Tyler Cowen points today to a new paper suggesting that attractiveness counts for a lot when it comes to being accepted into top economics programs. That got me curious, so I clicked the link. Here's the data:
As you can see, average folks have a noticeably higher chance of ending up at the worst economics programs, while attractive people have a higher chance of ending up at the very best. The authors say these effects are "not only statistically significant but are also substantial in magnitude."
I guess I have no reason to question that, but an eyeball look at the data doesn't really make it look like attractiveness has all that big an effect. Even at the extremes it doesn't look all that large, and in the middle the effect is reversed, with attractive people more likely to go to below-average programs while average people are more likely to go to above-average programs.
Plus I'm suspicious of the big drop in the middle. Why does everyone avoid programs in the #5 and #6 positions?
I dunno. None of the differences are bigger than 1.5 percentage points, and the average difference in each half of the distribution is tiny. This just doesn't strike me as an awfully big deal.
But if you say it that way, you don't get a pub.
I was talking about the antiscientists in the family with my stepson last night and he said he had a paper refused for publication on the grounds that he showed something doesn't work rather than showing that it does.
Anyone who would make a stupid statement like that doesn't understand how science works. 99% of ideas fail and understanding why they fail leads you to ideas that work.
That means that most of the world of social science doesn't understand how science works because this sort of publication bias is at the root of their ongoing replicability crisis.
So disproving the theory of spontaneous generation doesn't count as science, amirite? Somebody here doesn't understand how science works. But it's not me, and it's not your stepson either.
Very strange that sexes were not differentiated. Supposing that more males than females are economists, that males have higher ranks and make more decisions, that appearance for females is undoubtedly considered of greater importance even by females (amount of money spent on "beauty" products by women vs men) and some other things, we would expect a greater effect for appearance of females than males. Not differentiating the results by sex may have reduced the effect.
This is a very good point. There is the added problem of measuring attractivity: There are certainly different criteria for men and women. One would like to know anyway how the study got data for that--did the researchers just look at a few thousand photos and distribute them into categories?
At any rate "attractive" means more than just looks; it includes manners, temperament and other factors (some of which can be controlled by the individual). Makes things even more complicated.
Attractiveness is also class dependent: E.g. rich people are less likely to be fat then poorer people. Maybe class is a complete explanation of the results of this study.
Not only is attractiveness a signal for class but let's not exclude race and ethnicity. A study comparing program "Quality" and applicant "Attractiveness" is so full of loaded assumptions that it is a wonder this cold get published at all.
On the other hand, my experience with the "research" Tyler Cowen shares on his blog leads to be not so surprised after all.
A woman economist with a Paulkrugmanian beard would never get anywhere in her field.
Probably because the middling programs are (a) not cheap, and (b) not the best programs. If you aren't going to go to a school in the top 50ish of your profession (or top smaller-number in a smaller profession), then it doesn't really matter where you go so much as just getting the degree.
+1
1.5 percentage points out of about 9 is ... 17%? Seems huge to me. On the other hand, don't looks correlate with something else? Health maybe?
This does not explain the physical appearance of the economists I see on television.
Sure it does. Those economists didn't get into a good school, so they can't get a real job, and end up on TV instead.
Larry Kudlow was a history major, anyway.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose you partitioned economists into high- and low-score by GRE, then plotted the percent in program by quality of program, then fitted a linear trend to each group. Wouldn’t you expect to see the low scorers trending downward, and the high scorers trending upward, sort of a low-profile X? Do we see that here?
My speculation: high-rated schools get to charge higher tuition, therefore have wealthier students who can afford better haircuts.
Things have changed since I was in grad school in economics; I switched programs in mid-stream, One was a highly rated program, the other was second tier institution. No one asked for a photo. No one knew what I looked like until I showed up on campus. I will say that the faculty at the lower-ranked institution were better looking that the faculty at the highly ranked one. Which might be because the faculty at the less prestigious place were considerably younger.
I actually think it's probably an indirect result of the halo effect: being better looking results in getting better grades, which results in being more likely to be accepted by so-called top programs.
This is two stories in a row where the thrust is "That statistic? It doesn't matter, who cares", which seems to be a more and more common subtext to these posts. It's a little disconcerting to see "Things are fine, whatever" as one of Kevin's major themes.
J.M. Keynes addressed this issue (sorta) in the 1930s:
"It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees." (From The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936).