming to automate everything, coding included.
Just as an aside, I think the phrase is “pay through the nose”. There is another phrase to “lie through your teeth” though, so maybe a it’s a “rocket surgery” type thing (I.e it’s not rocket science/brain surgery)
A quick google seems to indicate that it has been used, but my gut tells me it’s not right.
Slightly ironic given the subject of parent’s comments.
You're right, I did confuse the two and I actually know both. (I will admit I mostly read non-fiction and these phrases rarely come up). Perhaps I should read more proper literature to become an insider, haha.
Nah your writing is great, don’t worry. Language is fluid and I think it’s more fun to see it used differently in various places. If it makes sense to you, why not use these words?
Imagine if the person who said the phrase is ‘not right’ told you instead that you poop in the 'wrong' way?
Is there really a ‘wrong’ way to live or wrong way to do things? Or are there just different or alternative ways?
> Is there really a ‘wrong’ way to live or wrong way to do things? Or are there just different or alternative ways?
Yes to the former, some people go around murdering and stealing. I’m not being facetious, there’s a whole philosophy bent on subjectivism which is super interesting.
Instead of merely dressing as if you don't care, you can just not care what other people think.
You are right that you still cannot escape potential consequences of this particular game, but at least you can escape being actively involved in the game itself.
Of course, there are always consequences to everything in life, but you don't have to be an active participant in everyone else's games. Just play the games you want to play.
Now, the consequences to this game do seems to be quite real. My wife is more successful in certain respects than I am, I believe, in part because she is good at playing that particular game while I just can't be bothered to give a damn.
There are many non-asshole people who might care if your clothes had never been washed & were full of gaping holes. For example, if they were trapped in an elevator with you.
But to be generous, maybe you know relatively well-dressed hobos.
Counterpoint: dressing that way says "I don't care" and is an indication of who you are as a person. First dates, interviews, just walking on the same sidewalk... all situations where we should be making judgement calls about how close we choose to get to you.
I would have called this "Mirrortocracy". More clear that you're referring to mirrors, rolls off the tongue just about as easily, and still sounds like meritocracy.
> I've seen people turn up to social events with what is very clearly to an insider the 'wrong type' of suit (wrong fabric, wrong cut, buttoned incorrectly, wrong shirt, wrong tie, wrong type of shoes)
I’ve been on one side of this, making half-conscious assumptions about other guests based on subtle sartorial faux-pas I’d have a tough time articulating, but this made me realize that I could just as easily be on the other side, and probably have been.
How is that even a thing. I'm trying to wrap my head around how someone would even make those observations, let alone justify changing how they interact with someone because of it.
I mean, like, you would think the substance bro brings to the table would matter more than his duds 'n' presentation.
I once went to lunch with two colleagues. One was the son of wealthy parents, the other came from the poor side of the tracks. The first was dressed in a casual t-shirt and shorts, the second in an Armani suit.
The first ordered lunch and wine, in the most unconsciously casual, elegant way. The second then tried to imitate that manner, failing pathetically. I.e. the clothes didn't take away the upper class manner, nor bestow upper class mannerisms.
I think this is what The Great Gatsby was about. It is also possible to spend nearly (same O() but maybe different constant factor) as much on t-shirt and shorts as an Armani suit. Plus the fit of the clothes matter almost more than the brand. But I think the biggest difference is that people who grow up rich often have this ineffable sense of ease with the world.
> The second then tried to imitate that manner, failing pathetically.
Your comment reminded me of a similar experience of mine, but in reverse.
I was washing my hands in the restrooms at work, and decided to drink some water.
I bent over, cupped my hand and started drinking.
At this moment, a guy went out of another stall and walked up to the sink next to me.
He was some sort of manager, I guess, because he'd always be in a suit when I've seen him around the office before.
When I got up, I saw him drinking water the same way I did, only he was failing to get much of it into his mouth. :-)
Obviously, this was his first time.
I'm trying to understand how ordering lunch can ever be described as "elegant." It's a mundane task. I'm largely convinced that it's not the manner, but the body it's done in or the credit card on the person.
People are really good at convincing themselves that things are just so.
If you spend every day meeting strangers in a certain context, then I imagine you can learn to notice things like that over time. I suspect an insider explaining these things to a relatively young entrant also happens.
Or replace the $80+ "tech" climbing pants or selvedge jeans, expensive trail runners or toe shoes or whatever, tech company t-shirt, and American Giant (on the cheap end, it goes up from there) hoodie with: $25 Lee jeans or Target cargo pants, cheap big box store sneakers or cheap work boots—not, say, Redwing Heritage or you'll accidentally start fitting in with the hipster-tech variant of tech fashion, because they're kinda impractical and expensive-for-their-features compared to other work boot options, and yes of course I own some—a Nascar shirt and a wal-mart hoodie that's missing its plastic aglets because it's been washed once.
You can definitely dress in a way that doesn't look that much "lower" to an outsider but looks very wrong, and, gasp, poor to someone in-tune with tech worker fashion. So it's not just dressing too nice that does it, and hell, for that matter you can spend about as much as the cost of an on-sale Brooks Brothers suit buying a "tech shabby" outfit[0], with results that will definitely be appreciated by many your fellow tech workers, or simply overlooked by others in a way that Red-State-Working-Class or suit-and-a-tie won't.
[0] The aforementioned Red Wing Heritage boots are north of $300 for most models, full retail, and check out Arc'teryx and such for how expensive trail shoes can get ($150+, and they're not the most expensive brand), but even something like Danners are pretty pricey compared to what normal people buy for shoes; dropping $200 on a hoodie and rain layer is easy (again, go for expedition-clothing sorts of products to run up the price tag but also the tech worker cred—$300 just for a paper-thin rain jacket isn't even the top of the range); $80 merino wool hiking shirt ("I just love how it keeps me dry, but also I love talking about merino wool with other people who know how expensive it is"); and shit, jeans, sky's the limit, you can hit $200 on those while still just "buying more quality" and not even in just-paying-for-the-label territory yet.
When first starting out I wore a suit to a job interview (not a tech company, but a Fortune 100 where you could literally wear a bikini to work (man or woman) and nobody would say anything). After I was hired they pulled me aside and told me to never do that again.
As a counter example one of the best developers I've worked with wore a business suit/formal clothes regularly. But he was in his 40s and it felt appropriate with his demeanor - it didn't feel out of place at all despite the office being rather casual (I remember more than a few people wearing sweatpants around the office since they would cycle/run to work)
Oh, there are certainly exceptions to this, Gary Bernhardt (whom I highly respect for giving excellent talks) wears exactly the attire I'm describing.
But we all have implicit biases, and it wouldn't be my gut feeling to trust a person who does not present as 'one of my group' like this.. even though I'm aware of the bias.
Surely you remember being a teenager and acutely aware of subtle signals like that. You could identify a "try-hard" who are often disliked for pretending to be part of a culture they're not in. It's a kind of dishonesty.
I've been to quite a few meetings where it's widely assumed that the people in suit know nothing technical, and the ones in button-down shirts know nothing financial.
That rings strangely to me. I don't think I've worn anything other than a button-down shirt to a tech company (interview or otherwise) in the last...decade?
Somehow, I keep getting handed principal and director gigs and my peers are fine with me. I'm pretty sure it's OK, tbh.
I wear a shirt one/two days a month, but my default dress has been jeans+t-shirt for 20+ years working in the UK, and now Finland.
I'd "dress up" for an interview, but that's really what I think of it as. I think I average wearing a suit once a year, and that's usually for a wedding, funeral, or similar formal occasion.
I sometimes wear a button down shirt in winter, it's a surprisingly versatile piece of clothing. I tend to prefer ones that are a bit more practical than dressy.
Other than that, I've replaced t-shirts with polo shirts. Maybe it's just the t-shirts I buy, but they usually shrink weirdly and I prefer the pique fabric used in most polos. I also appreciate the collar (for protecting my neck from sun) and being able to unbutton to cool off a bit in summer. They also tend to last longer.
I have had the pleasure of bamboozling Americans with my ‘posh’ English accent and own style, making them make all kinds of wrong guesses about my level of privilege and background. Of course my accent isn’t what an English person would consider posh, my schooling was normal and my “style” is actually clueless tinged with apathy. Snap judgments can be really wrong.
There's a much greater leeway given to people from a different background, which is why moving to another country is a great way to reset your class and immigrants often make massive jumps in class compared to where they come from.
If you try to fit in as just another member of the group then you need to pick up on the group norms, but I fell like people react positively when you pull off something well.
For that sort of crowd, you wouldn't really cancel a major clothing faux pas by excelling in your choice of accessory.
That being said, it is also important to not look like you're trying too hard. Rolex and Omega are typically loud in the same way an "improper" suit is. They might hurt more than help, whereas Patek, Vacheron or Lange would be more impressive. Socialites who care enough about these things tend to have a certain affected air about them -- they (ostensibly, if not actually) appreciate them for fine craftsmanship rather signaling, which becomes a signal of its own. It would be an easy outsider error to assume that signal is about how expensive the watch is rather than which expensive watch it is.
Subtlety is everything. It is important not to look as though you're exerting effort to fit in. And you can afford to break from the ingroup convention if your mannerisms are otherwise "correct" and everyone in the group is aware of your status.
The mannerisms matter much more than the clothing. Personal looks too, especially face, body shape and posture. Manner of speaking completes the picture.
You can pick up old money relatively easily even if they're in a frumpy grandma sweater, even from a distance.
I wonder if all that just comes naturally to them or it feels like the "prison" it seems to me as an outsider. Constantly caring about this stuff, buying new clothes, looking out for fashion trends etc seems exhausting. I'm the typical nerdy wrinkly T-shirt and jeans guy and I know I'll not get into high circles anyway, and subjectively it feels quite freeing not to care. I spend my time immersing in stuff I'm actually interested in, not any required stuff like watches and suits and fine wines and whatever else. Or perhaps to these people it's not a burden, they naturally care about watches and fine wine... I honestly have no idea but would love to once speak honestly about such things with insiders...
