Attractive people have many advantages: they are perceived more positively, receive better jobs and gain more in elections. Because of external beauty we often indicate characteristics such as competence and reliability. This is also reflected in the language. With the help of AI supported voice analyzes in 68 languages, a study shows that terms such as “beautiful” and “pretty” are often linked to positive properties such as “successful”. But that does not apply equally in all cultures. In parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, beauty seems to be more associated with incompetence.
Beautiful people are more successful than less attractive contemporaries. This cliché is widespread socially and sometimes becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy. Because the positive attributions mean that good -looking people in the education system are better assessed, have higher opportunities for interviews and can collect more votes in democratic elections. These relationships have already been shown in numerous studies.
Nice, clever, successful
“However, these studies were carried out almost exclusively in western industrialized countries, which neglects the role of cultural mechanisms,” explain Benjamin Kohler from ETH Zurich and Wladislaw Mill from the University of Mannheim. In order to find out to what extent the so -called “beauty bonus” is widespread worldwide, the two researchers have focused on language. With the help of AI models, they analyzed how tight terms such as “beautiful” or “pretty” in 68 languages are linked to positive properties such as “successful”. “Our method allows for the first time to automate and compare cultural patterns in the perception of beauty,” says Mill.
The result: in most languages, beauty is stronger with positive than with negative terms, including success, trust and competence. The connection was clearly shown in many languages in Western European countries, including English, French and Italian, but also, for example, in Japanese, Persian, Chinese and Russian. The association between beauty and success in Somali and Albanian was most pronounced. For German, on the other hand, there was only a slightly positive tendency, which, however, was not significant, as Mill and Kohler report.
Not always an advantage
In some other countries, however, good looks seem to be associated with negative attributions. In Vietnamese, for example, the term beauty often appears in connection with incompetence. Negative associations also seem to dominate in Romania and Moldova, as the analyzes showed. The study does not provide a reason for the differences found. However, it indicates that the cultural character that is expressed in the language can also decide whether beauty causes privileges in the professional context or not.
The authors point out that some of the languages examined and very different cultures are spoken. This was not taken into account in the current analysis, since the languages were examined regardless of their regional distribution. “Overall, we do not consider our study to be the last word in this matter, but as a first proof of how culture could influence the beauty premium,” says Kohler and Mill. “This specifies a direction for further research in order to create a more comprehensive understanding of the beauty bonus.”
Source: Benjamin Kohler (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) et al., Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/S41598-02857-4
