In truth 16% is much lower than I would have expected, expected it upwards of 50%.
I once had a debate with a friend about whether it was ethical to hire someone based on looks, because looks were something mostly inherent to the person and not earned (how well you take care of it and fitness withstanding), and he argued that it was just as ethical or even more so than hiring for intelligence which is just as inherent, but offers similar types of advantages. I've been more open minded about it since, more of the opinion of "use the pretty person to be a front/face" almost along the lines of "put the right person in the right position".
Nepotism means hiring friends or family. The advantage there is that you start out with a greater level of trust, depending on how long you've known the person. This must be weighed against the disadvantage that there are likely more skilled individuals to be found. When dealing with delicate matters (i.e. when small mistakes cause big problems), reliability becomes more important.
Most people trust their families more than their work acquaintances. Still, the family member must have more than trust, to do a good job in a skilled profession.
Proof? I'm not going to spend the effort to cite data here, since we have no prior relationship.
There are pills for beauty. Look at Kylie Jenner, you think that's all natural? In fact I'd say you have less control over intelligence then you do over beauty.
“You’re not ugly, just poor.” Is a saying for a reason. There’s plastic surgery, ozempic, having the time/drive to work out consistently, dressing well, eating well, etc etc.
People can improve their beauty score by 2-3 points if they have the drive and/or money.
Growing up with a poor diet and lack of nutrients will make your skin look bad, you won’t grow as tall, and you’ll be overall less attractive. Many environmental factors directly contribute to one’s’ perceived attractiveness.
I think it’d be unwise for VCs to discriminate on protected characteristics. Even if the investments worked the legal/political consequences wouldn’t be worth it.
However, the entire purpose of early stage VCs is to allocate capital by discriminating between founders. To that extent discriminating on non protected characteristics like education, experience and presentation skills are fair game.
I’m assuming attractiveness is a non protected characteristic but we’d need to be careful to define it in a way that doesn’t accidentally proxy for protected characteristics.
"When it comes to height, every inch counts--in fact, in the workplace, each inch above average may be worth $789 more per year, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology."
> For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. "It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it."
Apart from good health attractiveness is the probability the biggest privilege that you can be born with. It’s normal, attractive people will always have an advantage because it’s in our nature to wanting to be around attractive people for obvious evolutionary reasons. All these studies and articles which basically confirm that humans are after all just another type of animal are getting a bit boring. Yes we know, we have some pretty basic animalistic instincts, because we are just another creature roaming this planet. Accept it and get on with life. Everyone can make themselves more attractive through healthy eating, physical exercise, good hygiene and self care and looking at the positives in life and have an aura of positivity and smiles.
> Which is utterly and completely divorced from reality.
Do you have a citation for this statement? I would be very careful about saying things like this. You might be significantly more incorrect than you presume.
Yeah I agree, it doesn't seem immediately obvious to me that those things aren't correlated. In fact, if nothing else and based on no other factor, the existence of this bias is itself telling us that attractive women are probably more likely to have more experience, since they likely will have received additional opportunities which would be self-reinforcing and result in exactly such a correlation.
And all that totally ignores the fact that we're assuming the genes behind attractiveness (which can include indications of health, athleticism, and developmental symmetry) have zero effect on mental factors. That assumption would really require supporting evidence IMO.
> it doesn't seem immediately obvious to me that those things aren't correlated.
Wait, what? My assertion is that physical attractiveness is not correlated with competence, trustworthiness, and being a good person. You see evidence that there is such a correlation?
My entire experience with people gives no hint of any such thing. The beautiful people I've known have not been more likely to have any of those qualities than the ugly people I've known.
I'd be very interested in any evidence of such a correlation. It would completely rock my world.
> the existence of this bias is itself telling us that attractive women are probably more likely to have more experience
This is a completely different thing, though.
> That assumption would really require supporting evidence IMO.
That's completely backward. If you're asserting a correlation, it's on you to provide supporting evidence for it. You are making a positive claim. All I'm saying is that I see no evidence in support of that claim.
Are you asserting that there's a correlation between physical attractiveness and how trustworthy, competent, and good people are?
If so, then I think it would be you that needs to provide evidence for it, if for no other reason that on casual inspection anyway, there is no hint that is the case.
As naked monkeys in the wild, perhaps. However in our modern world a visit to the esthetician and an appointment with a makeup artist before the interview will make you appear healthier than the most nourished monkey in the jungle.
Now you could argue that having the awareness to do this before an interview is a display of intelligence, however I would say that this is indicative of a type intelligence different to the one needed to be, say, a good engineer.
It’s divorced from some “higher” reality maybe, but the CEO will be operating in a human reality where their attractiveness will continue to pay off. Getting more funding, hiring talent, and eventually trying to IPO will all be influenced by having an attractive confident CEO.
I guess it's because we want to further our genes and we're wired to go for attractive mates because we'll have attractive offspring which can further those genes more easily. Geez, I wonder if that's evolutionary or learned...
And I'm speculating, but I guess our brains give attractive people a better starting score because we... want to mate with them? Or we
want introduce them to our sibling so they can mate?