Edit: upon some reflection, perhaps my stereotypes are outdated and it's not really necessary for even old-money-rich young people to care about fancy watches and wines any more. I mean some base level knowledge is needed, but I have to remind myself that when I think they may have it worse in some respects I'm probably wrong. Why would they restrict themselves to rigid bullshit, if it's not pleasant? Probably the rules are more flexible today. Probably I'm totally blind to whatever the current actual class markers are as they are invisible to us.
The point is that these people don't care about fashion or watches or how much you spend on your clothes. They dress conventionally instead, which is a standard that only changes over the scale of a decade or so. The mistake outsiders make is to think that the point is to follow fashion and buy an expensive watch. That's why they don't fit in - they wear something fashionable.
Also, to defend the idea a bit, the idea of a dress code is exactly that purpose - so that you don't need to worry about what you're wearing or how much it cost or wether someone thinks it's fashionable or not.
I always come back to the cinema image of the rich guy casually tossing the keys of his supercar to the valet. The reason it's "cool" is the effortless balance. He has fun with the car, but he is no petrol-head. To you & I it's an unobtainable thing, to him it's just another car.
That's how I've come to understand it. These wealthy types are not horophiles or sommeliers. They just casually appreciate beautiful craftsmanship & the taste of high quality alcohol- and who doesn't? Just look at how techies love machined metal laptop bodies, and the popularity of craft beer. The reason out-groups are quickly identified is because they cargo-cult the material things.
I know maybe you’re trying to give advice, but all I think when reading your comment is: “what a pretentious prick, what a great example of saying nothing and adding nothing to the conversation“ - your comment made me cringe. For me you’ve illustrated the point well that many in the existing elite - with inherited privilege, knowledge, and position in hierarchy - are ruined by money and obsessed with status signaling through 'elite consumerism' as a form of identity.
I mean, there are human beings who are making these ridiculously overpriced vanity watches day in, day out, in a miserable factory somewhere. All I see when I see these ads for Patek Phillippe, or similar, is a hopeless human doing work that they won't benefit from.
I wish rentier capitalism would end now, so we’d all live in a Commons-based peer production life where everyone was fed, instead of this ‘some people will buy a Ferrari and a rolex today, and some children will die from malnutrition’-world.
Luxury is a scam. The ultra rich (read: dominators) are just as anxious as the Precariat, scared to lose it all. Not to mention their kids are often ruined and unbearable people. [1]
Edit: when I write "Patek or similar" I am really talking about any type of 'luxury good', like a Prada bag, or a cheaper-than-Rolex Michael Kors watch etc.
The people 'defending' Patek are missing my point (or I am missing them?) My point is that living in a world with artificial scarcity-creating systems is disturbing to me (Rentier Capitalism by Prof Guy Standing)[1]. It constantly surprises me how our priorities became the way they are with many of us in chains, and a few rolling around in a pool of blood-stained gold and diamonds. [2],[3]
I think you are underestimating the skill and craft involved in making some of these watches. Have you actually seen a movement? They're not made in a sweatshop in a low cost geography by some human drones. A watch maker is a high status craftsman and can be influential in their own right (look up the story of FP Journe if you doubt that). If you come to Switzerland you can see the actual factories for many of the producers in the area around Geneva and they are more like pharma manufacturing plants than fast fashion warehouses.
It's very uncharitable to assume that because you can't see the craft in something that it doesn't exist or is a scam. I couldn't taste the difference between two kinds of whisky if you put a gun to my head but it doesn't mean other people can't or that it's some kind of status game in disguise.
> They're not made in a sweatshop in a low cost geography by some human drones.
What the hell does that mean? 'human drones'
> It's very uncharitable to assume that because you can't see the craft in something that it doesn't exist or is a scam.
“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”
What are you blaberring about? I agree that these luxury watches are mere status symbols and not a necessity, but no one's selling them at 90% margin. A considerable amount of highly skilled exclusively first world labor goes into these watches, and these devices are probably the single best type of objects where the labor that went into it is patently obvious right in front of your eyes. In fact, that exactly IS the symbol here for the most part, the fact that it's a human creation whose value is purely of the labor (the good kind) more than something that came out of the earth, and something, all considered, that holds its value over time instead of being ephemeral. I understand the angst and anger against the plutocracy but logic needn't go out the window in pursuit of an outlet for that anger.
Luxury watches - maybe. Although the fact that these rare and unique precision-made craft pieces are incredibly bad at basic timekeeping compared to a $5 Casio, which is in turn pretty average compared to a $50 World Time Wave Ceptor, is both hilarious and sad.
But luxury handbags and other "fashion" items are inexcusable, because they are literally assembled in sweat shops by slave labour and then sold for four/five/six/seven figure price tags to vulgar stupid people.
The point of this kind of luxury isn't utility or quality - it's pure status display, combined with narcissistic indifference to the fate of the unfortunates whose work is being displayed so ostentatiously.
The US (a country without a wealth tax, and an income tax that only applies to realised, non-loopholed, income) can be a more effective tax haven than switzerland. I believe various ex-british islands may also part of the reason we get this particular bit of anglophone[1] two minute hate[2].
Yes, we're part of the Global North. We have a relatively high standard of living now, due to not having blown ourselves up twice last century, before which we were considered poor in relation to our neighbours. Compare Heidi. (Iodine in salt may have helped immensely, too.)
[1] the brits may still be salty that our bankers did to them what Soros did to thailand. Someone's gotta make sure The Market stays efficient, innit?
How are worker protections in your jurisdiction? Solidarity is an ideal invoked here even by the pro-free trade pro-small business centre-right party.
(One way our rich flex amongst themselves is on the Züri equivalent of Groundhog Day: they ride horses around a giant wooden snowman with explosives in its head after it's been set on fire. The faster it goes boom, the better the summer will be.
One can tell the Zürchers are a bunch of capitalist pigs who'll be against the wall when the revolution comes[3] because although the holiday is celebrated on a Monday evening, some of them don't even get the day off.)
[3] at the end of Cold War I, we learned we'd had a secret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind unit active on our soil. This was a scandal, because we are not a Nato member. Thank you, UK!
The good kind of labor is where the people doing it are free, compensated and satisfied.
If we are going to avoid Switzerland because it's a tax haven then we should probably avoid doing any commerce with any country, including the one you probably are in now (unless you're in NZ or something).
And with regards to your update - no one is talking about faux luxury consumer goods here; in fact an argument can be made that the _only_ sustainable mode of consumerism is the kind practiced by these luxury watch makers if antrhung.
Sorry, I should clarify that my comment wasn't intended to be advice or endorsement of the situation. I was being descriptive, not prescriptive.
I don't really have a dog in the race when it comes to whether or not such veblen goods should exist. I agree they are often only sought after as status objects, but I also can't discount the possibility that some people really do appreciate their craftsmanship.
As opposed to "a sweatshop in a low cost geography by some human drones", like another person who replied wrote?
You do know that the Global North is hoarding IP, and that another world of Commons-based peer production is possible, right? We could all be 'well paid craftsmen' if we shifted to that. In my eyes, you're showing an incredible privilege here, being aware of, and talking about, Patek watches.
I find the "short-circuit" is confidently rejecting the notion of "socially imposed norms" but appreciating the subtle ones.
A funky dress shirt at an event when most are suit and tie (not required but socially imposed) without giving a wink about it - rejection of the norms. Strong handshake with a suit, mentioning their watch, speaking their lingo - appreciating the subtle ones. That short-circuits people's expectations and the rejection of the "socially imposed norms" seems to be perceived as more of a status symbol then following them is. Humans both love patterns and anomalies, so an anomaly that fits in the pattern seizes their interest.
> I can tell you that the cost of a Rolex is well worth it, from the particular point of view of 'access' to the guys with watches and hey let's talk about them . The watch club. The $40 fake I had was good enough, because who is going to unwind someone else's winder at a social gathering? Similarly other Veblen goods like a Lamborghini (rent one!) that a guy talked about as a conversation piece on a Reddit AMA a day or two ago. Whatever someone is deeply interested in, they will glom onto you if you show anything like authentic interest.
There's nothing that signals 'lower-class' more than buying luxury goods to try to look wealthy.
A fancy watch might earn you some respect from the tiny subset of rich folks that are themselves watch affectionados, but the respect will come from your depth of knowledge about watch construction, brands and history. The fact that you own one is largely inconsequential.
If you really want to cheat the system, skip buying the watch yourself. If you study the fancy watches, you can compliment folks on their watch, and get the benefits of appearing both knowledgable and friendly.
The wealthy don't value things you can buy with money. Spending money will not impress them.
I saw Americans seriously arguing that ads are a legit means of brainwashing. My bet would be that she was a walking advertisement and any rentable image would fly.
Since you study this stuff, do you mind sharing a description of the kinds of situations in which the 'sharp appearance' or related type of tactic has a negative effect?
Re: David Boies (who is a prominent Manhattan attorney):
> Part of the David Boies legend is his rejection of high fashion. He’s a millionaire many times over, and many aspects of his lifestyle reflect what I’m guessing is a nine-figure net worth — his primary residence, an 8,000-square-foot mansion on almost 10 acres; an $8 million pied-à-terre here in New York City, at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel; and a racing yacht, because you’re nobody until you have a yacht. But his wealth doesn’t go into his wardrobe. He eschews Prada and Patek Philippe in favor of navy blue suits from Sears or Lands’ End, inexpensive plastic wristwatches (worn over his sleeve), and what look like black sneakers (but are actually walking shoes by Merrell).
People who think that a little bit off. The point of fashion is so people don't mistake you for being a little lower status than you are. So high status people can afford to wear clothes with holes in them, because nobody is going to mistake them for people who are poor (royalty can wear what they want, Queen Elizabeth looks like she just picks a colour to me). That can't be imitated by ordinary people, because they would just look poor.
Also, fashion isn't for strangers. I mean, I don't know anything about what is fashionable. Nearly nothing at all. So obviously stranger can't impress me with expensive clothes because I can't detect it. The situation is similar with most fashions which are signals for inside an in crowd.
It is like a developer putting "Haskell" or "Scheme" on a resume. The goal isn't to impress randoms in HR who don't know what a Haskell is and are suspicious of scheming programmers. It is to signal within a group of semi-peers who don't specifically know who you are.
But they can sure as hell read subtle social cues that occur between the lawyers and the judge. I'd reason that those cues have an outsized impact on how the jury rules.
