It does pay to look your best at work

Attractive people are usually hired sooner, get promotions more quickly, and are paid better than their less-attractive peers, researchers have claimed.

Researchers found that attractive people earn an average 3 to 4 per cent more than people with 'below-average' looks, the 'Sydney Morning Herald' reported.

The study, led by Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at the University of Texas analysed the concept of beauty as a factor in a person's success in multiple ways.

Beautiful people tend to bring in more money for their companies, and are therefore seen as more valuable employees and hard workers, according to professor Dario Maestripieri,from the University of Chicago.

Maestripieri calls this principle "the pleasure of dealing with good-looking people." "Good-looking people are more appealing as potential sex partners," Maestripieri says, "and [so] other people choose to interact with them, to spend time near them, talk with them, buy insurance from them, and hire them as employees."

Hamermesh, however, believes that it's not just the 'sex appeal' that makes attractive people more successful and there are still ways to succeed despite one's looks.

He said that attractive people tend to have desirable personality traits, like higher self-confidence - likely a direct result of their good looks-that appeal to employers. "Beauty may just reflect self-esteem. Perhaps people's self-confidence manifests itself in their behaviour, so that their looks are rated more highly, and their self-esteem makes them more desirable and higher-paid employees," he said.

"Another possibility is that beauty and the attractiveness of one's personality are positively related, and that it is the general sparkle of one's personality, not one's beauty, that increases earnings," he said.

Researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston also found that people with facial blemishes and "disfigurements"- birthmarks, scars, blemishes - were more likely to be rated poorly by their interviewers.

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