The age-old adage “beauty is power” has never seemed more relevant — or measurable. In a new study, researchers from the University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) revealed that attractive MBA graduates are more likely to land desirable jobs and earn higher salaries than their less attractive peers. Over a 15-year career, this “beauty premium” adds up to a significant advantage, with the most attractive individuals earning thousands of dollars more annually.
The researchers analyzed the career trajectories of over 43,000 MBA graduates from top U.S. business schools. In parallel, they used advanced machine learning techniques to objectively assess the attractiveness of each graduate based on a single profile photo. They then tracked their career progress, ranking jobs based on desirability and salary.
The results were striking. Attractive graduates had a 52.4% higher chance of holding a more desirable job 15 years after earning their MBA and earning 2.4% more annually than their peers. This “beauty premium” translates into an annual salary increase of $2,508. For the top 10% of the most attractive individuals, the gap widened further, earning $5,528 more annually.
“This study shows how appearance shapes not just the start of a career, but its trajectory over decades,” says Nikhil Malik, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of Southern California.
The Beauty Premium in the Job Market
What makes this study unique is its longitudinal approach. Unlike previous research, which often relied on short-term experiments or snapshots of career data, this study tracked graduates over a 15-year period. The findings suggest that the beauty premium isn’t just a fleeting advantage in the early stages of a career. It accumulates over time, with attractive individuals consistently outpacing their peers.
The researchers proposed two mechanisms to explain their findings: belief bias and preference bias. Belief bias occurs when employers assume attractive individuals are more competent, healthy, or socially skilled. In pop psychology, this is known as the halo effect. Preference bias, on the other hand, stems from a desire to work with or be around attractive people, regardless of their actual perceived abilities.
In fields that rely heavily on social interaction, such as management and consulting, the beauty premium was most pronounced. Attractiveness was perceived as an asset, helping individuals climb the corporate ladder and secure higher-paying roles.
In contrast, technical fields like IT and engineering showed significantly smaller rewards for attractiveness. Here, skills and expertise appeared to outweigh the influence of appearance, although there was a slight beauty premium in this industry as well.
This may explain the “horizontal sorting” effect that the researchers observed, where attractive individuals tended to avoid technical roles in IT or engineering, gravitating instead toward managerial or social-facing positions. This sorting amplified their premium, as these fields often reward social skills and charisma.
Interestingly, the beauty advantage persisted across early and late career stages. Even in the late thirties and forties, attractive professionals experienced steady gains. This debunks the idea that appearance-based biases fade over time, as reported in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research.
“This research underscores how biases tied to physical appearance persist in shaping career outcomes, even for highly educated professionals,” says Param Vir Singh, a co-author and professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
A Stark Reminder of Hidden Biases
The findings also raise important questions about fairness in hiring and promotions. While the gender wage gap among MBA graduates is approximately $10,000, the beauty premium adds another layer of inequality, disproportionately favoring those deemed more attractive.
The researchers did not find significant differences in the size of the premium between men and women. In other words, attractive men and women both benefited from the beauty premium, but the advantage was not disproportionately larger for one gender over the other. That said, the researchers acknowledged that while the career premiums might be similar for attractive men and women, the broader consequences of beauty bias could differ. For example, attractive women might be more likely to face unwelcome romantic or sexual attention in the workplace, a factor the study did not measure.
This isn’t the first study that found evidence of a beauty premium in the workplace. One of the earliest and most influential studies on the topic, “Beauty and the Labor Market” by Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle (1994), found that attractive people earn 10-15% more than their less-attractive peers. A 2015 cohort study analyzed facial attractiveness in adolescence and linked it to higher earnings decades later. Men who were rated as attractive in high school earned significantly more in their 30s and even into their 50s, suggesting that beauty’s professional benefits endure over a lifetime.
Even in fields where technical skills are paramount, attractiveness can still play a role. A 2015 field experiment by Bradley Ruffle and Ze’ev Shtudiner found that attractive job applicants were more likely to receive callbacks and higher salary offers, even in industries like IT and engineering.
These findings open the door to a host of new questions. On one hand, how do individuals navigate the beauty premium? Are they strategic about leveraging their attractiveness in certain job markets? On the other hand, how can organizations mitigate the impact of beauty bias so they hire the most qualified people for the job, regardless of their appearance?
The researchers hope their methodological framework will inspire future studies. By combining machine learning with large-scale data analysis, they’ve created a tool that can be used to explore other forms of bias, from speech patterns to cultural preferences.
“It’s a stark reminder that success is influenced not just by skills and qualifications but also by societal perceptions of beauty,” concludes Kannan Srinivasan a co-author also from CMU.
