welcome to well to party discipline sad that beauty is in the eye of the behold there but hundreds of studies across decades show that most beholders view beauty in pretty similar ways and that's leaps into all facets of a person's life from the way a kid is treated in school to he's or her success in the labor or marriage markets it's pretty clear that beauty is an advantage but is it really an unfair or superficial one well to discuss that i'm now joined by daniel hamermesh emeritus

professor of economics at the university of texas and author of beauty pace why attractive people are more successful professor it's so good to have you on the show thank you very much for your time thank you for having me now it's been almost a decade since you published these groundbreaking book and there's been quite a lot of changes in this past decade beauty pageants on not as popular as they used to be. some voters in some western countries are no longer discriminating against ugly man running for president of prime minister so i wonder if people as of sassed about the looks as they used to be when they you were writing your book that's really hard to say there's been very little studies where they have through the exactly the same thing let's say in the eighty's and right now one study for australia did exactly the same experiment in the mid eighty's and 2009 and they found remarkably similar relation. between beauty and outcomes such as earnings in

these 2 periods so while we think things have gotten a little bit better i really doubt that it's changed very much over my lifetime now you describe beauty as a scarce resource but ogden is canyon is very too i mean you point out in your book that most people are sound where around the average somewhere around the middle 1000 make a beauty by is this phenomenon of discriminating or privilege ing people based on their looks. fairly infrequent because if we are all around the average who is discriminating against whom well not everybody is average i mean typical things like for example in the u.s. when these studies are done perhaps one 3rd of the people are rated as above average of whom a small fraction are rated as gorgeous and about a 6 the rate is below average so we're talking about the top 3rd in the bottom 6 which is half of the entire population so it's not

a rare thing but it is scarce in the sense that people value it and are willing to pay for it but i think you're also make a point in your book that for the large by them there are some differences internationally some countries are more generally to assessing looks than others but you make a point that for the most part people are rated as either attractive or around the or above average and yet you also say to your book that many people perceive that discrimination based on looks is pretty widespread at least more widespread than discrimination based on race on national origin or on the this city do you think that's just self perception people thinking that they're being discriminated or is that the real thing. tremendous amount of perception that one is discriminated against if one is bad looking or obviously favored if one is good looking. my guess is that people. perceive more discrimination than actually exists indeed that was

the purpose of our original study 25 years ago trying to put a number on how big the effects of looks differences are on the outcome such as earnings adjusting for everything else like raise gender age. and how big it is well in the us for men we're talking about maybe 10 percent extra earnings for those in the top 3rd compared to folks in the bottom 6th of looks a little bit less for women the effects are slightly smaller in the other 7 countries mostly rich western countries in which i've seen studies i even did one for china which found somewhat similar of facts although the chinese were unwilling to say anybody was ugly you're either good looking or average which is rather hard to believe now the most contentious part of your book for me is this i search and we are generally stuck with what i've been the chair has given us in the way of looks and i definitely don't buy that at all i think genes may it validate your

disadvantage you in early life but beyond a certain age there is no such thing as gratuitous beauty i'll grant you this ugliness for that matter your face your body i think he breaks off your lifestyle choices i they not they are and yet there's an immense amount of evidence that. you are basically stuck with what you have i mean sites used to study as one had pictures of kids when they were age 10 the same people when they were age 50 and it showed they had them rated for looks by a bunch of onlookers they then looked at the relationship between the age 10 beauty rating in the age 50 and they were a market be closely related the study was called do ugly ducklings become ugly docs which is a truly wonderful lie and the answer is yes they do other study looked at. women who had put on a lot of cosmetics and. done stuff and it turns out they were rated as being

slightly younger as a result of the cosmetics not very much younger and none the less though the beauty ratings that they received before and after were identical i looked at the effect in china of p. brim and spend the money on hair cosmetics it just doesn't matter very much for how people perceive your beauty well. you know professor how much it's all i don't know but i just had my high school reunion a few weeks ago and i can tell you for sure that it's pretty obvious that at age 40 an average looking person in good shape is much more attractive than somebody who used to be handsome you know a few decades back but who is in the bad physical shape now we leave this to the inevitable question what is beauty and how much of it overlaps with things like health longevity and likeability which are all under your control they are and they are and i mean health is partly surely age in that they just as beauty is surely