After he was Bill Clinton's attorney in televised impeachment hearings? You have to remember that the jurors' office casts a wide net. With the worst will in the world, the attorneys can't strike everyone who has heard of someone.
I mean... David Boies is a pretty famous lawyer! There is likely a huge amount of people who recognize the name, even if they don't know anything about the person. The guy has been on cover of magazines!
Maybe _everyone_ on a jury is filtered out to only take people completely disconnected from society but.... probably not.
(case in point: many people on this website are not in legal professions yet recognize the name)
talk about disconnected from society. a lot of people have seen him on a magazine or heard the name on the news. along with about 20 other names. every day. for decades. and the name is forgotten an hour later, with a thousand other names.
as far as your point, the 1% of people here reading recognized the name. didn't know why, then googled and remembered. the jury is not here. it's '12 random people from the dmv,' and they don't recognize it, nor will they care to google it. they don't even know who steve jobs is, and won't google it on their iphone.
Defense attorneys usually put on a show to relate to you in some way. The prosecution usually looks like undertakers and usually appeal to the institution of justice, sacred duty as a citizen, etc.
Just guessing, but in some places there used to be automatic exemptions and substantially fewer people were eligible to be called so they had to serve more.
Reforms expanded the pool, for instance in NY.
From a 1996 NY Times article:
"As of Jan. 1, all 27 former exemptions and disqualifications for jury duty in New York State have been repealed"
"...as many as one-third of Long Island's residents have been exempt from jury duty because of their white-collar professions, particularly doctors, dentists and lawyers"
I live in New York, which has no exemptions. I suspect that having a last name early in the alphabet has some significance in my county as well, I’m called about every 4.5 years, starting the week after my 18th birthday. I’ve been selected about half of the time.
Also, I’m fortunate to have a job where there is no financial penalty for service, I find it interesting, and I’m not comfortable hamming up some nonsense to avoid it. I’m always surprised I’m picked because of my job (lawyers don’t like engineers on juries), and I am friends or relatives with a bunch of attorneys and policemen.
Engineers have an often-times pedantic fascination with debugging deeply detailed problems.
Consider a legal trial to be a giant machine executing a huge set of detailed and arcane and sometimes arbitrary instructions. Either the machine does the right thing (one side arguing there was no crime) or the wrong thing (the other side arguing there was a crime). What engineer doesn't love figuring out why the machine's behaviour is correct or incorrect?
I'm pretty sure that this is a bit of a myth, mostly repeated by engineers who want to feel important and superior to lawyers, who are often hotter, richer, and higher-status.
Trial lawyers present a narrative to the jury, and thus prefer jurors who are more likely to believe the presented narrative. Your typical engineer believes themselves to be capable of discerning truth independent of expert opinion. This could be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how the trial lawyer plans to present their narrative.
To expand on this, the engineering type is going to work their way through problems and situations systematically. More likely to try to dissect and analyze what they're being presented.
That's not universal -- two of the most religious people I've met were some flavor of engineer; they never bother to challenge their own biases -- but in aggregate they're a riskier jury pick than a teamster or housewife or cashier.
I feel like humans are good in identifying privileged person and would like to think them different. If someone is dressing up perfectly but it is clear that the person is not rich/confident it will have negative effect than them dressing moderately. Some non rich born people are able to get in high societies but for most of us, it will be how you are born and raised.
Much of what attorneys do is for their client(s): win or lose, the client pays the bills. One of the attorneys I work against is extremely loud in court but seldom wins. Even so, all their clients love them, despite the fact that they are incompetent as a trial attorney. Because they present themselves as the belligerent television attorney that does always win, every time the lose they can just blame the court for getting it wrong. People are easily fooled.
Law is as much about settling grievances, taking moral stands, and slinging "fuck you's" as much as it is about actual damages and money.
Even if loud, angry lawyer guy doesn't win, dragging them to court and making them pay for a lawyer -- and then slinging vitriol at them in court -- has more emotional satisfaction than a dispassionate, slow, boring, go-nowhere hearing that ends with a moderate settlement.
(note: in some places the loser pays all of the fees for the winner, so locality matters here)
Oh for sure. I consider myself lucky to be a salaried attorney with one government agency as a client since I don’t have to sing and dance to impress people. I can just do good work and achieve consistent results and everyone is happy. Really, what my comment should have said, is that much of what attorneys do is done to impress their clients and has very little to do with actually litigating whatever the issues are in a case.
A hobo who hasn't showered in a decade should be able to argue his case, be heard and receive justice. Anything less, you're using rules to enforce a social order, the legal system has no relationship with justice if this is acceptable.
To put it the most callous way I can, that's not very baseyian of you.
How someone looks informs your prior probability of who they are. What they say informs your posterior probability, but you gotta take that prior into account when forming the posterior. At least, if you want 'accurate' statistics.
(Bias - variance trade-off not withstanding, nor second-order effects of doing the 'correct' thing being possibly more detrimental than the advantage given by the 'correct' thing)
But how strong is the effect? It's not just a binary judgement. People can heavily bias based on features that are borderline irrelevant. Also, you may end up hurting a lot of innocent people by generalizing too much based on some feature that is not causally associated with the actual crime, even if it predicts well overall.
Are you comfortable applying this same bayesian logic to other factors like race?
There are 2 separate issues. Firstly, are people correctly estimating their priors, or are their priors unfounded.
Secondly, and more importantly I think, what effects does a 'correct' bias have when it starts interacting with other people. It might be the optimal choice in isolation. But that doesn't make it a good idea game-theoretically if everyone starts doing it.
The end result can be difficult to explain though. Because it means that not taking certain useful information into account leads to better decisions.
I think that, sometimes, we argue that a systemic bias is stronger than the statistics warrant. When sometimes the argument should be that sysyemic bias, statistically warranted or not is harmful.
(Note, my original comment was me making the mistake I argue against in this post)
>>A hobo who hasn't showered in a decade should be able to argue his case, be heard and receive justice. Anything less, you're using rules to enforce a social order, the legal system has no relationship with justice if this is acceptable.
Should is they keyword and maybe one day we'll reach that point. Meanwhile, looks and appearance can make a huge difference, so why take the chance?
I agree, it's should. I am not saying take a chance but let's emphasize should, the way things are is wrong, period. Not worse, but wrong and incorrect and it should not be tolerated much like racism and msiogyny shouldn't have been tolerated in the past.
Yes, same thing with racial disparities. Something needs to be done about both issues, perhaps technology can help by using deepfake audio/video to repeat what the defendant is saying and avoid judge/jury/prosecutor visual contact.
It doesn't get a ton of attention in the article, but I think this starts to explain a little of it:
"Finally, it may be possible that a third variable affects the relationship of attractiveness and criminal accusations/activities. Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and developmental advantages (e.g., nutrition, schooling) might be such factors.[29]"
Your physical attractiveness and the way you dress can both signal information about you. Rich & powerful men with status tend to marry attractive women, even if the men are not always attractive themselves. After a couple generations, rich & powerful families with status tend to have more attractive families. They can also afford better nutrition and educational opportunities. Dressing nice and fashionably indicates that you care about your appearance. While a few people can pull off the idea of someone being such a genius that they can't be bothered to care about their appearance, the general trend is that people that can't be bothered to care about their appearance also can't be bothered to care as much about other things, like preparing for work.
It would be nice if we could get rid of any attractiveness biases. I sure would be angry if I was disadvantaged in a court case because I'm not attractive. I would be extra angry if I was disadvantaged because my lawyer wasn't attractive. I have a feeling that just blindfolding the jurors or blocking their view would cause them to miss out on other important things like being able to see faces and reactions during testimony. At least if we know about the bias we can work to fight it in other ways. Getting people to "think slow" sounds like some Malcom Gladwell popular B.S. that has probably been debunked, but it's probably better than nothing, and any lawyer can probably work at getting juries to think a little harder.
"Liking what you see: A documentary" is a short story by Ted Chiang published along side Story of your life (Arrival) that talks just about this topic. Sci-fi story about what could happen if we had the technology to remove beauty bias entirely. Well worth a read: https://afuzzyrants.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/liking-what-you...
> After a couple generations, rich & powerful families with status tend to have more attractive families.
...unless they inbreed (which a lot of european royalty did), in which case it works in reverse. Also, income mobility probably prevents this from having significant effects. According to [1] if your father is in the top pentile, you only have a 36% chance of remaining in the top pentile. Repeat this over 5 generations, and you only have a 0.6% chance of staying in the top pentile.
Is each generation independent though? In other words, if the past three generations were in the top N-ile, do you have a better chance to also be in that bracket?
>After a couple generations, rich & powerful families with status tend to have more attractive families.
IIRC this is a common misconception. The son of a traditionally handsome man isn't necessarily going to get all of the traditionally handsome male features from his dad; he might get some of his traditionally beautiful mother's traditionally beautiful female features. Genetics is a crapshoot like that.
Nutrition and personal care go a long way as well. I'm (self-assessed) of around average appearance and my wife is, according to most sighted people, better looking than I am. Our kids are better looking than either of us (at least so far), in part from genetics, but substantially from having a healthy diet, healthy lifestyle, excellent medical, skin, and dental care, etc. (And we're just upper-middle class vs middle-middle class where we were raised.)
Even if genetics are a crapshoot, I'd expect offspring of rich and powerful families to be, on average, more attractive than the median for their area from these environmental factors.
> I have a feeling that just blindfolding the jurors or blocking their view would cause them to miss out on other important things like being able to see faces and reactions during testimony
Honestly, that might be an advantage too. Humans think they’re good at these things, but this sort of judgement gives plenty of opportunity for more bias to creep in.
Very rarely does one find someone else commenting in a way that so perfectly mirrors one's thoughts. This is one of those instances, so thank you for posting that most eloquent insight.
> Maybe all the lawyers and jurors should be literally blindfolded, like Lady Justice.
This should be doable by requiring the entire process be done remotely. Seems like a perfect time to try it out too! Even regional accent bias[1] can be removed by requiring unformatted text responses.
25 years of online communities provides a great testbed for this hypothesis.
