No matter ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, everyone has a love of beauty. The philosopher Aristotle has long said that beauty is a letter of recommendation that is more useful than any letter of introduction. In fact, being attracted by beauty is an innate instinct of human beings. Babies like to look at beautiful faces from a few days to six months after birth, and they look at them for a longer time. In 2007, a survey of 45,098 people jointly conducted by the Social Investigation Center of China Youth Daily and Tencent.com News Center showed that 94.7% of netizens definitely looked very important. Reports of cosmetic surgery for employment are more common in China recently. Obviously, human's love for beauty makes "beauty" a scarce resource, and "aesthetics" and "pursuit of beauty" have also evolved into social behaviors. Appearance affects a person's social interaction, career acquisition and income gains and losses from social, psychological and economic aspects. This paper mainly focuses on the influence of appearance on income.
In the relationship between appearance and income, it is usually implied or implied as a positive correlation, that is, "the more beautiful, the higher the income." Quinn (1978) used the data of American labor market to reveal the correlation between appearance and income. Roszell( 1989) used data from Canada to find that the income of beautiful people increased faster. Frieze( 199 1) found that appearance is positively correlated with men's starting salary and subsequent salary, while women's appearance has no effect on starting salary, but beautiful women's salary increases faster. In particular, Hamermesh and Biddle( 1994) creatively estimated the beauty premium (that is, the beauty income premium) by econometric methods. Doorley and Simerminska (20 15) studied the beauty premium of different deciles. Women's beauty premium is higher at low income level, while men's beauty premium is more even in the whole income distribution.
In view of their different research objectives and emphases, it is understandable and acceptable for the above scholars to simplify the issue of beauty premium. However, as far as beauty premium itself is concerned, whether it is completely equivalent to the implicit assumption that "the more beautiful, the higher the income" is still a topic that has not received enough attention, especially economics. This topic is directly related to what kind of beauty we want to pursue, so it is necessary to discuss it further.
In order to study the relationship between appearance and income, this paper first draws a diagram of the relationship between appearance and income using the data used by Hamermesh(2002), as shown in figure 1. This data comes from the household survey of floating population and permanent population in Shanghai (hereinafter referred to as "SASS 1996") conducted by the Institute of Population Studies (SASS) of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in1996, including 33,000 individual samples, aged 17-60 years.
Figure 1 shows the relationship between appearance and income very intuitively. This data comes from a survey conducted by the Institute of Population Studies (SASS) 1996 of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. In the process of appearance from poor to average, and then to better, income is rising; But when the appearance changed from good to good, the income showed an obvious downward trend. In view of this, this paper puts forward the hypothesis that there is a "high-heel curve" relationship between appearance and income: there is a "degree" of beauty, before which beauty helps to increase income; But after this "degree", the improvement of beauty will weaken the beauty premium. A curve similar to the shape of high heels is formed between appearance and income, as shown in Figure 2, ABC curve.
Second, the "high heel curve" mechanism.
The mechanism of "high heel curve" between appearance and income can be explained from two angles: "preference" and "signal".
1. Preference Angle-Section-AB
Preference means that people tend to deal with good-looking people from the heart of beauty, regardless of whether the latter can really bring them returns. Prejudice is often inevitable in preference, and differential treatment caused by prejudice often leads to discrimination. Discrimination means that people with the same characteristics are not treated equally. If good-looking people and bad-looking people make the same contribution, but get different wages or incomes, then there will be employer discrimination or even customer discrimination in wages or incomes.
2. Signal angle-section-AB
Appearance is not only a simple appearance or appearance, but also a kind of "ability signal", which mainly reflects an individual's interpersonal skills. The rapid rise of knowledge and service industries highlights the importance of interpersonal skills. However, due to information asymmetry, employers can't directly observe employees' interpersonal skills at first, and education often focuses on conveying employees' information about professional skills, which is difficult or rarely able to convey information about interpersonal skills. Therefore, employers choose employees with interpersonal skills by observing their looks to a certain extent.
3. Signal angle -BC part
However, as a signal of interpersonal skills, the more beautiful people are, the better their interpersonal skills are. Extraordinary beauty will have a negative impact on the development of interpersonal skills;
(1) The negative influence in interpersonal communication caused by poor similarity.
The long-term attraction between people is influenced by similarity, which is the so-called "birds of a feather flock together, and people are divided into groups". Similarity is the dominant factor in interpersonal relationships. Similarity leads to mutual liking. When attitudes, beliefs and values of * * * are confirmed between each other, the satisfaction that comes with it will enhance each other's attraction. The most beautiful people are often born with beauty. In the process of their growth, they are favored by their elders and teachers because of their outstanding looks. Therefore, their attitudes, beliefs and values towards life are different from ordinary people. The most beautiful people are unfavorable in interpersonal communication, especially in long-term communication, so it is difficult to be welcomed by ordinary people who account for the majority of the crowd, and they are more likely to be jealous or even excluded; The most acceptable person is the second most beautiful (above average but not the most beautiful); Plain looks are easily overlooked, which is not conducive to interpersonal relationships and communication. In the workplace, whether it is cooperation with colleagues or the maintenance and development of customers, it often involves long-term and in-depth interpersonal relationships. Due to the lack of similarity with the general public, the most beautiful people are more vulnerable to interpersonal exclusion in the workplace.
(2) The lack of reciprocity causes the most beautiful people to have a negative effect on the improvement of interpersonal skills.
In interpersonal communication, people tend to like and accept those who like and accept them. With people who like and accept them, people get a sense of satisfaction, which in turn will make them appreciate and like each other. People with outstanding looks have received too much attention and preference since childhood, and "thousands of people are spoiled", which is easy to develop arrogant behavior and self-centered personality, and often ignores the cultivation of their other abilities because they can rely on their appearance, which is not conducive to the expansion and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. Because of this, extraordinary beauty often leads to negative effects from other people's ability evaluation, and halo effect often masks other personal characteristics of extraordinary beauty. The negative impact of these appearances rises sharply with the degree of beauty from the second to the most beautiful, which makes the income of the most beautiful person drop instead, forming the BC segment of the "high heel curve" in Figure 2.
The person who has the most advantage is the inferior beauty.
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Original text from: Guo Jiqiang, Fei Shulan, Lin Ping. The more beautiful, the higher the income? -Also on the "high-heel curve" between appearance and income [J]. Economics: quarterly, 2017 (1):147-172. Please contact us in time if copyright issues are involved.