Beauty Is an Advantage, but Not Everywhere
ow much does beauty influence our social success? And is attractiveness perceived in the same way worldwide? For the first time, a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports provides comparative insights into different countries. Mannheim economist Wladislaw Mill and his colleague Benjamin Kohler from ETH Zurich analyzed large language models in 68 languages and developed a cross-national index. In this way, they were able to find out how closely terms such as “beautiful” or “pretty” are linked to positive attributes such as “successful” – and how these associations vary depending on the culture.
The key finding: The so-called ”beauty premium”, i.e. the advantage that attractive people enjoy in their career, when choosing a partner or in their social environment, is widespread worldwide – but by no means equally pronounced or defined in the same way everywhere. “For the first time, our method makes it possible to automatically and comparatively record cultural patterns in the perception of beauty,” explains the study’s author, Professor Dr. Wladislaw Mill, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Economics. “And we found that almost everywhere in the world, beauty is associated with something positive rather than something negative – but not everywhere,” adds Mannheim graduate Benjamin Kohler.