| When it comes to personal and professional success, more attractive people have a clear advantage over their less attractive peers (Hamermesh, 2011). Better looking people tend to have better looking spouses (Feingold, 1988), for instance, and earn better rewards when they appear as contestants on reality television dating shows (BBC News, 2009). At work, too, being attractive pays (Dipboye et al., 1977). Relative to their less attractive peers, more attractive people are more likely to be called back for an interview (Bóo et al., 2013), more likely to be hired (Hosoda et al., 2003), earn more money (Biddle and Hamermesh, 1995; Frieze et al., 1991; Hamermesh and Biddle, 1993), achieve promotion relatively more quickly (Morrow et al., 1990), and, perhaps predictably, are more satisfied with their careers (Hosoda et al., 2003). Two lines of psychological inquiry help to explain why beauty pays. One focuses on perceivers and how they think about, and consequently treat, attractive people. Studies show that perceivers ascribe a range of (unrelated) positive qualities to an attractive person, believing the attractive person to be relatively more intelligent, more sociable and mentally healthier, for instance (Dion et al., 1972; Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992; Langlois et al., 2000). Being stereotyped in this positive way benefits better looking people, helping them reach relatively more favorable outcomes. Another line of research argues that people think and behave differently depending on how attractive they are, which accounts for their outcomes. Experimental and empirical studies document, for instance, that attractive people have relatively better social skills and stronger, more positive self-beliefs compared to their less attractive peers (Judge et al., 2002, 2003, 2009; Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006). These differences, too, explain why being attractive is so beneficial. With the perceptions and behavior of attractive people as our focus, we draw on psychological research to hypothesize differences in network preferences and structures between people who are more and less attractive. In a laboratory experiment, we test whether attractiveness is linked to people’s preferences for positions in networks. In a follow-up correlational study of young professionals, we test whether these preferences translate into differences in the structure of people’s social networks, as one would predict. If our claims have merit, then our findings could open up new lines of inquiry into how a neglected attribute of nodes—their physical appeal—is a contingent factor for network activity, and brokerage, in particular. |
