Beauty in pretty similar ways and thats leaps into all facets of a persons life from the way kid is treated in school to hes or her success in the labor or marriage markets is pretty clear that beauty is an advantage but is it really an unfair or superficial one well to discuss that im now joined by danielle hamermesh emeritus professor of economics at the university of texas and author of beauty pace why attractive people are more successful professor and so good to have you on the show thank you very much for your time thank you for having me now its been almost a decade since you published these groundbreaking book and theres been quite a lot of changes in this past decade beauty pageants are not as popular as they used to be. Some voters in some western countries are no longer discriminating against ugly man running for president of prime. Mr so i wonder if people as of sassed about the looks as they used to be when they you were writing your book thats very hard to say been very little studies where they have been exactly the same thing lets say in the eightys and right now one study for australia did exactly the same experiment in the mid eightys and 2009 and they found remarkably similar relationships between beauty and outcomes such as earnings in these 2 periods so while we think things have gotten a little bit better i really doubt that its changed very much over my lifetime now you describe beauty as a scarce resource but ogden is canyon is very 2 i mean you point out in your book that most people are sound way around the average somewhere around the middle 1000 make a beauty by is this phenomenon of discriminating or privilege ing people based on their looks. Fairly infrequent because if we are all around the average who is discriminating against whom well not everybody is average i mean typical things like for example in the us when these studies are done perhaps one 3rd of the people are rated as above average of whom a small fraction are rated as gorgeous and about a 6 the rate is below average so were talking about the top 3rd in the bottom 6 which is half of the entire population so its not a rare thing but it is scarce in the sense that people value it and are willing to pay for it but i think youre also make a point in your book that for the large part and there are some differences internationally some countries are more generally to assessing looks than others but you make a point that for the most part people are rated as either attractive or around the or above average and yet you also say to your book that many people perceive that discrimination based on looks is pretty. A widespread at least more widespread than discrimination based on race on National Origin or on the this city do you think thats just self perception people thinking that theyre being discriminated or is that the real thing. Tremendous amount of perception that one is discriminated against if one is bad looking or obviously favored if one is good looking. My guess is that people perceive more discrimination and actually exists indeed that was the purpose of our original study 25 years ago trying to put a number on how big the effects of looks differences are on the outcome such as earnings adjusting for Everything Else like raise gender age. And how big it is well in the us for men were talking about maybe 10 percent extra earnings for those in the top 3rd compared to folks in the bottom 6th of looks a little bit less for women the effects are slightly smaller in the other 7 countries mostly rich western countries in which ive seen studies i even did one for china which found somewhat similar of facts although the chinese were unwilling to say anybody was ugly youre either good looking or average which is rather hard to believe now the most contentious part of your book for me is this i search and we are generally stuck with what ive been nature has given us in the way of looks and i definitely dont buy that at all i think genes may advantage or disadvantage you in early life but beyond a certain age there is no such thing as gratuitous beauty of this ugliness for that matter your face your body i be hubris off your lifestyle choices i be not they are and yet theres an immense amount of evidence that. You are basically stuck with what you have let me cite used to study as one had pictures of kids when they were age 10 the same people when they were age 50 and it showed. They had them rated for looks by a bunch of onlookers they then looked at the relationship between the age 10 beauty rating in the age 50 and they were a market be closely related the study was called do ugly ducklings become ugly ducks which is a truly wonderful lie and the answer is yes they do nother study looked at. Women who had put on a lot of cosmetics and done stuff and it turns out they were rated as being slightly younger as a result of the cosmetics not very much younger and none the less though the beauty ratings that they received before and after were identical i looked at the effect in china of p. Brim and spend the money on hair cosmetics it just doesnt matter very much for how people perceive your beauty well. You know professor how much its all i know but i just had my High School Reunion a few weeks ago and i can tell you for sure that its pretty obvious that at age 40 an average looking person in good shape is much more attractive than somebody who used to be handsome you know a few decades back but who is in the bad physical shape now which leads us to the inevitable question what is beauty and how much of it overlaps with things like Health Longevity and likeability which are all under your control. They are and they arent i mean health is partly surely age in that they just as beauty is surely genetic. Theres really very little you can do it basically has to do with how you project yourself and that is in your control and also the basal basic facial structure which you really cant change you cant have your bones or youre arranged to have a more symmetric face or more pleasing face cosmetic stuff is very superficial even cosmetic surgery is its just doesnt help a lot but that cosmetic surgery or makeup its not about beauty its about present ability but beauty this is something that many people in many cultures in the russian culture at least its