Kohler Benjamin, Mill Wladislaw
Center for Law & Economics, ETH Zurich, Haldeneggsteig 4, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
Department of Economics, University of Mannheim, L7 3-5, 68131, Mannheim, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2025 May 21;15(1):17632. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-02857-4.
A large body of research suggests that better-looking people are associated with various positive outcomes, an effect labeled the beauty premium. However, the vast majority of this evidence has been demonstrated in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries, neglecting the role of cultural mechanisms in translating beauty into socio-economic outcomes. We close this gap by leveraging cultural differences embedded in an essential artifact of culture: language. Specifically, we establish a method for examining beauty associations in machine learning-based language models. Using this method, we replicate several standard findings in English. More importantly, we create a linguistic measure of the beauty premium and apply it to 68 languages. We provide new evidence that the beauty premium may be universal, with considerable heterogeneity across cultures. Furthermore, we discuss several new avenues for future research arising from our findings.
大量研究表明，长相出众的人往往与各种积极结果相关联，这种效应被称为“美貌溢价”。然而，绝大多数此类证据都是在西方、受过教育、工业化、富裕和民主（WEIRD）国家得到证明的，而忽略了文化机制在将美貌转化为社会经济成果方面的作用。我们通过利用文化中一种基本产物——语言所蕴含的文化差异来填补这一空白。具体而言，我们建立了一种在基于机器学习的语言模型中检验美貌关联的方法。使用这种方法，我们在英语中重现了几个标准发现。更重要的是，我们创建了一种衡量美貌溢价的语言指标，并将其应用于68种语言。我们提供了新的证据表明，美貌溢价可能是普遍存在的，且不同文化之间存在相当大的异质性。此外，我们还讨论了基于我们的发现而产生的几个未来研究的新方向。
