The Power of Beauty
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Nature gives you the face you have at 20; it is up to you to merit the face you have at 50. -- Coco ChanelA local judge who has four beautiful young law students working for him this summer asks me how to deal with inappropriate attorney comments about their youth and beauty. For those men over 35 reading this column, young women lawyers do not appreciate being told they are young or beautiful in a professional setting. And they particularly dislike being called girls.
More important is the whole question of beauty -- what it is and what magic it can perform. For negotiation purposes, we ask whether attractive attorneys and their clients can get a better deal than their less attractive peers. At least some of the answers to that question can be found in Coco Chanel's famous comment about beauty quoted above. But first the research.
Beauty is a Powerful Tool of Persuasion
Assuming that the "hits" a quality-describing word elicits from a search engine indicate the relative importance the quality described, I googled "beauty" and "intelligence" this morning. Beauty edged out intelligence by only a slight margin -- garnering 697 million to the 652 million hits generated by intelligence. For what it's worth, people apparently aren't so interested in coupling these two qualities. Searching both beauty and intelligence offered up only 26 million hits.
Because the young women law clerks I spoke to last week assumed that men fascinated by their beauty would not respect their intelligence, this morning's blog should cheer them up.
The Research
In the early 1980's, social science researchers found that physically attractive people are not only considered more intelligent and competent than their less fetching peers, but are presumed more competent in fields completely unrelated to physical attractiveness -- such as piloting an airplane. Other research studies followed, showing that we also expect physically attractive men and women to be more trustworthy, reliable and charitable than their less attractive peers, as well as better educated, stronger, and wiser.
Studies on electoral habits have shown that attractive candidates receive as many as two and a half times the number of votes as unattractive candidates and that voters do not realize their bias. Whether this confirms or disproves the adage that politics is show business for ugly people is up to you.
The influence of beauty does not stop at the political choices we make. Our judicial process is also susceptible to the influences of body dimension and bone structure. Researchers have found that attractive male criminal defendants are twice as likely to avoid jail time as unattractive miscreants. The relative good looks of civil litigants also influences juries, which award twice the damages when plaintiff is better looking than the defendant and half the compensation when the defendant is more physically attractive than the plaintiff.
As Robert Cialdini wrote:
Good looking people enjoy an enormous social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently assisted, and seen as possessing more desirable personality traits and greater intellectual capacities. It appears that the social benefits of good looks begin to accumulate quite early. Research on elementary school children show that adults view aggressive acts as less naughty when performed by an attractive child and that teachers presume good-looking children to be more intelligent that their less attractive classmates.
Youth and Beauty in Los Angeles -- Are the Rest of Us Out of Luck?
There's a scene in Arnold Schwartzenegger's Last Action Hero in which his young sidekick tries to convince this movie-character-brought-to-life that they are still in the movie. Standing in a Blockbuster check out line, the two are surrounded by tall, beautiful, blonde women -- and only tall, beautiful, blonde women. The kid tugs on Schwartzenegger's jacket and says-- "see -- look around you; we have to be in a movie -- we're in a video store and all of the women are beautiful," to which Arnold nonchalantly replies, "that's just because we're in Los Angeles."
Stereotypes aside, the world's movie capital is awash in youth, beauty and talent of both genders. Does that mean the rest of us are out of luck? Let's talk to the social scientists again.
The reason physical attraction is powerfully persuasive is because we like people who have the characteristics we reflexively attribute to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Whatever else makes others find us likeable can therefore be just as, or more powerful than, the beauty from which we infer likeable characteristics.
Similarity
We like what we already know and who we already know, i.e., ourselves. Therefore, we like people who are similar to us -- whether that similarity be in the area of opinions, personality traits, background or lifestyle (see June 30th's post -- Conspiracy Theories and Granfalloons).
Whether we like it or not, if we want to get the part, we need to dress the part. In a business negotiation or legal setting, this means showing up in a suit and tie (or, for women, slacks or skirt and jacket). If we're selling surfboards, a suit would kill the shop -- T-shirts, bathing trunks or swim-suits with pukka shell necklaces should do the trick.
For less obvious similarities, we need only ask our negotiating partner a lot of questions. Where are you from? What business are you in? Do you have children? Did you see Pirates of the Carribean yet? Have you been to Cancun? Even, wasn't it hot this weekend?
If you can find nothing in common with your negotiating partners in this way, you can "mirror and match" their body postures, moods and verbal styles -- characteristics which, if similar in seller and purchaser, powerfully affect the sale in favor of the one doing the mirroring and matching.
Yes I Like You, I Really Really Do!
No one alive at the time is likely to forget Sally Field's Academy Award winning exclamation -- "You like me! You like me! You really like me!!!" Social scientists confirming what we already know have done time on the praise and flattery issue as well. Not only are strangers better liked when they compliment their new acquaintances, this effect occurs even when the subject of the flattery knows that the flatterer stands to gain something by liking him.
Though I personally find it uncomfortable and distasteful to compliment another for an attribute I don't like, respect or believe they possess, the researchers tell us that we needn't be honest to achieve flattery's benefits. Simply put -- pure praise does not have to be accurate or sincere to work. Positive comments elicit the same degree of liking for the flatterer whether they are accurate or sincerely held or not.
Cooperation Trumps Competition
"You catch more files with honey than with vinegar," my mother always said. Whether fifties' moms counseled their sons in this regard with the same vigor I don't know. If they didn't, however, the men of my generation missed out on this powerful persuasive strategy. Divide any group of people by any kind of distinction -- race, gender, nationality, eye color or random "even" and "odd" numbers fished out of a hat -- and they will begin to create "in" and "out" groups -- the fertile ground in which competition, conflict and dissention flourishes.
When researchers give games geared for competition or cooperation to these groups, they find that the cooperators like their fellow collaborators better than they do those who compete with them. I won't even bother to state the obvious implications for the way in which one's litigation conduct will affect the potential for a mutually satisfying settlement.
Back to Coco Chanel
Although anthropologists have traveled the world in an effort to find and confirm that standards for beauty are identical in all cultures (based on such measures as body type and symmetry of facial features) I doubt that there is a single reader who has not met an incredibly attractive person who does not meet any of these standards.
Anyone who's ever found themselves thinking -- wow! she's really not at all beautiful -- she's plain and overweight in fact -- but she's incredibly attractive, knows what I'm talking about. Sometimes we call this reaction "chemistry" but it usually flows from attractiveness that is earned.
People who are comfortable in their own skins; who are vital, active, happy, kind, and generous do not need the "halo effect" provided by pure physical beauty. After all, we like beautiful people because their beauty leads us to believe they are smart, talented, generous and good-natured. Actually possessing those qualities not only makes us as persuasive and likeable as beautiful people, eventually, it ill also make us beautiful.
Note to Those Beautiful Young Women Attorneys
Not to worry. A few years from now, say, 25 or so, men will not reflexively remark upon your beauty when you enter the room. By that time, as Coco so wisely said, your face will have become your own responsibility. In the meantime, smile indulgently at those men over 35 who tell you what a beautiful girl you are. As annoying as this may be, the men who say these things not only think you're beautiful, they also think you're talented, intelligent, generous, virtuous and kind.
Live life joyously and authentically and, when you turn fifty, you will possess the qualities people automatically ascribe to you now because of your beauty. More imporatantly, you will have become beautiful by being the kind of person people used to imagine you were.
