Handsome men have edge in election wins - study
By Nancy WaitzWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Beauty may only be skin deep but it's apparently enough to carry an election, a new study says.
Handsome male candidates had a 56 percent chance of winning an election while their less dashing counterparts had a 44 percent chance, according Daniel Hamermesh, the study's author and an economics professor at the University of Texas.
Hamermesh studied the election of officers for the American Economic Association, a professional group, from 1996 through 2004.
"It was very clear that being good-looking helped and also helped more for men than for women, and that seems to be something one finds in looking at the effect of beauty in other outcomes such as earnings and wages," Hamermesh said.
He did not have a clear answer for why that was.
This is Hamermesh's sixth study on the impact of good looks, with others examining the classroom, the business arena and the legal profession.
He asked four outside observers -- three men and one woman -- to rate the attractiveness of 312 photographs used by 216 candidates on ballots.
The same people running for office several times sent in different pictures each time. The better their photograph, the more likely they were to do well, according to the study, released on Wednesday on the National Bureau of Economics Research Web site.
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
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