Maybe it’s an instinct to give resources to attractive people to increase the fitness of the group.
Or maybe investors know that attractive people have an advantage in business (for irrational reasons), so it’s rational for investors to value attractiveness.
> "We’ve not seen the paper yet so will have to go by the press office’s description, which outlines an experiment where 111 male early-stage investors are shown video of the same start-up business idea presented by a conventionally hot actresses and one who is more plain."
so these were experiments showing video of hot vs. plain ladies to a panel of men
Yep. There's an informal name for people on a consulting or consulting team for this purpose: "talent". Interestingly, in women C-suite heavy environments, there is an occasional niche of bringing male talent on a team.
The general rule: Attractiveness correlates positively with income per unit effort. Attractive people get other people to do the hard work for them.
The corollary is that unattractive people must work harder, prove themselves more, and are forgiven less than attractive people. People tend to hold unconscious biases against unattractive people as more likely to be selfish, unkind, unworthy, and criminal.
PS: Respect to attractive people from well-to-do families who work their behinds off to not coast on stereotypical advantages.
Not only more attractive people (both men and women) but taller, I believe thinner, are also automatically get a leg up. Beyond just physical appearance, I'm sure (as Elizabeth Holmes may have leveraged) voice tone, gaze, and other non-genetic or alterable genetic traits also play a factor.
But we all have to play the hand we are dealt.
Also, lets not forget that those VCs who are doing the investing are also likely in the more attractive side of the equation.
For people who did not win the genetic lottery, it probably feels like the game is fixed against them in every direction.
I believe this may have been a benefit in virtual settings where height, and many other physical attributes are not as easily judged.
I am not sure why the downvotes. My comment doesn't imply that we cant or shouldnt have mechanisms to factor out bias or other human nature traits. I think it is precisely because it’s in our nature that we should actively seek a fair process. Nature wont change but the process can.
If the attractive founder will be selling, hiring employees or raising future capital, it’s probably not irrational to like them more. 15% doesn’t seem enough to paper over a truly bad business idea like Neumann’s latest.
Male physical attractiveness is qualitatively different from female, because female attractiveness is pretty much a set of fertility proxies[1] and little else, whereas male attractiveness is much more dependent on signaling provisioning ability and overall social status.
The answer to this lives at the bottom of a rabbit hole because there's too many confounding factors. Layer 1 for women's attractiveness is fertility signals but layer 2 is the means to acquire them -- eating well, managing weight (I don't mean just being skinny, gaining/losing weight a lot makes you lose fat in desirable areas which is why filler is so popular), exercise, skincare, makeup and the free time to get skilled at it, flattering clothes, plastic surgery, etc.. And all this stuff is a signal of overall social status.
A lot of people are looking at it from the perspective of bias but another component is that attractive people get more opportunities to socialize and have more confidence and these things give them an advantage.
I really wish it was easy to find people like that who will be your CEO and face of the company. I don't even bother with implementing my ideas because of this. A good idea is a small portion of what you need to succeed.
For quite a while now, musicians audition behind a screen and remove their shoes so judges can't infer their gender from footfalls.
A stark reminder of how easily discrimination creeps in is in the number of male music directors/conductors vs orchestra members. Obv conductors are hired "the old fashioned way."
> 111 male early-stage investors are shown video of the same start-up business idea presented by a conventionally hot actresses and one who is more plain
Is this one hot person to represent them all? Seems like not the world’s best experimental if so
Also maybe attractive (/charismatic?) men do better too.
I have learned that it makes sense to hire less good looking people, other things being roughly equal. Very attractive people - both men and women - are a distraction to a workforce of young, single people, and lots of flirting in the office can get toxic very quickly. Furthermore, if two people appear to be equally qualified for a job, you can bet your bottom dollar that the uglier one had to work harder to get there. To my knowlege, there is no law against discriminating on an attractiveness basis, as long as both men and women are treated equally.
Probably it is a sound strategy. People who are better--for whatever reason--to secure funding, are probably also better in talking to partners, suppliers, media and the like.
> "the halo error (a cognitive bias whereby our perception of a person is shaped by our opinions of other traits) as applied to risk tolerance, which it proven to be vulnerable to stress and concupiscence."
so i know a lot of words but i guess i didn't know enough words at the intersection of christianity and horniness
> "concupiscence"
> "Involuntary sexual arousal is explored in the Confessions of Augustine, wherein he used the term "concupiscence" to refer to sinful lust."
"Tall men" "Wealthy men" "Handsome mean" "Men with a deep voice" why make it about purely about women rather than the overarching topic/problem? Literally everyone is judged based on appearance.
I once had a debate with a friend about whether it was ethical to hire someone based on looks, because looks were something mostly inherent to the person and not earned (how well you take care of it and fitness withstanding), and he argued that it was just as ethical or even more so than hiring for intelligence which is just as inherent, but offers similar types of advantages. I've been more open minded about it since, more of the opinion of "use the pretty person to be a front/face" almost along the lines of "put the right person in the right position".