genetic. there's really very little you can do it basically has to do with how you project yourself and that is in your control and also the basal basic facial structure which you really can't change you can't have your bones or you're arranged to have a more symmetric face or more pleasing face cosmetic stuff is very superficial even cosmetic surgery is it's just doesn't help a lot but that cosmetic surgery or makeup it's not about beauty it's about present ability but beauty this is something that many people in many cultures in the russian culture at least it's closely associated with health. how how for your health is definitely under your control i mean when it comes to dye the exercise there are lots of things that you can do to make yourself more attractive even in older age you can and you'll feel better about it there's no question people who spend more on themselves for a few of her beauty do feel better about it but it's absolutely clear from a large number of studies that except for experienced stream values extremely fat

people how people perceive your looks just aren't greatly affected about it you may spend money on it that the better but it's not going to affect your looks or or that much in the labor market but professor is not only about how you perceive yourself but also about how people perceive you in fact i'm going to give you one example from earlier today i notice that every time i come to the studio is the guards here would always greet me twice and with varying degrees of warmth i have to say 1st when i just come and wearing jeans and no makeup it's one sort of hello and then again 40 minutes later when i'm wearing a nice dress and makeup it's a different sort of hello how significant of those props who knows shoes to make up trinkets in securing a good attractiveness rating from from the people who surround you it's

a great question in terms of outcomes namely for example how much you earn how well you do in the marriage market these people things just don't matter very much they're very superficial you will feel better about it and my guess is in your own case i can't be sure it's one person you may project yourself differently as a result of brushing up properly for example i'm wearing a very nice pinstripe suit i feel better about myself but nobody looking at me is going to say i'm gorgeous regardless of what i'm wearing your of wrong you are too harsh on yourself you know definitely very clever and so that's one of the major attractions. for the mom that's a very good point in fact that's the crucial point of the book the bottom line of the book namely i think you're pretty much stuck with your looks but if you have other things that you're good at either music or running or doing intellectual work or politics then one should take advantage of one's advantages and project those and forget about the fact that you may not be the best looking person on the

block now i know that for the purposes of your studies you limited yourself to me that is the face of the shoulders but you also point out that you had to instruct the interviewers there radius not to base that assessments on the nature of the interactions that they had with people who they were raving you have to control for that but isn't that how it happens in real life regardless of you know you know phase so it's symmetry it's features they alternate impression is formed based on what you a bringing from within those soft skills the confidence that you mansion vitality etc that's exactly right all of these things matter and diden several studies now including a new one i just did for children. self confidence does matter in terms of improving outcomes but it really doesn't alter greatly the impact of differences and beauty on those outcomes so yes those all matter but beauty matters too independent of

those other things now i personally have been on both sides of the beauty buys i've been discriminated privileged because of my looks at various points of my life and i'm absolutely sure that the same people would treat you differently based on how you look but i also notice that you indeed project yourself differently depending on how you feel about about your looks i know that more attractive people are usually happier but does it worry the other way around are happier people more attractive. that's very hard to say we've done one study after the book was done i published a paper on happiness and looks in 4 countries there's no question that the better looking people all else the same or happy or whether somebody who is inherently happy tends to be better looking that i've not seen anything on so i really can't answer that a wall but certainly the causation does go from looks to being happier both for men

and for women professor how much we have to take a short break now but we will be back in just a few moments states. elwood forward to talking. about technology should work for people. must obey the orders given by human beings except where such a conflict with the 1st law should your identification for should be very careful about official intelligence and the point obesity is a great transfer. very chummy with artificial intelligence was something the demon.

must protect its own existence has existed. an entire village in alaska. if another country threaten the wife of an american. we do everything in our power to protect. wanted me to skipping climate change poses the same threat right now. alaska has seen some of the fuss just coastal erosion in the world we lost about 30 feet. 35 feet of ground in just about 3 months while we were measuring. is fast and that means the river is 3. those are. your 4 i think we're

part of america the 1st for america. to. welcome back to old apartment daniel hamermesh and narrative professor alpha canonic said the university of texas author of beauty pays why attractive people are more successful but i say hamermesh i heard you say in one interview that beauty for the most part is a silly distinction and that goes not only against my feelings but also against a lot of thinker is from the book great writers like i'm talking chad or scott a while who all believe beauty especially in older ages is is a reflection of harmony across the various demands of

a person's live do you think they were silly as well. no i don't at all i think those things are about she much more important than the things i'm talking about what i'm bothered about in terms of differences and beauty is that i have observed and have measured the whole different bamber of contacts that in fact people who are bad looking do worse economically and that seems to be wrong morally it also seems to be wrong in terms of the gains for those doing this criminal nation is a feeling that shouldn't exist any more than any other kind of discrimination but as you pointed out before a very ways to compensate for you know perhaps not the most attractive looks that the nature gave you and i want to actually quote chapter of here the russian of the great russian writer who said that people should be beautiful in every way and that face is in the way they dress in their thoughts in their innermost selves he clearly believes that beauty has agency that it's a lock to bold that this is something like this is your obligation to yourself do