closely associated with health. How how for your health is definitely under your control i mean when it comes to dye the exercise there are lots of things that you can do to make yourself more attractive even in older age you can and youll feel better about it theres no question people who spend more on themselves for a few of her beauty do feel better about it but its absolutely clear from a large number of studies that except for experienced stream values extremely fat people how people perceive your looks just arent greatly affected about it you may spend money on the food better but its not going to affect your looks or or that much in the labor market but professor is not only about how you perceive yourself but also about how people perceive you in fact im going to give you one example from earlier today i notice that every time i come to the studio is the guards here would always greet me twice and with varying degrees of warmth i have to say for instance when i just come and wearing jeans and no makeup its one sort of hello and then again 40 minutes later when im wearing a nice dress and makeup its a different sort of hello how significant of those props who knows shoes to make up trinkets in securing a good attractiveness rating from from the people who surround you its a great question in terms of outcomes namely for example how much you earn how well you do in the marriage market these people things just dont matter very much theyre very superficial you will feel better about it and my guess is in your own case i cant be sure its one person you may project yourself differently as a result of brushing up properly for example im wearing a very nice pinstripe suit i feel better about myself but nobody looking at me is going to say im gorgeous regardless of what im wearing your of wrong you are too harsh on yourself you know definitely very clever and so thats one of the major attractions. For the mom thats a very good point in fact thats the Crucial Point of the book the bottom line of the book namely i think youre pretty much stuck with your looks but if you have other things that youre good at either music or running or doing intellectual work or politics then one should take advantage of ones advantages and project those and forget about the fact that you may not be the best looking person on the block now i know that for the purposes of your studies you limited yourself to the me that is the face of the shoulders but you also point out that you had to instruct the interviewers the raiders not to base that assessments on the nature of the interactions that they had with people who they were raving you have to control for that but isnt that how it happens in real life regardless of you know you know phase its symmetry its features they alternate impression is formed based on what you a bringing from within those soft skills the confidence that you mansion vitality etc thats exactly right all of these things matter and diden several studies now including the new one i just did for children. Self confidence does matter in terms of improving outcomes but it really doesnt alter greatly the impact of differences and beauty on those outcomes so yes those all matter but beauty matters too independent of those other things now i personally have been on both sides of the beauty buys ive been discriminated privileged because of my looks at various points of my life and im absolutely sure that the same people would treat you differently based on how you look but i also notice that you indeed project yourself differently depending on how you feel about about your looks i know that more attractive people are usually happier but does it work the other way around are happier people more attractive. Thats very hard to say weve done one study after the book was done i published a paper on happiness and looks in 4 countries theres no question that the better looking people all else the same or happy or whether somebody who is inherently happy tends to be better looking that ive not seen anything on so i really cant answer that at all but certainly the causation does go from looks to being happier both for men and for women professor hamish we have to take a short break now but we will be back in just a few moments states. Is youll be dia a reflection of reality. In a world transformed. What will make you feel safe. Isolation full community. Are you going the right way or are you being that. Guy really. Wants his church wants his faith. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Or remain in the shallowness. Welcome back to worlds apart but Daniel Hamermesh and narrative professor off a canonic said the university of texas author of beauty pace why attractive people are more successful professor hamermesh i heard you say in one interview that beauty for the most part is a silly distinction and that goes not only against my feelings but also against a lot of think areas from the book great writers like im talking chair or scholar wild who all believe beauty especially in older ages is is a reflection of harmony across the various demands of a persons live do you think they were as silly as well. No i dont at all i think those things are about she much more important than the things im talking about what im bothered about in terms of differences and beauty is that i have observed in a measured the whole different bamber of contacts that in fact people who are bad looking do worse economically and that seems to be wrong morally it also seems to be wrong in terms of the gains for those doing this criminal nation is a feeling that shouldnt exist any more than any other kind of discrimination but as you pointed out before the very ways to compensate for you know perhaps not the most attractive looks that the nature gave you and i want to actually quote chapter of here the russian of the great russian writer who said that people should be beautiful in every way and that face is in the way they drafts in their thoughts in their innermost selves he clearly believes that beauty has agency that its a lock to bold that this is Something Like this is your obligation to yourself do you disagree with that. I wouldnt disagree with chekhov on our team thats for sure but no i dont disagree my only point is that beauty which is to some extent