 Does facial structure explain differences in student evaluations of teaching? The role of fWHR as a proxy for perceived dominanceValentina Paredes, Francisco Pino and David Díaz Economics & Human Biology, 2024, vol. 54, issue C Abstract: Dominance is usually viewed as a positive male attribute, but this is not typically the case for women. Using a novel dataset of student evaluations of teaching in a school of Business and Economics of a selective university, we construct the face width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a proxy for perceived dominance to assess whether individuals with a higher ratio obtain better evaluations. Our results show that a higher fWHR is associated with a better evaluation for male faculty, while the opposite is the case for female faculty. These results are not due to differences in teachers’ quality or beauty. In terms of magnitude, the effect of the fWHR is much larger for female professors. To the extent that fWHR is a good proxy of perceived dominance, it appears that conformity to traditional gender norms pays off for both men and women. However, the cost of challenging these norms is much larger for women than for men. Keywords: Student evaluations of teaching; Facial structure; Perceived dominance; Gender biases (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:54:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x24000339 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101381 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.