you disagree with that. i wouldn't disagree with chekhov on our team that's for sure but no i don't disagree my only point is that beauty which is to some extent inherent and can't be fixed it can be changed very slightly affects how well we do in life in terms of earnings in terms of marriage and it shouldn't because it doesn't affect our ability to reproduce it doesn't affect our inherent productivity as workers and that's the kind of thing that bothers me and that's the kind of thing i'm talking about in the book in terms of improving policy in this area well you just said that it doesn't affect our ability to repair it produced by beauty again is is a reflection of a person's health is it not i mean that's the evolutionary basis for why we have basing so many of our choices on the looks. it was the basis when in fact being good looking meant that you were fairly free of disease you weren't

disfigured but today ugly people aren't just as good as health as good looking people and are just as able to reproduce so part of our attitudes toward beauty i think are left over from days when it was a reflection of health which in rich countries today it is no longer the case now i heard you say that height and weight are independent of beauty. and this is something that doesn't sit with me at all because i know for a fact that if you are a 100 pounds overweight dogs will almost certainly show up on your face not just the general plumpness but the quality of your skin the brightness of your gaze the confidence of your pose in our weight of sask age can you really separate beauty from the from to pounds the kilograms that frame it. yes to some extent you're right when you say 100 pounds 100 pounds is a huge difference in weight 40 kilograms or so that's an immense difference but most people are no that not that morbidly obese nor that i'm

a ca did the overwhelming majority of people run from a b.m.i. from 20 to about 30 which is normal or overweight and within that very very important large area weight just doesn't make much difference in outcomes and beauty does vary more across people than wait for the 80 or 90 percent of people in that range so yes you're right for truly morbidly obese people that does affect how others perceive their looks but very few people thank goodness are morbidly obese though regrettably more becoming so but professor there are a number of recent studies that found that man and women jarred people with a higher b.m.i. body mass index as a last attractive and by the way women are the harshest judges there i mean there is a lot of talk about stigma and discrimination of fat people today do you think that's a valid problem. well there's no question that both in the u.s. and in european countries over the last 20 years people have gotten fatter none the

less the fraction of people who i would consider morbidly obese b.m.i. of 35 or more is still thank goodness quite tiny and there's no question looking at 3 or 4 studies that i've done over time the relationship with below that range of b.m.i. weight that is per height and beauty is just very very weak at best as separate things and they affect outcomes such as earnings marriage ability etc separately from each other it's interesting you say that because. i mean i'm like high i think weight is a current touristic that is easily changeable and i speak to that as a formerly obese person i know that for a fact you know once you lose a lot of weight you become a little bit jaja mantle of the fat people because you understand that to get into shape you know all you need is after the little bit just time a little bit of money perhaps a little bit of discomfort but you can easily do it and what some people describe

as discrimination of the fab i now see it as just a return on those investments for the fed do you think it's a wrong or perhaps cruel framing of the situation i think it's a very cruel framing of the situation. a let's assume being thinner is good ok not being thin or being fit or being fitter it's very hard to take self-control it takes pushing back from the table it takes in my own case not having chocolate chip cookies for snacks the fact that there are so many overweight people the fact that we value being fitter and thinner in the societies so highly people who are doing it it's not so easy to do believe me i would been trying to lose 5 pounds which is nothing for the last couple of months i lost more and more than 50 so i am a bad acts for the you are but you're maybe an extreme case and my guess is you're probably much more able to control yourself than most people in this discomfort but

professor you say it's actually a very controversial but also very important topic because overweight people different overweight people i'm not talking about morbidly obese but overweight people are more expansive for the society i mean that we know that matter bolduc diseases are the leading cause of mortality globally treating them is far more expensive than treating other diseases the care for overweight people and obese people in later life is far more expensive especially if they develop dementia or are the cognitive disorders to reach they. usually do so i mean i hate the word discrimination i think it's always cruel i would say agree with you on that but don't you think that they should be some other economic way way off discouraging people from packing up on x. or pounds for example a fact tax what do you think about the fact tax. i think it's wonderful i think having calories listed at restaurants on everything which we do in new york where i