Language becomes the new class marker. Even in strictly text-based media, people make snap judgments about who is worth listening to. It's based on spelling, complete sentences, punctuation, 1337speak or other dialects, even things as subtle as paragraph structure and who (and how) you cite. Back before Tinder became a thing, I knew several women (my now-wife among them) who would instantly ignore a man if he had spelling errors or improper grammar in his online dating profile.
Daniel Kahneman wrote once that if you really want an unbiased decision, you need to have a computer make it, because all humans are biased. Even then, the software ends up biased in the same way as its creators.
> Even regional accent bias[1] can be removed by requiring unformatted text responses.
I'm not sure replacing accent bias with spelling and grammar and familiarity-with-IM-tools bias is an improvement. And we might overestimate our ability to spot lying in person, but it's a damn sight better than our ability to gauge it based on speed and coherence in typing responses...
I have a funny story of the opposite happening to me. This is when I was leading a small team that developed specialized Machine Learning modules for clients. So we have this in-person client meeting (they had decided to travel down to our office), where someone from project management decided to represent the technical crowd i.e. us and the other devs. Since he has done this before he is dressed impeccably in formals, is his charming self, etc. While the meeting is on, and we backstage folks are at work, I suddenly get a ping from him asking to walk into the meeting to explain a specific module. I'm not cleanly shaved, and frankly, shabbily dressed - because well, I had been told I would not be needed in the meeting. So I walk in, describe what they wanted to know in about 2 min, which was no different from what the other guy had said, and they were suddenly convinced!
The phenomena might be general - looking good is one big part of it, but people in certain roles/work functions are expected to have a certain appearance.
Good on you, but this doesn't prove anything imo. People are almost always positively biased toward attractive faces due to the halo effect. Biologically/psychologically this is a result of one's facial bone structure, skin, and bodyfat levels.
So being shabbily dressed and having stubble is mostly irrelevant here. Maybe you were just much better looking than the other (poor) bloke.
Maybe I wasn't being clear in the last line of my response. I agree with this "People are almost always positively biased toward attractive faces due to the halo effect."
The point I'm trying to make is in addition to that there might be other forms of appearance-based biases: for ex maybe a scientist is expected to project an image of being nerdy, or detached-ly pensive, etc
Growing up the software dev son of a trial defense attorney, he was always pushing all these tips, tricks, and dogmas about how this-and-that needs polished and what kind of saddle soap to use and collar stays and these brands of shoes and shirts and how much starch and tie colors and what different cuff styles signal. I could never drive it into his head/make-him-believe that in my field "yeah, presentation counts, but like 3% of how much it counts in yours".
Do you think that all of his tricks actually worked, or was he pushing what he wanted to be right? To really know if specific brands of shoes or shirts really worked, you'd need to do some pretty advanced blind testing, that also might be unethical (would you want your lawyer to wear a pair of shoes he thinks might impact your case negatively?)
It's a good question. It depends on the end goals of your field. In programming the end goal is that your systems work as described. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and whether or not an engineer did a good job is fairly/objectively evident in whether or not the systems work as spec'd. No one really cares that you spun up your cluster in the nude.
In trial law, the end goal is to win the hearts and minds of a jury to believe you. Your end deliverable is a set of speeches and presentations to a group of strangers making decisions about ethics. In programming, your tools are your IDE, terminal, manuals, libs, etc. In law, your tools are all the different flavors of rhetoric. Some of these are pure logic-based rhetoric, but many appeal to human emotion and establishing trust and proving character. In the end, the jury needs to trust the evidence and arguments presented by the attorney are real and honest. He always explained to me that humans make lots of inferences about people based on their personal presentation--which is true. E.g. "he put a lot of care into polishing those shoes--I can infer that he did the same when collecting and investigating the evidence" Or, "that lawyer dresses really flashy with cheap clothes and fake gold watches to make it appear he's something he's not--maybe he's bullshitting his arguments too."
He explained it even extended to courthouse design. He'd say "There's a reason courthouses are big, imposing, and serious-looking. It's important that people behave themselves seriously and thoughtfully here; decisions are being made every day that can dispense justice to lives of the wronged and potentially ruin people's lives too."
He was right--when it comes to law, for absolute certain. Most of his trials were defending Fortune 500 companies (for good stuff--stuff he believed in--protecting them against other parties defrauding and legitimately wronging them). His record was something like 300-2. He was a legend and I miss him.
But I'm still going to spin up clusters with barbecue sauce on my shorts.
When I was involved in a lawsuit, my lawyer commented that both parties were the same race, sex, and socioeconomic status, so the judge would most likely rule on the actual merits of the case.
I had kind of the opposite experience. I showed up to a court date where dozens of other people were being charged with the same thing. Their lawyers all had Brioni suits and haircuts that looked like they cost more than my smartphone. Every single one of them was just pleading guilty to the original charges! Shit dawg, you coulda done that for free!
Meanwhile, my own attorney looked not too far from what you'd expect to see if someone had entered a garbage dumpster circa 1969, and emerged the mourning of the court date. And to this day, I have never been convicted of any crimes.
I would imagine there's a strong causal link between competence and being "dressed-to-the-nines"/"very sharp". Maybe signals of fitness and fitness here are to an extent the same thing.
This will vary enormously by field, and countersignaling is a thing. All bankers wear suits. If you see someone wearing a scruffy ill fitting suit maybe they’re just incapable of buying a well fitting suit and keeping it in good nick or maybe they are awesome and know they’re awesome and know everybody else knows it so they can get away with it. You saw the same thing at IBM when they started going casual. If everyone else is wearing a suit, is normal, and there’s one person with blue hair and full sleeve tattoos they’re getting special dispensation because they’re awesome. But the blue hair didn’t make them awesome.
I'm pretty sure the transition of "tech fashion" from something early computer nerds did at least somewhat authentically to its modern form was, at first, an example of exactly that (by people who "don't care about their appearance", naturally, wink wink). Of course these days there's a bunch of other stuff it's mixed with, like hipster fashion and outdoor-lifestyle-but-only-the-expensive-stuff clothing, but originally it seems to me to have grown out of exactly that aping-authentic-countersignaling thing.
This could be because of (anti-)selection bias. If you have a test of skill that can be overridden because someone happens to be very attractive, than the only really incompetent people who will make it past the skill filter are those who are really attractive. If both the skill filter and the attractiveness filter are very selective, then incompetent people will be overrepresented among attractive people by the inverse of the selectivity factor of the skill filter.
In short: people can be correct when they notice an inverse correlation, because their world consists of people who got into the same university, or workplace, or club, as them. But the correlation is exactly the opposite in society as a whole.
Highly dependent on the profession. In programming, I agree with you. In my experience, there's a nearly perfect inverse correlation between how much they care about their looks and how talented they seem. But not in other fields, seemingly. I basically stopped hiring slovenly people in many things because of terrible experiences (real estate agents, plumber, house inspector). I guess the difference are things that can be done solely with the brain vs things that require some amount of physical activity. We programmers have it easy in that respect.
Fair point. Do you think that's because of the observed correlation in the past, or some other reason? Biases are strong, and I'd admittedly not have a high first impression of the skills of someone who spent a lot of time on looks, male or female, just based on my own past experiences.
Oh, I'm sure they have been, and I remember distinctly once. Lady on my new team(we were all new) had bleached blonde hair, heavy blue eye shadow, tanned, lipstick, in honest way overboard. My first impression was 'oh boy'. She ended up being a super smart lady from Russia and I thoroughly enjoyed working alongside her. So biases exist, but you(I) have to admit when wrong and adjust accordingly.
I imagine it's probably fairly dependent on the expectations of the people you interact with. If there's no or very little expectation to dress professionally, those doing so might be doing it because they want to, or are trying to compensate for something else, or are trying to signal some other group (e.g. management). If the expectation of everyone is that you will put effort into it (even if it's because it's self-perpetuating by them making negative assumptions about you if you don't), then it can actually mean people that don't either are trying to make a statement, or can't make that happen, which can signal something all its own.
Me as well - those who overinvest (as opposed to adequately invest) in their appearance seem to underinvest in their competence. Not always true, but a correlation.
Collider, happens with lots of good things that correlate. To put it rather bluntly, if they were both competent and sharply dressed, they'd have a better job.
Horsehair wigs and gowns might help mask some of that "physical attractiveness". The US chose to abandon that tradition but it's still alive in some jurisdictions.
Everything is done by typed text, with no humans visible. Jurors just sit isolated in a booth reading the text, or have the same person read out all the text to them.
Lawyers would be against it, but everyone would benefit from a society that decides guilt based on how convincing an argument is and not how convincing the person saying the argument is.
"Look at that man, he is guilty." Is not very convincing when the person who is supposedly guilty has never been seen.
Sounds nice in theory, but the whole idea behind the right to face your accuser is that people depend on their senses to judge if someone's lying or not by how he/she reacts to the confrontation.
Perhaps, but "I can tell if someone is lying or not by [their manner]" sounds like exactly the kind of situation where people wildly overestimate their own abilities, doesn't it?
Tonal variation, speech cadence, hand gestures, and facial expressions sometimes communicate as much as what you actually say. That is probably important in a court environment. I would love to see your idea tested though.
The conversion of {speech, body language} to {text, nothing} is pretty severe when you're on a jury trying to establish if the person on the stand is credible.
I have a dream, that one day I will live in a country where peoples credibility will be decided by the strengths of their argument and not the sound of their accent.
> Maybe all the lawyers and jurors should be literally blindfolded, like Lady Justice.
People are generally quick to complain about bias, for whatever reason, while hypocritically guilty of bias just the same. As a result most people would be incredibly unhappy in institutional conventions with bias objectively removed because the resultant outcome would be wildly different than they intuitively anticipate. The most interesting part about that is that it’s identifiable and measurable.
> Generally, attractive people are perceived as more intelligent, more socially skilled, more appealing personalities, more moral , more altruistic, more likely to succeed, more hirable as managers, and more competent.
I am always astonished by how much we humans mix how moral is someone and how horny that someone makes us.
And it works both ways. To tell someone that you are not attracted to them is perceived as a judgement of their value in society and morality. When we actually decide if we are horny for someone in just 1 second from a picture and zero knowledge about that person.
Many years ago, I worked for a company that hired the hot one instead of the competent one. And it was amazing to see the twisted justification. But, I believe that the hiring manager was not aware and was convinced that the decision was based on the bogus conclusions.
