Essays in Idleness

Better-looking people get higher marks in school. They are more popular than their peers, there and ever after. They get better jobs, earn higher salaries, glean more praise and are more quickly promoted. Their houses are thus bigger, and filled with better stuff. They commit fewer crimes, or if they do commit one, the courts will treat them more leniently. Complaints from the better-looking will be more patiently heard. They are naturally more contented with life, and perceived as wiser and more charming. When running for public office, in an election where little information is available, they are more likely to win. This is also true if plenty of information is available.

I am told all this in a thread of studies that began with one link on Drudge this morning. All purport to be scientific, and the rankings of subjects by visual attractiveness is perfectly objective. Pictures of them are shown to randomly selected reviewers who, knowing nothing but what they can see, rank them from, say, a ten to a zero. Eccentricities of judgement thus come out in the wash.

More, more. … Attractive people tend to be more rightwing, or “conservative.” They think the world is fairer than unattractive people think it, and because they make more money, and have a better time, they are less well disposed to governments appropriating what they have. Whereas, ugly people are more likely to be socialists, and whiners.

We (or at least, I) might take this as the first scientific evidence in favour of democracy. The people may have no idea what is going on, or what is at stake in any election. But at least they know to vote for the pretty face.

The findings also agree with my own observations, over the years, and square nicely with some studies I recall from the 1970s, which showed that rightwing types in every European country had more active and fulfilling sex lives. In England, for instance, the Young Conservatives were an agreeable social club, in which politics were discussed only during the election campaigns. Whereas, among the Labour youth, everything was policy, policy, policy, and the kids were all tediously discontented. As for the Communists, hooo! They offered a freakshow of creatures who would never get a date, and in the end would have to settle for each other.

Moreover, as we see in Canada today, the Liberal party is reduced to finding a pretty-boy aerohead with “nice hair” to serve as their nominal leader. Shows that their brains are in the backrooms. And that the exception proves the rule.

I have a further reason to accept these plain scientific results. Being correlation, not causation, they work both ways. They give a welcome indication that I must myself be a very attractive person for, after all, I am very rightwing.