Do Looks Really Matter?

Sarah Palin I'll admit it. I judge people. See my story here for some of my own ugly stereotypes. Sometimes the judgments are positive: wow, she's got great style, but more often than I would like, my judgments come out a little harsh, and more along the lines of: I have a feeling that she's really stuck up.

What do the experts have to say about judging people based on appearance?

I don't know if it comes as a relief or not to learn that this has an evolutionary basis. According to a recent New York Times article, many social scientists believe that judging people based on appearance may have been rooted in our ancestor's need to recognize dangerous situations. (the fight or flight mentality).

Professor Susan Fiske, who was interviewed for the article pinpointed a couple of the common stereotypes that most people share.

• Attractive people are considered "more socially skilled". Whether this is because they get more attention from people and are thus able to develop their social skills better or because they are just so nice to look at, is unknown. Personally, I am wondering if it more likely relates to the high school cheerleader syndrome. Ie. Good-looking+Cheerleader+Popularity=Great Social Skills. (For the record, this is not a real equation-I just invented it.)

• Older people are viewed as "harmless and useless" which may account for a lot of what I perceive to be a high depression rate and a sense of isolation among older people.

• Since Barack Obama was elected as president, there has been a change in perception of black people, but primarily the positive change has benefited black professionals, who are now perceived as more capable than they were a few months ago.

How are women perceived?

In a recent study on perceptions of women, the results showed that women judged only by their appearance are perceived as less competent than those judged on  a broader basis. In the study, participants were asked to rate both Sarah Palin and Angelina Jolie first on the basis of their appearance and then on a broader basis. I found these results interesting because they seem to indicate that attractiveness in a woman does not necessarily equal an increase in confidence in the woman's abilitiies. This is also interesting in light of Barack Obama's recent Supreme Court Nominee, who is being judged by the conservative media on both her race and her face.

Does everybody judge based on appearance?

One of the frankest and perhaps harsher things I read about judging people by appearance was by a fellow blogger on the blog Former Slacker. He (and I am assuming it was a he simply based on the tone of the article itself) not only claims to be a "judger", he assumes that everyone else is, too.

"We optimize and judge based on appearances, just like we do with books. Go ahead and deny it if you want. You can cling to an idea of “fairness” that requires that everyone be judged based on “who they are” if that’s what you want. But it’ll make you a hypocrite."