The Halo Effect

In the Arab world, there is a widespread belief that if a child is too beautiful or brilliant, s/he may attract the evil eye (Hasad). Parents are sometimes advised to avoid posting pictures of especially pretty babies in order to protect them (click: Evil Eye).

While perhaps it was an evil eye that was cast upon a certain kindergartener pageant queen in Boulder on that tragic Christmas day in 1996 -- call it the Jon Benet Ramsey effect --  Western culture generally bestows great privilege upon the beautiful. They tend to get more parental attention, better grades, more money, and overall satisfaction from life (click: Moral Hazards Of Being Beautiful, text also linked here).

Research seems to suggest that physically attractive people often cultivate self-serving beliefs in their superior power and status, even goodness, in a world that is fair and just and rewards merit. In short, unacknowledged entitlement. Just spend seven minutes here with Tina Fey (The Beauty Bubble).

We’ve previously explored the journey into the thicket of luck and chance in MM 4/9/18 The Role Of Luck In Life but there is something special when it comes to the genetic lottery that births distinct physical attributes. They work below the conscious level unlike, say, the way race has assumed actionable legal status. Squishier physical qualities, say a man’s height or the timber of one’s voice, are in the mix – you in the business world may be able to cite examples of those whose primary qualification seemed to have been “looking the part.”

Just because these matters may be subtle and officially unacknowledged does not make them any less real. Sometimes they may be mocked e.g. Randy Newman’s, “Short people got no reason to live.” The real answer, though, is how one plays the hand that’s dealt.

But back to beauty, we see the emergence of an inner quality outside the realm of the physical as in the cited observation of Sappho, “What is beautiful is good and what is good is soon to be beautiful.”

Then there is that song from another lyrical poet, Jimmy Soul, as he advised, “If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.”