> Some researchers are skeptical that real jurors will have the same biases as the studies in simulated juries.
I would expect even worse bias when you do not feel observed and you are not a student that may have knowledge about the concept of biased decisions.
I believe the science is, unfair as it might be, that more attractive people are, on average, more intelligent, more socially skilled, more etc than the opposite.
What we find attractive has formed through eons of evolution, and we retain the preferences of those who managed to leave more descendants.
That's not the same as being more intelligent etc, but it's not completely unrelated either.
Another aspect of the relationship, I'm sure, is that attractive people are better looked after. And people who are better looked after, especially at a young age, have more opportunities to learn, socially and otherwise, than people who are worse looked after.
There's also the simple fact that attractiveness is endogenous. An intelligent, hard-working person will realize that attractive people get treated better and work to make themself attractive.
My rule of thumb is the attractive person never gets fired. I haven't thought this rule any further than that, but I've observed it to be true throughout most of my 15 years of work
To be fair, you also hear rich people inheriting money saying the same. Nobody wants their success to be based on the luck of the draw, everybody wants it to be because of their hard work and perseverance because otherwise it's not an accomplishment.
No one who has a full time job and is in good shape, with well-maintained hair, healthy skin, and a nice wardrobe, stays that way by accident. It's a ton of work.
It comes more easily to some than others, but an hour at the gym is an hour at the gym, whether you enjoy it or not.
I say this as someone who mostly doesn't do the work, but I have plenty of friends and colleagues (and a spouse) who mostly do. It's effort and money and time and stress for them.
Sure, and there's probably some that you wouldn't ever notice as attractive if they didn't spend an hour on make-up and another hour on tuning their abs each day. But most of it is genetic lottery, not hard work.
The same is true for money. It's still work to turn a million dollars into two million, but it's not anywhere close to the work required to turn a dollar into a million dollars. But nobody wants to be successful because of a lottery, so they'll argue that their father gave them "a small loan of a million dollars" but they made it big themselves.
> But most of it is genetic lottery, not hard work.
The luck part isn't primarily about genetics [1], it's about whether you enjoy (or at least don't hate) the routines necessary to be attractive.
For instance: my wife sticks to a strict diet because she doesn't like having to make decisions about food. If you're lucky enough to be wired like her (I'm writing this next to an empty pizza box...), you can hit any goal weight and stay there. Our bathroom is covered in lotions and creams that she spends an hour applying before bed every night. I could not tell you their names, to say nothing of their purposes. She goes to the gym every day except for planned rest days, and does a workout routine that was decided on weeks ahead of time. I maybe go for a jog, if I remember to and I'm feeling up to it.
I've tried copying what she does, and I can't even stick to it for a day. But most women I know do some version of this, and all of the really attractive men do, too.
[1] sure, it is possible to really lose the genetic lottery, but unless you would've been a 19th century circus freak, the bottleneck is probably how hard you're trying, not your genetics
You can be highly attractive and not very fit. And you definitely don't need to have a skin care routine to be considered attractive.
I'd also argue that there is a feedback loop, i.e. attractive people are told they're attractive starting at a young age, and so a large part of their self-esteem comes from being attractive, so they feel more pressure to do the things you mention, i.e. skin care, working out.
Definitely agree that there's a feedback loop and strong long-term effect of initial level of natural attractiveness when you're young.
One of the advantages of not starting out on the "is attractive -> gets self-esteem from attractiveness -> tries to be more attractive" cycle is that as you get older you don't feel like you're losing anything. It's no fun when you're young, but that's a small minority of most people's lives.
There are no routines necessary to be attractive. It is something you are either born with or not born with and it is pretty obvious at a very young age.
That gets the causality backwards. Your personality is set pretty early in life and determines characteristics like how self-aware you are, how vain you are, whether you care about how you come across to others, and more. Those qualities determine how much effort you put into being attractive.
If you need to put in effort then you you are not attractive in the first place. Attractive people are beautiful when they wake up in the morning. I Know this from experience. I am referring to facial beauty though. Maybe you are thinking of TnA.
I always wonder to what extent that attribution to slow evolutionary processes is true. There were several selective bottlenecks in our ancestry, and during historic times (from which we descend) most marriages were arranged, with attractiveness playing only a very small factor. Even in modern times, only a small percentage of the population had the luxury of breeding with a partner that we consider nowadays highly attractive.
Then there's the fact that up to 80% of marriages have been between first cousins or closer, which would would actually cause unattractive features.
So how come we think that sexual attraction is an evolutionarily shaped mechanism
There is also the feedback loop of "grooming", where, just like bees select a random bee to be groomed as a queen, humans are positively reinforcing a specific set of humans for reasons that have more to do with mass psychology than actual attraction. E.g. kings and queens are groomed as leaders and rulers, eventhough they are probably the most inbred and flawed genetic stock
The halo effect for attractive people is way higher than the actual, relatively weak correlation to measures of intelligence. So, while it's true what you're saying, it's also true that people think that attractive people are more intelligent than they really are and the second effect is stronger.
Another factor is that being more intelligent and socially skilled allows you to earn higher income, which lets you afford better clothing, stylists and healthier habits (food, exercise). And of course cosmetic surgery, for which even minor procedures can be very expensive.
Anything we evolve to desire signals genetic fitness.
Genetic fitness means anything that results in more grandchildren in the end. Physical health is a big factor, sure, but so is intelligence and social skills.
Maybe this is in part a linguistic disagreement. By "attractive" I don't just mean "looks good in a photo", but any factor that attracts a partner.
> I am always astonished by how much we humans mix how moral is someone and how horny that someone makes us.
I don't think this is about 'horniness', or even sexual attraction to the person, because this works across gender and sexual preference lines. Straight men are biased in favor of attractive men, even though they don't sexually desire them.
Horniness seems completely orthogonal to me to perceiving someone as "as more intelligent, more socially skilled, more appealing personalities, more moral , more altruistic, more likely to succeed, more hirable as managers, and more competent."
In fact I'd say the more horny inducing the less appealing personalities, less moral, less altruistic, less competent, etc I'd perceive someone. Not saying that's good of me but if we're saying attractiveness causes a boost well, as a man, for me, I'm generally attracted to the nice girl next door type, not the sexy temptress type. The sexy temptress type makes me horny but it doesn't remotely make me feel like I should trust her, give her more opportunities, etc... I don't think I'm alone in that. To give a more blunt example, I'm less likely perceive someone as having those positive traits who is a stripper or porn star even though they make me horny. It's the person that makes me feel like I want to spent quality time with that I'm more likely to perceive all those qualities, not the person I want a one night stand with.
> I am always astonished by how much we humans mix how moral is someone and how horny that someone makes us.
Yes, it's obvious that we shouldn't base our opinions on appearance or sexual attractiveness, but it really shouldn't surprise you that that's how things usually play out. Such reactions come from a much deeper part of our biology. The fact that we can sometimes think past those reactions is much more surprising, imo.
"Liking What You See: A Documentary" is an excellent short story by Ted Chiang (these days best known for the story behind the film "Arrival") about this topic.
In the story, a highly-targeted brain treatment exists that can make it so that one is unable to perceive physical attractiveness. The story explores the ethics of such a treatment.
Here is a pdf, but if you like it, I highly recommend supporting the author and getting both of his collections, "Stories of Your Life and Others" and "Exhalation". You won't regret it.
Someone should write a story about speakism, judging a message based on how it's said instead of the content of the message. They can posit some AI that extracts the facts from each person's message and removes how it was expressed. This would be see to help people who are not proficient in the local language, people who have accents that are perceived as less intelligent/trustworthy, people who deliver their message in harsh ways (Linus was apparently an example)
That exact topic actually comes up in the story I linked.
SPOILERS BELOW (though knowing doesn't really detract from the story)
In the story, one of the central discussions is the debate to make the procedure mandatory for students at a college campus. The procedure is non-invasive and reversible, similar tot an MRI or something.
Fearing that this sort of public debate will spread, a cosmetics lobbying firm (who wants to maintain the status quo) publishes a video with a persuasive counter-argument.
It is later revealed that the video had been manipulated by software "capable of fine-tuning paralinguistic cues in order to maximize the emotional
response evoked in viewers. This dramatically increases the effectiveness of recorded
presentations."
Some people get a further brain tweak to mitigate this effect.
I love this short story, I think it's probably my favorite of his first collection. I think he does a great job of making realistic and compelling arguments for both positions and really exploring the details.
Disclaimer: I've only read the 'Key takeaways' in the article.
Should we consider a system where the judge and jury do not see the defendant (and suer if applicable) in the pursuit of objectivity? I think the bias towards attractive people is quite obvious in so many spheres of life. For employment, for the way people treat you as a customer, colleague or day-to-day, for housing, etc. We are actively fighting many -ism in (rational) societies, but "unattractivism" is more taboo. I am not sure what the solution would be at societal level. My feeling is that a societal movement for this inclusion is more unlikely than the other ones, but that would require to acknowledge an implicit scale of attractiveness which is divisive in the first place (as opposed to gender, sexual orientation, ethicity, religion, etc which are either obvious or self-decided). But I could be misreading the situation obviously.
The judicial system is different, and with radically impactful consequences, you do not have to eliminate human bias (which probably isn't even possible), you just have to make the decision-maker blind just like peer-reviewed papers. While we can't really hide identity for employment or housing, but a judge and juree do not need to know the name or see the person. To go further, please could be read by impartial narrator which would also take care of emotional bias (should a good actor have a more lenient sentence?). In a way, the justice system should seek ultimate objectivity for the sake of fairness. On the flipside however, it would have a dehumanizing effect on the deciders to have zero connection with the convicted and perhaps lead to an increase in sentencing lengths, which I'm not particularly in favor of.
I actually just finished a stint of jury duty last week and got picked for 2 trials. A couple of observations:
1. One of the trials was an underage rape case and there was essentially no physical evidence. Mainly all we had to go on was 3 police interviews (2 from the alledged victim, one from the accused). As a jury, we relied on those videos to determine who we felt was telling the truth and the trust worthiness of what they were saying. I'm not saying this was a good thing necessarily, just an observation that this is what we did. I'd like to see the results with a parallel jury that relied only on written transcripts etc.
