How beautiful people see the world: Cooperativeness judgments of and by beautiful people

Adam Zylbersztejn, Zakaria Babutsidze, Nobuyuki Hanaki and Astrid Hopfensitz
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Adam Zylbersztejn: Univ Lyon 2, Université Lumière Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824, 69130 Ecully, France; research fellow at Vistula University Warsaw (AFiBV), Warsaw, Poland

No 2309, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: Perceived beauty is one of the strongest predictors of perceived cooperativeness, causing the “beauty bias”. Through a large three-step incentivized behavioral and rating experiment (N=357), we study (1) the relevance of beauty ratings for predicting cooperativeness in an incentivized game and (2) the beauty bias in incentivized predictions of cooperativeness. We additionally (3) investigate if one’s beauty influences the beauty bias in predictions of cooperativenes of others. Our findings demonstrate the robustness of the beauty bias despite its irrelevance for making accurate predictions. We further observe that individuals are affected by the beauty bias irrespective of their beauty. Overall, the results highlight the importance of strong institutions that protect individuals from falling prey to the beauty bias.

Keywords: cooperation; beauty; perception; hidden action game; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-gth
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https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2023/2309.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How beautiful people see the world: Cooperativeness judgments of and by beautiful people (2024)
Working Paper: How beautiful people see the world: Cooperativeness judgments of and by beautiful people (2024)
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