Brains come before beauty in boosting one's career earnings

May 11, 2009

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Nice guys may finish last, but it’s the smart ones that come in first with the lookers close behind, according to a University of Florida study that finds people with intelligence earn more in their lifetime than those who are attractive or self-confident.

“While beauty matters to career success, brains matter most,” said Timothy Judge, a UF management professor whose research is published in the May issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. “If you were somehow able to choose from being smart, good-looking or self-confident, our study shows that while you’d want all three qualities, brains are the most important to economic success.”

Intelligence is rewarded early in life with positive strokes from teachers, which boosts self-confidence and encourages future academic success, he said.

“Smart people do better in their careers because they are more likely to be educated and are more confident in their abilities,” Judge said. “And it’s also possible that smart people make better career choices, learn more on the job, negotiate for pay more effectively and adapt better to changes in the workplace.”

The results emphasize the need for employers to be fair in their hiring and not unduly influenced by a job candidate’s appearance, he said.

Judge, along with UF graduate students Charlice Hurst and Lauren Simon, studied how intelligence, beauty and self-confidence affect income and financial strain. Results came from surveys of 191 men and women between the ages of 25 and 75 who participated in the National Midlife Development in the United States study.

Measures of intelligence were derived from a series of established tests and mental exercises, while self-confidence was determined from a 15-item questionnaire examining attitudes about one’s ability to cope with various life situations. Researchers judged attractiveness by rating personal photographs of the participants on a scale of one to seven.

By knowing men’s and women’s scores in the areas of intelligence, beauty and self-confidence, the researchers were able to accurately classify them into one of 35 income categories more than half the time, Judge said. After brains, self-confidence ranked second in importance, followed by beauty, he said.

Although beauty ranked last, its importance to earnings is still troubling, Judge said. With few exceptions, such as modeling, attractiveness is not particularly relevant to job performance and is never seen in job descriptions, he said, yet it still matters to what people earn.

“Countless parents have assured their children that it is the inside that counts, with the ‘inside’ presumably referring to one’s personality and intelligence,” he said. “While the ‘inside’ clearly counts when it comes to income, attractiveness makes a difference, too.”

Part of the reason for attractive people’s success is their educational prospects are influenced by their looks, Judge’s study found. From an early age, studies show that good-looking students receive more teacher instruction and attention, while being punished less frequently, making them more likely to finish high school and attend college, he said.

In one study, for instance, school psychologists were less likely to refer attractive, poorly achieving third-grade students to remedial classes than their homelier classmates, he said.

“Employers who interview people for jobs need to make sure they are not favoring the attractive — and there is evidence that they do — while denying its importance,” he said. “Intelligence is a legitimate factor to consider in almost all jobs because research shows that intelligence predicts job performance in nearly all types of work, even fairly simple, entry-level jobs. While the same can be said for self-confidence, looks are another matter.”

“Dr. Judge’s research shows that, although the cover of the book matters, the content matters more. We ugly people can all breathe a sigh of relief,” said Jose Cortina, a psychology professor at George Mason University. “It is easy to be cynical in face of research showing that physical attractiveness affects important outcomes for which it should be irrelevant.”