2. The judge actually gave us guidance at the beginning of both trials that in addition to what witnesses said, how they appeared to us (their demeanour) was also evidence that we could use in assessing the trust-worthiness of what they said. My understanding was that we should use our general life experience that we had acquired in our day to day living to assess the evidence of the witness. I guess there are good sides (eg. intuition based on non-verbal communication/body language) and bad sides (eg. biases) to using this approach.
I was once excused from a jury panel in a quite-similar situation, but the alleged victim had waited months to say anything, and it was totally he-said / she-said. During voir dire, the prosecutor asked if anyone had a problem with a one-witness case. I raised my hand and said, yeah, under those circumstances there was reasonable doubt by definition. I was excused, and never heard what happened afterwards. (IAAL.)
This might be a silly question, but how come there was no evidence?
I thought that the hard part with persecuting (adult) rape is that the physical act is the same as sex - so there’s no “obvious” proof that the crime even happened (like a dead body), only different interpretations of why sex happened.
That goes away if it’s statutory rape, where even just sex is evidence of crime.
So she claimed she had been raped while sleeping over at a friend's house by the father of the friend. He claimed it never happened. She only told her mother and step-father around 2-3 weeks afterwards about it.
She was forced (she was not able to choose) to take pregnancy rejection medication but refused/declined to have a physical examination/rape kit done (she had a choice in this). So essentially there was no physical evidence (in the trial at least) that sex had ever occurred. Also, the trial was taking place around 6 years after the alledged incident.
What we did have was a very detailed, consistent, plausible, and compelling recount of events leading up to, during, and after the rape from the 13 year old victim in a police interview about a month after it occured and also another interview around 2 years later. Watching the interviews, and based on the type emotion she showed at particular points, the language (including body language) she used to describe the events etc it was difficult to not believe her, it was in fact heart breaking to watch and listen to.
I guess my point is that all that "soft" information that we received from the video recorded interview was indeed information that we used to assess whether we thought she was telling the truth or not or whether she was coached or was making it up, for whatever reason. We were in fact instructed by the judge to use that information to make our assessment whether there was reasonable doubt or not.
I'm not sure how you separate this type of information from other information we also receive eg. the physical attractiveness of the accused and defendant and how the legal system can remove this type of bias. Based on other comments here, I'm also no longer sure about whether we, as a jury, should be using that soft information, and I'd love to see results from studies about how juries assess evidence when it is presented in different ways as suggested here.
I believe I once heard that people are better able to detect lies by reading transcripts compared to watching people. They think they're getting additional information they can use to detect the lies but it ends up being misleading.
Having trouble finding a source for it, however. Anyone?
Also, plenty in the legal system is already done on the basis of transcripts. This isn't an all-or-nothing prospect.
I'm pretty sure it was shared on podcast, but unfortunately that's making it impossible for me to search and find it because they don't provide transcripts. Obviously I don't expect anybody to take my word for it, just was hoping somebody else recalled it.
I think lawyers are subject to the biases, as well. Defense lawyers probably work harder for attractive people, prosecutors are probably less cutthroat. It's an intractable problem.
But judge and juree make the final decisions, and the lawyer issues run much deeper in terms of inequalities. I don't think lawyer perception of client attractiveness is the core issue in this case, they'll (naturally) mostly care about their compensation. Prosecutors having a bias plays into the other -isms as well, perhaps a blinding system could be helpful as well, although harder to enforce.
Aren't the vast majority of people in the US represented by public defenders? Public defenders who make salary, and are extremely overworked and often default to some subconscious rubic for how to allocate their efforts....
See or hear. Everyone, in the process from judge to representation to jurors in their own isolated rooms with proceedings transcribed and read via the same text to speech. Eliminate the theatrics.
Though it would be interesting to have a double blind of a normal case + transcript case and see the role of bias or even intuition.
I’ve occasionally thought about something similar for political debates/speeches since we k le how much presentation swings impressions. When really we should care about reasoning.
This reminds me when I once remarked that Elon Musk's various procedures to change his appearance likely were an ROI of >1,000x for him and have probably increased his net worth by billions if not tens of billions of dollars, just by making him seem more attractive.
Interesting... because I think that Musk is one of the worst public speakers. But, that doesn’t matter, because what he has to say is so damn important.
Since I saw his presentation on Starship, I have started considering the “polish” of a presentation, and the “skill” of public speaking, to be a negative signal (the speaker wants us to focus on the form, instead of on the content).
Part of the reason I find Musk endearing (I know, controversial opinion in these parts) is that he doesn't come across as fake. Every time I hear a different CEO give a speech I think to myself how many speech classes they've taken, how often they rehearsed this, and that a big component of their job is just acting to project a good image. And they're getting paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for that.
Musk often just says what comes to mind. He clearly doesn't often rehearse or sometimes even prepare. He comes across as human and relatable. Not just some dude in a suit that has a team of secretaries of lawyers and hasn't had to flush his own toilet in 20 years.
bill gates, mark zuckerburg strongly disagree with that hypothesis. I think maybe in tech, looking the part is even better than being conventionally handsome.
"According to Fire in the Valley, he also reportedly told Gates that when IBM CEO John Opel heard Microsoft would get the contract, he said "Oh is that Mary Gates' boy's company?" since Opel and Bill Gates' mother served together on the national board of the United Way."
The way it's worded makes it sound like they already had the deal aside from any nepotism, but perhaps the CEO's approval sealed it / ensured terms were kept fair.
Gates also went to a school that had remote access to a large mainframe, back when this was almost unheard of. A lot of pre-Microsoft work was done on that mainframe.
lol yes he started eating and exercising better... and taking supra-physiological amounts of testosterone. he had a second puberty in his 50s that was more androgenic than the one he had in his teens.
Firstly, I think Bezos has done quite a bit in an effort to look better.
Secondly, I think Elon's role is a lot more outward-facing than Bezos's role, and that would probably have been the case even if Bezos was more attractive, so I doubt the procedures would have had as much an effect on Bezos's success as they may have on Musk's.
Bezos is probably on some high quality, doctor prescribed performance enhancing drugs. He's jacked, compared to what the lanky physique he used to have.
Its been interesting to me how people hate Bezos so much but love Musk, when Bezos has almost certainly provided more value to the average American's life [up until this point at least]. People like Zuck and Bezos can't get away with the smallest mistakes without being grilled yet Musk got away with some crazy things. One huge difference is how Musk is unapologetic and Bezos.Mark are constantly apologizing for everything, which i've been critical of. Since the Trump era I've always thought never apologizing is the way to win in the current environment, but maybe if you're good looking you just don't need to apologize?
Steve Jobs wasn't really conventionally attractive (and to my knowledge didn't get any cosmetic surgeries) and still managed to make billions and a massive impact on the world.
Additionally I wonder what bald Elon looks like. Jeff Bezos put on some muscle and looks a lot better afterwards despite losing his hair
I'd beg to differ--I'd say he was maybe _the_ original sexy young tech startup founder, and his appearance was integral to his success as a marketer, leader, etc.. A lot of his early publicity shots are smoldering, e.g.: https://manwithoutqualities.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/stev...
Ted Chiang (wonderfully talented sci-fi author, wrote the story Arrival was based on) wrote this great short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary" that explores a device that causes people not to see physical attractiveness, by inducing something like prosopagnosia (a medical condition where people can't recognize faces) in the wearers. It's written in short snippets of people arguing for or against device and whether it should be mandatory. It didn't consider the legal system angle though!
The argument isn’t that basing sentencing on physical attractiveness is unfair because attractiveness is randomly distributed (“less a given”), it’s that it’s irrelevant a priori; accordingly your argument misses the point. In contrast: IQ and grit are by definition supposed to measure those traits which are relevant to success; fwiw they are NOT considered completely fair, but that is because of the extent to which many instruments end up measuring “belonging to a certain cultural group” instead of those relevant traits.
That's a weird comparison. Yes life is unfair and everyone of us is born with some genetic privileges or disadvantages. But IQ and beauty hardly sit on the same bench.
IQ has a pretty strong correlation with the quality of the work you can produce. Higher IQ is generally beneficial to the solution of any task. If you are trying to go to Mars or find a vaccine for COVID-19, you probably want very smart people in the room. Hell, you want smart people even if you are building yet another ecommerce website.
The same is hardly true for beauty. Excluding beauty-specific jobs, skills and experience should always prevail over look.
IQ: unfair to the individual, justified by society well being
Beauty: unfair to the individual, no particular advantage for society
No, it's not. Using any criteria that creates substantial disadvantage to a protected class is illegal if you can't show a sufficiently close nexus to bona fide job requirements/performance, which happened to be found to be the case with the IQ test that was adopted as a direct replacement for overt racial discrimination in the Duke Energy case. But the legal rule that comes from that case is not “IQ tests are illegal”, and in fact IQ tests are used in a number of places in hiring (including, as became notorious in another case where the practice was upheld, being used where a score above a threshold was disqualifying in a particular police department.)
It's funny, in a society with an intellectual obsession with recognising and deconstructing systems of privilege, we largely overlook what is possibly the single most powerful inborn advantage one can have - attractiveness. It's rightly considered abhorrent that people could be treated unequally based on their race or gender, but I think that we are on some level accepting of the fact that attractive people have it easier in almost every field of endeavor.
Someone, I think Sonja Starr, did a series of studies on racial bias on sentencing. Unsurprisingly, it existed. Here's the shocker: the male versus female bias on sentencing was enormous by comparison, using the same methodology.
I remember a very left forum in which someone bemoaned that one out of four homeless are women, and that's why we should care about homelessness.
Overall, I have begun to look at which privileges are examined and which are ignored as the real three card monte.
> I remember a very left forum in which someone bemoaned that one out of four homeless are women
That sounds like an extreme mischaracterization. The concern about homeless women is the extra suffering the endure at the hands (and other parts) of homeless (and other) men.
Much worse is the horrific (and never retracted) Washington Post article fretting that murder at work is a female epidemic because even though men are murdered
_more_ often than women at work, men die so much in other ways that murders of men aren't important*.
It was absolutely gobsmacking to read the utter disregard for men's lives.
"more men are murdered on the job than women. But that's because [450%] more men are killed on the job overall."
