Do good looks get high
school students good grades?
Thursday, April 23,
2009
Do personal traits predict success in school? If so, which
dimension of one's outward appearance can tell the most about
academic achievement? The answers to these questions are found in a
new study by researchers from the University of Miami Health
Economics Research Group. The study is the first to demonstrate
that non-cognitive traits play an important role in the assignment
of grades in high school.
Economists have examined the role that beauty plays on the type of
employment, earnings, productivity and the likelihood of
politicians being elected to office, and have wondered if "beauty
premiums" and "plainness penalties" in the labor market come from
an accumulation of differences in attention and rewards received
from teachers throughout the school years. Findings from this
peer-reviewed study titled: "Effects of Physical Attractiveness,
Personality and Grooming on Academic Performance in High School"
will be published in the next issue of Labour Economics.
The study offers a new perspective in an area of research that
until now was almost exclusively focused on adults. It examines the
effect of three personal characteristics--physical attractiveness,
personality and grooming--on students' grade point averages (GPA)
in high school. The primary objective is to determine which aspects
of these non-cognitive personal traits are more strongly linked to
academic achievement, said Michael T. French, professor of health
economics in the UM College of Arts and Sciences and one of the
authors of the study.
"Several studies in the literature have found that physical
attractiveness is significantly related to labor market earnings
for men and women. Thus, we were somewhat surprised to find that
physical attractiveness was not the most important non-cognitive
predictor of grades," French said. "Instead grooming and
personality were stronger predictors of academic success in high
school for boys and girls, respectively."
Looking at GPA as a function of a long list of individual,
familial, school, and environmental characteristics that are likely
to affect academic performance, the researchers were able to make
several significant observations, including:
In conclusion, the study posits
that students may be able to "trade-off" different personal
characteristics to improve academic achievement and that this trend
may affect future success in college, the labor market and family
formation.
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University of Miami
Thanks to University of Miami for
this article.