Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Personality, and Grooming on Academic Performance in High School
Rationale: Previous studies had been done about physical attractiveness and pay rates. The researchers for the previous studies looked at people in both the professional and unprofessional world and rated the attractiveness of people verses that person’s salary. What had been found was that the more attractive one was the more money they made. Also, more attractive people sorted into jobs that put more focus on physical attractiveness. The researchers also found that less attractive people were more likely to commit crimes that ranged from burglary to selling drugs. The team of researchers who performed this study asked themselves if the real reason that more attractive people made more money was because they were treated differently and had a better cumulative GPA throughout school.
Methods: The researchers came up with an equation where the GPA was equal to physical appearance plus personality plus grooming added with a set of control variables. Standard errors were adjusted for clustering at the school level. The researchers also looked at models to better understand the potential motivation of high school students to alter their appearance.
The researchers measured some students’ physical attractiveness only compared to their GPA, some students’ personality only compared to their GPA, some students’ grooming compared to their GPA, and measured all three characteristics of personal appearance compared to the GPAs of the rest of the students.
Results: The researchers found that for the male students, the more attractive they were, the better their overall GPA. Males’ grooming scores had the greatest effect on GPA; the best groomed males had the highest GPAs while the least groomed males had the lowest GPAs. Contrary to the rest of the results, the researchers found that males who had the highest scores in physical attractiveness had below average cumulative GPAs.
Similar findings were recorded for the female students: the more attractive the female student, the higher her GPA. The researchers also found that personality and grooming had more of a positive effect on the GPA than did actual physical attractiveness. Unlike the males, poorly groomed females did not incur a significant GPA penalty.
The researchers also found that Hispanic and African American students had lower GPAs then white students but other non-white races have higher GPAs among men. Having a resident mother who attended college, living in a two parent household, and attending a small school also had positive effects on GPA. Students receiving public aid had lower overall GPAs. These factors may reflect the amount of resources being allotted for the students’ academic activities.
Discussion: To better understand the results. The researchers did further analysis. The researchers found that people who were the most physically attractive had the highest personality and grooming scores as well. The researchers excluded students with below average physical attractiveness and then looked at GPA from the perspectives of personality and grooming. The researchers found that attractive males with lower scoring personalities saw a negative impact on their grades. They also found that among students with average physical attractiveness, positive personality and grooming had a positive effect on cumulative GPA.
The researchers also took into account that not all students’ goals in high school are to have high GPAs. The researchers took into account three types of risky behaviors which were drinking days in the past year, number of binge drinking days in the past year, and marijuana use in the past 30 days. Over all few personal appearance measures are related to these risky behaviors. The researchers did find that in females, the more physically attractive she was, the more likely she was to drink alcohol. The less attractive females reported less alcohol use but more marijuana use. Males with high personality ranking reported to have less drinking days than males with lower personality ratings. Males with high and low physical attractiveness reported less marijuana use than males with average physical attractiveness.
The study proved the hypothesis that personal appearance does have an effect on the GPA of high schools students. Females who are more attractive may be conforming to peers and adults, which may cause them to spend more time studying than socializing. Male students who have the highest physical attractiveness may spend more time socializing and may believe more that their attractiveness will push them farther than their grades will. The researchers also took into account the bias of the teachers to more attractive students. Teachers may view well groomed students as caring more about school and their grades than poorly groomed students. This could cause some more generous grading practices in favor of the students with the better personal appearances.
The researchers were unable to conclusively determine whether the relationships between personal appearance and high grades were because of the students’ efforts to establish their identities and attain academic objectives, teachers’ discrimination when assigning grades, or real differences in academic performances.
Reflection: We found this article to be fascinating. While in high school, we all recalled the students who put lots of time an effort into their appearance, and those who obviously put little to no effort into their appearance. I never thought to look at the GPA differences between those students. It makes total sense that students who are more physically attractive will spend more time grooming and have more positive personalities. If a person is happy with the way they look, they will put more pride into dressing themselves.
We believe that a similar study could even be done on a college campus. We think that the results of the same study done on a college campus would be different than the results found at the high school level. When people get to college and decide on their majors, they typically put more time and effort into classes than in high school. This could partly be because college is a choice and students have to pay to attend college whereas high school is mandatory. Also, students who play sports or have scholarships or grants must maintain a certain GPA to remain eligible. We think that the results of this study at a college campus would be all across the board. We do think that the “risky behaviors” or drinking, binge drinking, and marijuana use would have more of an effect on the cumulative GPAs of the students.
References:
French, M., Robins, P., Homer, J., & Tapsell, L. (2009). Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Personality, and Grooming on Academic Performance in High School. Labour Ecomomics, 16, 373-382.