People draw conclusions about the moral qualities of others based on their appearance, Australian psychologists from the University of Melbourne found out that attractive people seem to them more courageous and fair than not too beautiful. The study was published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior.

Scientists invited 501 volunteers and showed them six photos of attractive and unattractive people of different gender and race. Each photo was accompanied by a description of some positive moral trait of a person (fair, courageous) and any other (strong, organized, etc.). The participants had to evaluate how the specified feature can be expressed in a person in the photo. In the second part of the study, another 756 volunteers completed a similar task, but with a different set of traits.

It turned out that participants were much more likely to attribute positive moral characteristics to more attractive people. To a lesser extent, the influence of beauty was expressed on physical and personality traits. The results are consistent with the findings of other groups of researchers who have found that beautiful people are generally perceived as more competent, smart, mentally stable, which helps them get jobs and promotions more often, be less likely to be considered guilty in a jury trial and receive other social bonuses.

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