Nope. That was the thrust of their argument: we should care about the homeless because some of them were women. I've seen it elsewhere, there's even some handy samples on imgur if you search for them.
As an individual, it's not really possible to treat everyone equally.
Do you treat people unequally if you know they are smarter? What if someone else told you they were smart? If they have a high IQ, would that matter to you? Based on which college they graduated from? If they work 16 hours a week? What about 16 hours a day?
Attractiveness is an indicator just like any other [1]. It's just a reality.
Well, if I know they have a high IQ I might infer that they have strong mental faculties, are able to cope well with complex problems, etc. If they graduated from a good University, I might infer that they are intelligent and have a reasonable work ethic. If they work a great many hours, I may infer that they are motivated, or perhaps passionate about their job. I do not think that I can fairly infer similar things from attractiveness even if a correlation exists. There exist beautiful idiots, but essentially no idiots graduate from Cambridge or score 140 on an IQ test.
Most attractive people I've met put no work at all into diet or exercise or makeup. I will admit that makeup can have some effect though. It can turn a 6.0 into a 6.3, but it's really only good for a few tenths of a point at best. Diet and exercise won't give you giant doll eyes or a smaller or rounder or flatter face. It won't change the shape of your head. A taste for fashion? hahahahahahahhaha ha
Part of the issue is that it's much easier to ask somebody about their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc (at least in the context of a survey or something) than it is to ask them "Are you ugly? Y/N". It's not just a category, it's a value judgment. This also drastically reduces the number of ugly advocacy groups and advocates. It's hard to push for better treatment of a group in which almost nobody wants to claim membership.
Please remind me when ugly people were forbidden to vote, for example.
One thing is an (un)conscious bias favorable towards handsome/attractive people, another is a system that historically thought that one group of people was inferior and had less rights.
Obviously I'm not justifying this bias, and I think that society has an important role in reinforcing it, so we should try to stop it, especially in the justice system.
Interestingly if you account for height discrimination, it causes women to be over-represented in management roles, implying that what's normally ascribed to sex discrimination is really height discrimination and the sex discrimination, if anything, goes the other way. A 5'6" man is less likely to be in management than a 5'6" woman.
It also implies that if we solved height discrimination there would be a lot more female CEOs.
> Maybe a better way to put it, an 'average height female is more likely to be in management than a below-average height male'.
Average adult female height in the US is 5’4”, so 5’6” is noticeably above average, almost as much as it is below average for an adult male (average 5’6”.)
The average is probably even higher if you restrict your data to those who would even be eligible for CEO level positions (higher educated, coming from wealthy families, etc).
I think 5ft 9in would be on the short end of the men I know, especially white collar professionals.
US male adult average height is 5'9" per CDC, for females it's 5'3.6”. hence my statement that 5'6 is nearly as much above average for an adult female in the US as it is below average for a male.
Correct in what sense? Both statements are borne out by the evidence. You are each choosing to select different representations of those facts as the most salient.
One is more correct than they other, and it's borne out by the evidence here, and the evidence of your own daily observations. If you work in a large office, or a few of them for comparison, there's ample data in your own experience to see it if you care to observe specifically.
The issue is not crudely height, it's height relative to gender and it's actually pretty straight forward.
A 5 foot 6 woman is not going to be hugely punished for her height, whereas a 5 foot 6 man will definitely be.
> A 5 foot 6 woman is not going to be hugely punished for her height, whereas a 5 foot 6 man will definitely be.
Isn't that in itself gender discrimination?
We know that on average Asian men are shorter than black men. If someone made the same compensation for the difference, what would you call it?
We've just had a Supreme Court decision saying employers can't discriminate against trans employees. If the same 5'6" employee gets a promotion by presenting as female that they don't get by presenting as male, what does that imply there?
5'6" is the average height in the US, so they're both of average height. Someone engaged in height discrimination and not sex discrimination is, by definition, looking at their height and not their sex.
Unless they are actually doing it consciously and fastidiously, by actually measuring, height discrimination is probably done by subjective perception of being tall, which is probably subconsciously “tuned” to apply gender-specific standards.
You would have to look into the motivations behind it. From an evolutionary perspective you might expect people to consider it riskier to have a leader they expect to lose a physical confrontation to a competitor, in which case there would be no reason to expect an adjustment for gender.
If I was to make a WAG as to why height discrimination seems to affect women less, consider footwear. 3" heels close half the perceived height gap between men and women on average -- not all of it, but enough to confer an advantage at the same original height.
That doesn't mean that a woman at height X is more likely to be a CEO than a man at height X, which was the original claim.
That's simultaneously a very interesting and somewhat plausible claim, which is why I'd love it if someone did an actual analysis of it.
Is there a public dataset available of S&P 500 CEOs of the past two decades, tagged with height and gender? I might take a stab at a simple analysis myself if there is.
> That doesn't mean that a woman at height X is more likely to be a CEO than a man at height X, which was the original claim.
It basically does.
Suppose the average height for a female CEO is also 6'. (I can't find the actual number anywhere, Google seems to be useless for this sort of thing these days.) In that case women ~6' are over-represented as CEOs, even more than the men of the same height, QED.
Suppose it's less than that, e.g. 5'9". In that case women ~5'9" are over-represented, or less under-represented, as CEOs compared to men of the same height, otherwise the overall average wouldn't be 6'.
Having more data would tell you some interesting things like whether and to what extent it's true at any given height, but it implies that it's true for at least some heights and possibly all of them.
This is an unfortunate reality in most aspects of life. Physical attractiveness _does_ matter, and has many advantages. Whether in job interviews, relationships (non-romantic ones too!), performance assessments or even the judiciary system: attractive people are seen more favorably.
Honestly, I almost wish they would stop releasing these studies, it's like "I get it, if you're ugly, not only is it harder to get a date, but you'll get paid less, be less likely to get promoted, get rated as less productive/smart/etc., and if you get caught doing a crime you'll get a much longer jail sentence."
Ask any girl and they will say that people who wants to be friends with them greatly depends on the current attractiveness of her. I think it is less true for males, but nonetheless I feel like there is correlation.
I still think the effect of attractiveness on female-female friendship is much much more than male-male friendship. I don't know if there is some known theory or reason for it, but you can see in a group of female friends, the attractiveness level is in similar range more often than not(of course speaking from anecdotes, nothing to prove).
I would love to see a double blind study on attractiveness and job interviews, but this would be pretty hard to do (facial prosthetics?)
Response rate of identical resumes with different portrait photos attached would be interesting.
I recall seeing an experiment shown on a news program with 2 different teachers in a young (like 1st grade or so) class. One of the teachers (they were actually both actors) was conventionally very attractive, the other very plain (I always thought "How's that for an acting job: yay, I got the role of ugly teacher.")
The thing is, with kids that young, they were very transparent about their feelings toward the attractive teacher "She's so pretty! She's so nice! I really liked her." It was classic halo effect stuff.
Wow, a huge effect on sentencing (fine amounts, prison term lengths) but no effect on conviction rate? That seems hard to believe.
If true, it means that this bias could be fairly straightforward to correct in theory, though in practice I doubt people would accept the necessity or fairness of such corrections.
With the exception of mandatory minimums, sentencing usually is broadly subjective with judges having significant leeway. In contrast, convictions are based on juries who are provided strict instructions on how they must arrive at a verdict. Swaying the judge can you get you lighter sentencing but has no impact on the verdict.
I'm aware of this distinction, and yet I too am a little surprised, only because I'm so used to seeing people manage to convince themselves against fairly objective truths in the name of following their emotions.
I'm surprised too, but conviction does seem to be the more objective part. Sentencing can vary on the attitude, etc. and is inherently more subjective in practice IMO.
This should be obvious to anyone who isn't gifted with top ~10% looks. Not just in the legal system but in the way the really attractive just have things easier. The person who just smiles and avoids trouble, etc.
A huge confounding factor is that socio-economic status and life history can significantly affect attractiveness.
For example, in the US at least, a lot of people consider having nice, straight teeth attractive. But getting there requires good dental care and perhaps orthodontics such as braces which can be expensive. Thus, not only are straight teeth attractive, they can be a signal of socio-economic status.
Another thing is that life situations alter attractiveness. For example, I have seen people who were attractive once, but after a few years of using meth, they would not be described as attractive by a lot of people.
Also, in at least one of the studies, photos of the criminal were used to judge attractiveness. These may have been mugshots. However, how someone looks on mugshots can be significantly different if one has been living on the street for sometime vs living in a wealthy home, and their lawyer arranged their client to turn themselves in to the police.
Physical bias is inherent in everything. All human interaction.
Being "beautiful" or "ugly" can be a pro, it can be a con, it can lead to jealousy. Awkwardness, feeling low self-esteem, confidence, tension, etc. A lot of it is subjective.
We're animals, and we often forget that fact. We try to normalize as much as possible to remove these biases (thankfully), but it's completely impossible to remove outright.
I'm waiting for the day we have Matrix-like capabilities and can change our avatar on a whim. :)
A coworker came back from jury duty. She said, “He was totally guilty.” “How do you know?” “Because his lawyer had greasy hair and shifty eyes.” “So he was guilty because his lawyer looked untrustworthy?” “Yes” “Okay...”
This reminds me of a study of cases where judges pre-screened cases looking at the evidence and charges without ever seeing the defendant or demographics about them and predicted the outcome. Their expected verdicts and sentencing was far more uniform and accurate (taking appeals into account) than the in-person trials that followed.
That said, you don't want to be too attractive - rather, nice symmetry, good proportions, healthy looking, but generally not attractive like a model.
Height and even girth for men, but only height for women as weight is a negative for them (I'm loathed to find the source for this, sorry).
One of the only fields where 'well turned out' folks are naturally viewed with scepticism ironically is software! Either by way of reason (ie nobody who spends that much time looking good has spent enough time on algorithms!) or by jealousy (ie it's unfair that this attractive person is as smart as me!) I think we tend to love 'true geek' flair. It's probably mostly a healthy bias ...