inherent and cant be fixed it can be changed very slightly affects how well we do in life in terms of earnings in terms of marriage and it shouldnt because it doesnt affect our ability to reproduce it doesnt affect our inherent productivity as workers and thats the kind of thing that bothers me and thats the kind of thing im talking about in the book in terms of improving policy in this area well you just said that it doesnt affect our ability to repair it produce but to your day again is is a reflection of a Persons Health is it not i mean thats the evolutionary basis for why we have basing so many of our choices on the looks. It was the basis when in fact being good looking meant that you were fairly free of disease you werent disfigured but today ugly people arent just as good as health as good looking people and are just as able to reproduce so part of our attitudes toward beauty i think are left over from days when it was a reflection of health which in rich countries today it is no longer the case now i heard you say that height and weight are independent of beauty. And this is something that doesnt sit with me at all because i know for a fact that if you are a 100 pounds overweight dogs will almost certainly show up on your face not just the general plumpness but the quality of your skin the brightness of your gaze the confidence of your pose in our weight of sask age can you really separate beauty from the from to pounds the kilograms that frame it. Yes to some extent youre right when you say 100 pounds 100 pounds is a huge difference in weight 40 kilograms or so thats an immense difference but most people are know that not that morbidly obese nor that im a ca did the overwhelming majority of people run from a b. M. I. From 20 to about 30 which is normal or overweight and within that very very important large area weight just doesnt make much difference in outcomes and beauty does vary more across people than wait for the 80 or 90 percent of people in that range so yes youre right for truly morbidly obese people that does affect how others perceive their looks but very few people thank goodness are morbidly obese though regrettably more becoming so but professor there are a number of recent studies that found that man and women jarred people with a higher b. M. I. Body mass index as a last attractive and by the way women are the harshest judges there i mean there is a lot of talk about stigma and discrimination of fat people today do you think thats a valid problem well theres no question that both in the u. S. And in European Countries over the last 20 years people have gotten fatter nonetheless the fraction of people who i would consider morbidly obese b. M. I. Of 35 or more is still thank goodness quite tiny and theres no question looking at 3 or 4 studies that ive done over time the relationship with below that range of b. M. I. Weight that is per height and beauty is just very very weak at best it is separate things and they affect outcomes such as earning his marriage ability etc separately from each other. Its interesting you say that because. I mean unlike hived i think weight is a current touristic that is easily changeable and i speak to that as a formerly obese person i know that for a fact you know once you lose a lot of weight you become a little bit jaja mantle of the fat people because you understand that to get into shape you know all you need is after the little bit of time a little bit of money perhaps a little bit of discomfort but you can easily do it and what some people describe as discrimination of the fab i now see that as just a return on those investments for the fed do you think its a wrong or perhaps cruel framing of the situation i think its a very cruel framing of the situation. A lets assume being thinner is good ok not being thin or being fit or being fitter its very hard to take selfcontrol it takes pushing back from the table it takes in my own case not having chocolate chip cookies for snacks the fact that there are so many overweight people the fact that we value being fitter and thinner in the societies so highly people who are doing it its not so easy to do believe me i would been trying to lose 5 pounds which is nothing for the last couple of months i lost more and more than 50 so i am a better expert on that you are but youre meant to be an extreme case and my guess is youre probably much more able to control yourself than most people in this discomfort but professor its a its actually a very controversial but also very important topic because overweight people give on overweight people im not talking about morbidly obese but overweight people are more expansive for the society i mean that we know that matter bolduc diseases are the leading cause of mortality globally treating them is far more expansive than treating other diseases the care for overweight people and obese people in later life is far more expensive especially if they develop dementia or other cognitive disorders to reach they. Usually do so i mean i hate the word discrimination i think its always cruel i would say agree with you on that but dont you think that they should be some other economic way way off discouraging people from packing up on x. Or pounds for example a fact tax what do you think about the fact tax. I think its wonderful i think having calories listed at restaurants on everything which we do in new york where i live house the year but we sure dont do it in texas i think that brings people who are aware of how much its costing them in terms of weight i Pay Attention to that i think a fat tax a tax on sugared sodas is a wonderful i dont know but what i what i mean by fact taxes taxing people who are overweight more. That would be very hard to do in this country i think a better way is to tax the things that make people fat such as sugar and sodas or highly caloric treats said starbucks for example there are easier ways to accomplish and more politically acceptable ways to accomplish what you and i both want than taxing fat per se why because i mean i dont think its a matter of personal choice i know that youre in the states you dont have a public house system but i mean in many countries around the world the system is public and if you are required disproportionately more care in the resources