live how if the year but we sure don't do it in texas i think that brings people who are aware of how much it's costing them in terms of weight i pay attention to that i think a fat tax a tax on sugared sodas is a wonderful i don't know but what i what what i mean by a fact actually is taxing people who are overweight more. better to be very hard to do in this country i think a better way is to tax the things that make be both fat such as sugar and sodas or highly caloric treats that starbucks for example there are easier ways to accomplish and more politically acceptable ways to accomplish what you and i both want than taxing fat per se why because i mean i don't think it's a matter of personal choice i know that you're in the states you don't have a public house system but i mean in many countries around the world they system is public and if you are required disproportionately more care in the resources than anyone else because if your lifestyle choices so why should i pay for it from my

taxes i mean if professor you want to eve chocolate chip cookies by all means do so but just paid in advance for the extra care you really require why is that not fair . this is seems perfectly reasonable to me and i just don't think politically at least in this country there is any chance whatsoever of that happening where as taxing sugary things tacking things that make you fat in the u.s. has been done and more of it should be done so i think there's a we're both after the same thing here another getting people thinner and healthier the question is only the means of how we get there now let me also ask you about hyatt which is last mutable down the way that although i know that there are clinics both in russia and in the united states that do a lag extensions it's been known for some time that taller man earn more they're also they also fare better on the marriage market so to say but i've seen. a couple of studies suggesting that women are increasingly opting for shorter males you know

be they short tight is no longer you know a major disadvantage is that an example of beauty being reinterpreted at least male beauty to the extent what you say is correct and i've not seen those studies again i would say it's not a reinterpretation of beauty beauty is basically independent of height rather it's a reinterpretation of another aspect that affects outcomes such as marriage and earnings namely height so yeah i think that's if in fact that's going on i view that as good and maybe can reinterpret the importance of beauty in these outcomes and maybe someday probably long after i'm gone people won't care very much about looks in terms of whom they employ and whom they marry but why would you ever want to get yourselves there i mean this is why in the way one indication of how a person is leaving his or her life you know the type of care he's taking about himself would be a type of carry he or she will take about future children etc i mean what if we

totally need to lack of beauty i mean what are you know what should be base our decisions on. no i don't want the gleick beauty i want to have beauty not be important in terms of economic outcomes i want people to be good looking to take care of themselves be fed be thin exercised but i don't want to have have that effect the extent to which they're able to earn money i want to divorce this from economic things since inherently it has no economic value it has psychological value but it ought not have economic value in a society that i would if you were is just but i mean people who look better or who feel better they also think that i mean there is an undisputable link between cognition and accessories for example they also tend to be more active more pro-social morning gauging perhaps more innovative aren't attractive people indeed batter workers are likely to be better workers no it's not their attractiveness per

say i might be a good worker because i'm very fit for a man who's 76 etc etc not too overweight but my beauty itself does not make me a better worker by keeping myself thin keeping myself thinking does being bad looking or good looking does not affect how well i do even though i've shown in other studies that better looking professors get paid more and students appreciate the more they shouldn't but these outcomes do exist while it looks like you have fighting against human nature let me ask you one last question there is a lot of talk these days about artificial intelligence and how would it how would it raise these beauty buys in both of you know positive and negative ways do you think that's possible and would you like to see it happen i guess you would say yes you would like to see it happen yes i would and for example in some countries still when you apply for jobs you post a picture of yourself which i think is

a disaster in the u.s. and some other countries really can't do that anymore so in a sense by mechanize their computerizing judgments about pay. say or about hiring we eliminate the effect of beauty or at least reduce that and i view that as very beneficial so the more we do that the more we eliminate beauty from non from economic outcomes i'm all in favor of that an ai is one of them while professor how meshed thank you very much for being with us today we have to leave it there and say and i opening discussion if i may advise people to review a book because they will you know a decade later it still sounds very very timely thank you very much and thank you for watching i hope to see you again next sunday on worlds apart.

walking back to you guys to report summer solution series on next bad with stacy harbor and today we're going to be talking about the banning cell of money stop stop being self costly and stop the world alliance joining us very quickly will be changes the whole lot of key stock cost a. little.

bit too. much. but because. of this connection to last him fast for the last company and seeing endemol today today for the dutch pro who should. she. gradually shift to time does in the. future. no new car so sit on the opening much to me mama just back.

alexei navalny arrives at a boat and also it's off to being at if good from russia to receive emergency treatment. crumblin opponent has been in a coma since gravely ill. put a russian leader form a human chain through minsk as post-election on the rest rolls on a long rally in support of alexander lukashenko has also taken place in western belarus. and sweden registers its highest 6 month deathrays in 150 years you were in criticism of its approach to cope with 19. you can find those stories on our website with the headlines in an hour. that's going on the ground.