Edit: I should add 'nice teeth'. Seriously, 'nice teeth' are the ultimate mark of class in an ostensibly classless society. Like in the UK, the oddly huge variety of accents immediately projects one's origin (and thus class, however totally unfair it seems to be that way, at very least subconsciously), 'perfect teeth' are generally uncommon in nature, more likely it means one's parents could afford the $5K in braces etc. for their kids, which is still not entirely widespread. It's not something I think we think of consciously, but my gosh 'nice teeth' make a really 'nice smile' and it has such a big social impact without us ever really realising it.
The only section I needed to read was "causation". Essentially, there's no evidence that this is a causal effect of attractiveness on sentencing, and there are many alternative explanations available.
If you lead a tough life of crime or had an abusive childhood that led you to crime, etc - I would expect it to be hard on your body - and looks.
Whenever I see correlation assumed to be causation I like to wonder why they excluded causation in the other direction. In this case, maybe sentencing someone heavily is hard on their looks, and we know once you go to jail you’re likely to reoffend, and that continues, until you have the correlation you observe, perhaps?
My opinions are quite controversial, but I think that for most jobs, interviews should be conducted fully in text, through a platform that doesn't reveal anything about the interviewed. This is the only way to combat this kind of bias in recruitment, where it exists too. Teaching people not to discriminate is just the beginning. Changing the system to make discrimination impossible is much, much more important.
How do you see cultural match and the person's mentality that way? Many brilliant engineers simply wouldn't fit into my team and would be a net negative. Most of the time it's obvious to the person being interviewed too, but how would we know if we don't talk about non-technical things or don't even see each other or talk at all?
I find it surprising that, according to the article, attractiveness affects the severity of the sentence, but not whether someone is judged innocent or guilty. If the former is true, the latter seems too good to be true.
If both are true, it's fascinating. We should then research the mechanism that makes judgements more fair, and see if we can't change the way the sentence is determined to match that.
It is fascinating because the notion of guilt may be difficult to apprehend.
It could be that the investigation of guilt is very carefully pursued, with a lot of rules, a lot of evidence.
It could also be that for 'most cases' the outcome is actually fairly straight foward?
Also, once someone is found to be 'guilty' - then we are free to 'loathe and pity then'. Whereas guilt/innocence is mostly a black and white affair, subject to objective guidance ... the sentencing may not be, which is to say, it's maybe hard to reference 'what is a little and what is a lot' in any given scenario, so are bias are more likely to run free.
Remember that by the time a case gets past indictment and plea bargain, almost every case is a conviction. Prosecutors aren't dumb. Variation in conviction is pre trial or even pre arrest, not at trial.
These are eye opening results: minimum 2X to almost 4X increase in fine for unattractive people! In a way attractiveness plays out everywhere starting from college admissions to careers to finding mate. We don't want to admit it but then we are fighting against biology and evolution. I guess it doesn't matter what other attributes one has in long run. Evolution doesn't care anything but propagating the best genes which apparently attractiveness is a statistical proxy.
Another irony: Virtually every object of value in modern world is made by scientists and engineers but guess who is million times more worshiped, popular, paid, followed, protected and cared about: actors! Most actors simply act out a scene someone else designed, someone else shot, someone else wrote, someone else directed. None of the behind the scene people matter much or even get fraction of a credit because they are often not as attractive as these puppets to put on the screen. That's humanity for you in its raw form.
> Virtually every object of value in modern world is made by scientists and engineers but guess who is million times more worshiped, popular, paid, followed, protected and cared about: actors!
Not really. It just seems that way because of the a tiny, highly visible slice at the top of the field. The 2018 median pay for an actor was $20.43/hr, there were only 64,500 of them working in 2018, and there's about 1% projected 10 year growth in the field.
The median pay for a software developer in 2018 was $50.77/hr, there's almost 1.4 million of them, and there's 21% projected 10 year growth in the field.
> None of the behind the scene people matter much or even get fraction of a credit because they are often not as attractive as these puppets to put on the screen.
Directors, Producers, Screenwriters, and Composers, among others, often are as prominently, or nearly so, credited as stars, paid quite well, and quite well known; definitely moreso than non-star actors.
And star actors very often have a much bigger impact on productions than just presenting what others have written, actively shaping their characters and often other parts of the production.
> Most actors simply act out a scene someone else designed, someone else shot, someone else wrote, someone else directed.
I can imagine myself designing, writing and shooting a scene, but I can't imagine acting it well (let's say on Antony Hopkins level). I have maybe the 5-10% of the expression range necessary for that. It's a talent and a skill, possibly more rare than the ones which "just" require lots of brains and an eye for aesthetics.
"Attractive people tend to have better physical health, better mental health, better dating experiences, earn more money, obtain higher career positions, chosen for jobs more often, promoted more often, receive better job evaluations, and chosen as business partners more often, than unattractive people."
Could some of those correlate with things relevant in court? Prior criminal history, for example? (That explicitly and deliberately does factor into sentencing, where the main difference is reported.) Are they controlled for? The article doesn't use the word "control" or "history". I only see a couple of studies about mock juries, where the subjects are merely given a photograph and a packet to read, which does control for everything (except for details that the subject's imagination is left to fill in).
If you haven't read "Liking What You See", a short story by Ted Chiang, do yourself a favor and check it out. It is one of the most interesting works of fiction focused entirely on this subject. It is part of the book "Stories of Your Life and Others".
Eventually we'll have an equality movement for the very real effects attractiveness / unattractiveness have on things like job performance. It will be a more subtle equality movement than civil rights, gay rights, trans rights, but it will happen.
So many people in this discussion seem to think that "attractiveness" is a scalar value. This makes no sense to me. Quite apart from this being highly subjective (different people having different opinions) I couldn't even state my own opinion on something so vague. If you asked me which of two people is most "attractive", I wouldn't know what's meant. If you asked me which looks more intelligent, or more friendly, or more trustworthy, or more healthy, or more fun, I could perhaps give some kind of answer, but, seriously, what is "attractive" supposed to mean?
It sounds like you have a kind of impairment in this regard. Most of us don't need anyone else to define 'attractive' for us. It is something we all feel when we see a face that represents certain ideals of aesthetics. For me it is a small round flat doll-like face with large widely spaced and elongated and ideally slightly upturned eyes close to the edge of her face. When a girl has a face like that I feel a kind automatic love for her. I think that is what it really is: a kind of aesthetically based instant love. Every time you find someone attractive it is a variant of love at first sight differing only in degree.
This got me thinking of the connection to ageism. Sure, a younger person might be hired over an older candidate for reasons that are legitimate: maybe the more senior person wants too much money, or maybe the hiring powers-that-be want to bring in someone who can "grow with the company".
But occasionally, I suspect these reasons become convenient excuses to go with the younger, more attractive, reasonably-qualified candidate.
The article mentions that felonies did not produce a sentencing bias. Perhaps this is because sentencing guidelines for more severe crimes are also more closely defined by the points of the case and judges have less latitude in sentencing. If so, could other forms of bias be mitigated by providing additional guidelines for sentencing in those cases? Do they simply suffer from lack of attention to the guidelines?
Hmmmm... physical attractiveness is highly subjective. What was the methodology for determining it? I didn't see it in the article.
And physical attractiveness can vary by setting. Dressing business professional helps attractiveness in a court room, but if you were dressed like a stripper, you might still be highly attractive, but cause a negative perception in the court room.
There's always sociocultural dependencies and personal preferences, but beauty can certainly be quantified. Facial symmetry, body proportions, etc.
Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but only up to a point. There are some markers that, when you increase or improve them, objectively increase beauty.
> They gathered a group of police officers and students to rate the attractiveness of over 2000 criminals. A scale of 1 - 5 was used and their ratings were mostly similar.
Wow, after all the professional, personal, and legal information that's been related here, I feel pretty badly. Is it really that important to go get plastic surgery? I exercise and take care of myself, but have an exceptionally asymmetric face, so might it improve my prospects personally and professionally?
Ignore the studies and anecdata. Attractiveness is substantially a reflection of personality, so it's hard to disentangle them in studies and anecdotes.
Being unattractive can be superficial, or point to deeper issues. In general it'll hold you back to the degree that it points to deeper issues, because people mostly won't care if your face is a bit asymmetrical if they can depend on you and you are pleasant to be with.
Unfortunately plastic surgery cannot usually fix things like asymmetry. Surgery is really very primitive and people like to overestimate its power. It rarely ever makes a person more attractive in reality.
Really hate to be the overanalyzer here, but just wondering how is physical attractiveness defined in these studies?
And was charisma considered as a variable?
(I'm just thinking of the courtroom scene in "My Cousin Vinny". Joe Pesci is not conventionally good looking but has a personality that is very persuasive)
For all the variables, check table 1 of the following for "Zero-order Pearson’s correlations between facial appearance and health, with the corresponding p-values and sample sizes":
All this is well known now, as the first study was about 22 years ago:
Perrett, D. I., Lee, K. J., Penton-Voak, I., Rowland, D., Yoshikawa, S., Burt, D. M., … Akamatsu, S. (1998). Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness. Nature, 394(6696), 884–887. doi:10.1038/29772
Wonder if this controls for severity of the crime? It could be the case that attractive people don't tend to commit crimes as serious (within each category, ie misdemeanor)
What about tech? Are physically attractive software engineers more likely to receive jobs and promotions than engineers of equivalent skills and experience?
Almost certainly yes, unless tech is different from the job market at large.
An interesting point on attractiveness in the job market is that people who are extremely unattractive tend to also perform very well. It’s mildly unattractive people who do the worst. My pet theory is extremely unattractive people have to work their asses off to make enough money to be sexually competitive in any way.
This carries the assumption that competence is something that is purely objective. I find it more likely that what is perceived as competence is still subject to bias.
Honestly I don’t see a profession where people considered attractive in that location would do worse than their unattractive peers, all other things being equal.
Probably, but this is a rabbit hole all in itself. All aspects of life are dictated by others' perception of us, our work and our personality being signals just as appearance is.
In an ideal world, we could simply uncheck these biases and do blind promotions and detach a person's work output from his or her face, but it doesn't work like that. Even worse attractiveness is subjective and thus hard to control for. You can usually identify racism because the person will have traits that puts him/her in that category. It's much harder for subjective beauty.
TLDR: Probably yes, but don't expect it to go away anytime soon.
Good questions, I would like to see some data for that.
I assume it is like a reverse bias where someone who looks like garbage is expected to be a good programmer.
