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Beauty and the Sources of Discrimination

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  • Michèle Belot
  • V. Bhaskar
  • Jeroen van de Ven

Abstract

We analyze discrimination against less attractive people on a TV game show with high stakes. The game has a rich structure that allows us to disentangle the relationship between attractiveness and the determinants of a player’s earnings. Unattractive players perform no worse than attractive ones, and are equally cooperative in the prisoner’s dilemma stage of the game. Nevertheless, they are substantially more likely to be eliminated by their peers, even though this is costly. We investigate third party perceptions of discrimination by asking subjects to predict elimination decisions. Subjects implicitly assign a role for attractiveness but underestimate its magnitude.

Suggested Citation

  • Michèle Belot & V. Bhaskar & Jeroen van de Ven, 2012. "Beauty and the Sources of Discrimination," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(3), pages 851-872.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:46:y:2012:iii:1:p:851-872
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    3. Arunachalam Raj & Shah Manisha, 2012. "The Prostitute's Allure: The Return to Beauty in Commercial Sex Work," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, December.
    4. Buser, Thomas & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2023. "Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 350-370.
    5. Parrett, Matt, 2015. "Beauty and the feast: Examining the effect of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 34-46.
    6. Adam Zylbersztejn & Zakaria Babutsidze & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Astrid Hopfensitz, 2023. "How beautiful people see the world: Cooperativeness judgments of and by beautiful people," Working Papers 2309, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    7. Daniel Hamermesh, 2012. "Tall or taller, pretty or prettier: is discrimination absolute or relative?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-17, December.
    8. Kapoor, Sacha & Magesan, Arvind, 2019. "Having it easy: Discrimination and specialization in the workplace," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 153-173.
    9. Altmann, Steffen & Traxler, Christian, 2014. "Nudges at the dentist," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 19-38.
    10. Tom Lane, 2020. "Along which identity lines does 21st-century Britain divide? Evidence from Big Brother," Rationality and Society, , vol. 32(2), pages 197-222, May.
    11. Ruffle, Bradley J. & Sherman, Arie & Shtudiner, Zeev, 2022. "Gender and beauty price discrimination in produce markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    12. Deryugina, Tatyana & Shurchkov, Olga, 2015. "Now you see it, now you don’t: The vanishing beauty premium," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 331-345.

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