Your good looks help enhance your income—unless you’re also very smart, says study

People who are attractive tend to earn more, but this advantage diminishes for those with higher levels of intelligence, says a study that analysed the life and career of 37,000 employees in the UK and US.

Research spanning decades indicates that those who are physically attractive generally earn more than those with average looks, but a new study suggests the beauty advantage mainly benefits only those who aren’t particularly intelligent.

The study analysed data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), which tracked more than 17,000 Britons born during a single week in March 1958. The subjects were assessed on everything from education and income to cognitive ability from childhood.

They were graded on their looks at the ages of 7 and 11, and then their earnings at ages 33, 42, 47, 51 and 55. The exercise revealed a consistent trend—attractive people earned significantly more, on average.

However, there was a striking exception: this benefit disappeared for the most intellectually gifted, or in other words, beauty boosted earnings—except for the brainy.

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, the author of the study, carried out similar analyses using data of more than 20,000 Americans and found that the pattern was the same: attractive people earned more at the ages of 22, 29, and 38—but only if they were of average or below-average intelligence. For the most intelligent, beauty made little difference to earnings.

One likely explanation is that employers have less inclination to reward superficial traits in professions that demand more intelligence.

In contrast, in roles that require less brainpower, a winning smile might tip the balance in promotion decisions without a severe impact on job performance.

However, in a study published in the International Journal of Manpower, Kanazawa says our brains evolved millions of years ago to deal with a very different world to the one in which we now live.

“For the most part, our ancestors hunted and gathered, every day. And the primary context in which our ancestors evaluated members of the opposite sex was mating,” Kanazawa writes.

He adds that the most convincing explanation for modern humans treating attractive individuals more favourably is because, on some level, they yield to an evolutionary urge to impress or attract them as potential mates. This impulse to treat beautiful people better is strong and heterosexuals may be guided by it, even when they are confronted with somebody of the same sex.

He further says that workers in particular professions, whether superiors or subordinates, often share similar levels of intelligence.

He concluded that occupations that tend to attract less intelligent bosses, who oversee less intelligent workers, are more susceptible to being swayed by good looks, which means that their attractive subordinates benefit from a beauty premium.

In sharp contrast, clever bosses who supervise clever workers in “high IQ” jobs override such evolutionary instincts.