Attractive pupils perform better in exams, say scientists

Attractive pupils perform better in exams, say scientists (Yeah, Right!)

20:04pm 9th July 2006

Daily Mail--Good-looking people do better in exams than their plain or ugly counterparts, new research has revealed.

They achieve superior results in oral and written exams which are marked anonymously and take no account of physical appearance.

This suggests that the success of people with devastatingly good genes is not just down to lecturers favouring attractive students but also to superior ability.

Researchers also believe that attractive children may get more attention from their parents which boosts their self-esteem. They may be more confident and therefore reap the benefits later in life.

Academics at Verona University, Italy, studied the exam results of 885 economics students at an unidentified Italian university over three years from 2001. Half were female.

Five professors studied a close-up photograph of each student who was rated for their looks on a scale of one (most homely) to five (beautiful or handsome).

Giam Pietro Cipriani, associated professor of economics, and his colleague, Angelo Zago, matched the ratings against the exam results.

They discovered that those graded four for looks achieved a 36 per cent better performance than those graded two. The impact of looks on performance was 'significant' for male students.

Better-looking students also did better in the written exams. This means that the 'effect of beauty on academic performance cannot be ascribed to pure professor discrimination'.

The report, Beauty and the Exams, says: 'We have shown that physical appearance has a significant and economically meaningful effect on the performance of students.

'First of all, being handsome increases the probability that a student in fact takes and pass exams. Second, and more important for us, better looking students have better performances than other students.'

It adds: 'The higher productivity of attractive people could be the result of pure discrimination because of parental (and teacher) solicitude or of social stereotypes that affect self-esteem and motivation and hence productivity via a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

Meanwhile previous research has shown that better-looking people go on to earn more in the workplace.

A study of 11,000 33-year-olds by London Metropolitan University found that unattractive men earned 15 per cent less than those who were attractive. Plain women earned 11 per cent less than their prettier colleagues.

And researchers from Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and the Minnesota University, discovered that there is a 'wage penalty' for obese women.

They have lower family incomes than women who are within 'recommended' weight ranges.

Celebrities who combine brains and beauty include actress Rachel Weisz who attended St Paul's Girls' School before studying English Literature at Cambridge University

Model Laura Bailey, who is currently fronting the successful Marks & Spencer campaign, graduated from Southampton University in 1995 with a First in English Literature.

And Britain's most successful teenage model, Lily Cole, 17, a student at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, West London, is planning to study psychology at New York University next year.

Tim Hands, headmaster of Portsmouth Grammar School, said he did not think good-looking pupils performed better in exams.

He added: 'Although I have never hard it debated in academic circles at university or in schools, I suppose it could have to do with the inner confidence one would have going into exams.'

But Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, yesterday cast doubt on the research.

He said: 'It does seem as though some people are very lucky. They're good-looking, they're talented and so on but it's quite difficult to stand up.

'Attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder so it's difficult to claim that there can be a universal effect.'