Do Pretty People Earn More?

Looks Do Matter at Work

By CareerBuilder.com

You know the woman -- the one who could wear a paper bag to a board meeting and still manage to look both beautiful and perfectly professional. As if it weren't annoying enough that she maintains her obnoxiously flat abs by lifting doughnuts to her mouth, it turns out your gorgeous co-worker may also be out-earning her less genetically-blessed colleagues.

Good looks can have a real impact on workers' bank accounts, according to research by Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle published in the Journal of Labor Economics. Attractive people earn about 5 percent more in hourly pay than their average-looking colleagues, who in turn earn 9 percent more per hour than the plainest-looking workers. This means if an average-looking person earned $40,000, their prettiest co-workers would make $42,000 while their least attractive colleagues brought home just $36,400. Plain-looking workers may also receive fewer promotions than those awarded to their more striking contemporaries.

Steven D. Spitz, D.M.D. and owner of cosmetic dentistry firm Smile Boston, said he once had a client who wanted his assistant to get veneers, and was even willing to pay for the dental work -- as long as the assistant asked for it. "He said this was a woman who was really good at her job and he was moving up (within the organization), but he couldn't take her with him because her teeth were so bad," Spitz said. The assistant never came in for the dental work, and Spitz said he didn't know what became of her career.

Are pretty people just more talented?

It remains uncertain whether the handsomest people translate their good looks into higher productivity, but students do consistently give better-looking professors higher evaluations than they give their less comely teachers, according to research by Hamermesh and Amy Parker at the University of Texas in Austin. Still, many experts warn against assigning too much value to beauty in the workplace, arguing that even if your good looks do get you in the door, they may not get you much farther.

"A person can be breathtaking in person and destroy that within the first five minutes by acting in a way that seems superior or behaving in a way that is lewd or provocative," said Francie Dalton, President of Dalton Alliances Inc., a consulting practice providing executive coaching to C-level clients. "Although I very firmly believe that looks are the first thing one notices, I am not convinced that looks trump things like competencies, interpersonal skills and other factors," she said.

Richard St. John, author of "Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky, and RICH," says he's so unconvinced of the connection between good looks and competence, he often chooses to hire the "visual underdog." "I'm not saying looks won't help you be successful at getting a date," St. John said. "I'm saying looks won't help you be successful in other areas of life."

Unfair, but legal

Unlike religion, national origin or disability, discrimination based on looks is legal in most jurisdictions, said James McDonald, Jr., managing partner of the Irvine office of employment law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP. Washington, D.C. and Santa Cruz, Calif. are two of the only municipalities with laws explicitly protecting workers against discrimination based on physical characteristics or personal appearance, he said. Still, that hasn't stopped workers from launching unsuccessful lawsuits.

Fortunately, there's -- literally -- more to attractiveness than meets the eye. Researchers Markus Mobius and Tanya Rosenblat found that confidence makes up 20 percent of perceived attractiveness. To ensure the image you're portraying is a confident one, be sure your posture doesn't betray your nervousness. Keep your back straight, head high and make eye contact with your associates.

The things doctors eat...

If doctors aren't making wise choices about their health, what kind of message are they sending their patients?
by Claudia Kalb
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 13, 2008

I'm not naive when it comes to doctors' diets. I've seen M.D.s eat cookies in hospital cafeterias and gulp down sodas at medical conferences. One of my doctor friends sneaks corn dogs and fried dough at the beach. But even I was surprised when I sat down to dinner with a couple of physicians one night and watched them order the biggest steak platters on the menu. Here were two guys who presumably recognized the ills of dietary fat and clogged arteries, eating an overly rich, wildly caloric meal. Shouldn't they have known better?

On the whole, America's physicians are healthier than the people they take care of. Twenty-one percent of the population smokes; only 4 percent of docs do. And M.D.s are leaner, too. Forty-four percent of male doctors are overweight and 6 percent are obese, according to Harvard's Physicians' Health Study. The rest of America: 65 and 32 percent, respectively. We can all do better.

But doctors are the people we look to for guidance and advice about our health. If they're not making wise choices, what kind of message are they sending us? Studies show that physicians are more likely to counsel patients about good health habits when they're also following the rules. "You can't look a patient in the eye and talk to them about exercising, diet and weight loss if you yourself aren't a role model," says Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. David Eisenberg, director of the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School, came up with a novel idea: teach doctors how to create "nutritious, yet delicious" meals so that they can, in turn, teach their patients. With diabetes, heart disease and cancer plaguing this nation, a nutritious diet is "as essential as any prescription drug or surgery," says Eisenberg, who developed a passion for cooking as a child when he spent weekends in his father's bakery. Last month some 300 health-care professionals, most of them physicians, gathered in Napa Valley to attend Eisenberg's brainchild, Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives, a collaboration between Harvard and the Culinary Institute of America. They listened to scientists talk about healthy carbs and phyto-nutrients. They received guidance on the basics—how to hold a knife, how to measure portion size. And they learned how to eat mindfully, savoring flavor, texture and taste.

Dr. Rajani LaRocca attended an earlier session in April and went home inspired. Plenty of LaRocca's patients at a community health center in Charlestown, Mass., want to lose weight, but too often they look for an easy out. "People come in and ask, 'Is there a pill?' " she says. A couple of weeks ago, LaRocca and her colleagues put on a healthy-cooking demonstration for their patients, teaching them that olive and canola oils are "good" fats—something many doctors still don't know, according to a survey of physicians published in Nutrition Journal. "You have to change the basic way you think about food," says LaRocca.

Medical professionals must change the way they think about themselves, too—and early on. Dr. Jo Marie Reilly, of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, has seen the negative impact that doughnut-eating, sedentary young M.D.s can have on their clinic population. Patients will say, "This doctor is telling me to lose weight and exercise more, but look how he looks," Reilly says. Reilly's first-year med students must fill out a "physician wellness contract" stating their personal health goals. Yohualli Balderas-Medina, 23, committed to running regularly and maintaining close ties with friends and family, which can reduce stress and lead to better health outcomes. She's done both, and says she feels "healthy and motivated." A great beginning for a future doc and her patients.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/162334