than anyone else because if your lifestyle choices so why should i pay for it from my taxes i mean if professor you want to eve chocolate chip cookies by all means do so but just paid in advance for the extra care you really require why is that not fair. This is seems perfectly reasonable to me and i just dont think politically at least in this country there is any chance whatsoever of that happening where as taxing sugary things tacking things that make you fat in the u. S. Has been done and more of it should be done so i think theres a were both after the same thing here another getting people thinner and healthier the question is only the means of how we get there now let me also ask you about hyatt which is last mutable down the way that although i know that there are clinics both in russia and in the United States that do a lag extensions its been known for some time that taller man earn more theyre also they also fare better on the marriage market so to say but ive seen. A couple of studies suggesting that women are increasingly opting for shorter males you know would be if they shortened height is no longer you know a major disadvantage is that an example of beauty being reinterpreted at least male beauty to the extent what you say is correct and ive not seen those studies again i would say its not a reinterpretation of beauty beauty is basically independent of height rather its a reinterpretation of another aspect that affects outcomes such as marriage and earnings namely height so yeah i think thats if in fact thats going on i view that as good and maybe can reinterpret the importance of beauty in these outcomes and maybe someday probably long after im gone people wont care very much about looks in terms of whom they employ and whom they marry but do why would you ever want to get yourselves there i mean this is why in the way one indication of how a person is leaving hes or her life you know the type of care hes taking about himself and the type of carry he or she will take about future children etc i mean what if we totally need to lack of beauty i mean what are you know what should be base our decisions on. No i dont want the gleick beauty i want to have beauty not be important in terms of economic outcomes i want people to be good looking to take care of themselves be fed be thin exercised but i dont want to have have that in fact the extent to which theyre able to earn money i want to divorce this from economic things since inherently it has no economic value it has psychological value but it ought not have economic value in a society that i would if you were is just but i mean people who look better or who feel better they also think that i mean there is an undisputable link between cognition and accessories for example they also tend to be more active more prosocial morning gauging perhaps more innovative arent attractive people indeed batter workers or likely to be better workers no its not their attractiveness per say i might be a good worker because im very fit for a man whos 76 etc etc not too overweight but my beauty itself does not make me a better worker by keeping myself thin keeping myself thinking does being bad looking or good looking does not affect how well i do even though ive shown in other studies that better looking professors get paid more and students appreciate the more they shouldnt but these outcomes do exist while it looks like you have fighting against human nature let me ask you one last question there is a lot of talk these days about Artificial Intelligence and how would it how would it have raised these beauty buys in both of you know positive and negative ways do you think thats possible and would you like to see it happen i guess you would say yes you would like to see it happen yes i would and for example in some countries still when you apply for jobs you post a picture of yourself which i think is of this aster in the u. S. And some other countries you really cant do that anymore so in a sense by mechanizing or computerizing judgments about pay. Say or about hiring we eliminate the effect of beauty or at least reduce that and i view that as very beneficial so the more we do that the more we eliminate beauty from non from economic outcomes im all in favor of that is one of them professor how mesh thank you very much for being with us today we have to leave it there and say and eye opening discussion if i may advise people to read your book because they will you know a decade later it still sounds very very timely thank you very much and thank you for watching i hope to see you again next sunday on worlds apart. Crazy. He just took out a syringe. May be shocked but harry and. I have been waiting for the moment of complete and total societal collapse i never knew it would happen this. New york alone has become a place where dozens and dozens of demonstrations were driving through brownsville one of new yorks neighborhoods that has the worst homicide a shooting rate in the city. About to get going. Oh my god this is after the seems to go. Away because of the 2nd grade so were not even done with the 1st one. Little movie going to be funny. Some mass was going on behind those walls the richest country most powerful voice and yet it has the worst response there while countries i dont. Worship ruin it for you if youre doing nothing about it the level of going to be so great. That dead i were going to have to bury them maybe and. Maybe in potters. This truly has become a symbol of the current new york. Thanks guys are fine it will survive they say money to develop its going to be easy this is a central plank support diet film is kind of a problem right now so stop. 2 weeks of political turmoil in will be capped by another huge opposition protest in the capital on sunday as rallies in support of the president is again significant momentum over the past its. Been hard to believe and i cant believe this is happening in bell who said i took the salary i was going to attend a meeting she said you look at she called wrapped the more the authorities delight over the things the worse it is for the state of the peoples voices let me hear now they have been heard. In hospital after being airlifted from russia to receive emergency treatment with russian opposition figures being in a. Critically ill