Beauty's sting is in failing others

People are more likely to trust a pretty face but, when that trust is betrayed, the backlash can be ugly, according to a recent study.

Numerous studies have shown that attractive people generally make more money, get better reviews from their supervisors and are viewed as being more intelligent and trustworthy.

What surprised researchers in the new study, published by Rice University in the US, was that subjects deemed attractive also were penalised more harshly for failing to live up to expectations.

"There's a lot of work in experimental economics and in other aspects of economics like labour economics where they find that attractive people have a beauty premium," said Catherine Eckel, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas who co-authored the study with Rice professor Rick Wilson.

"It's kind of a pervasive thing, but the twist that we have in our paper that you don't see in the others is this 'beauty penalty'," she said.

"What we see in our data is that people have very high expectations of attractive people and, when they're disappointed, they react."

Eckel said her research has also shown that the only way to change stereotypes is to be aware of them. And, as it turns out, our mothers may have been right when they told us that "pretty is as pretty does".

"The takeaway message here is that people have the wrong idea about attractiveness," she said.

"Attractive people, well, they're not less trustworthy than other people, but they're not more trustworthy either.

"So, if we're aware of our biases, we can do a little better job of making decisions."