Good looking students stopped getting higher grades with the transition to online learning

(PxHere/Q000024 https://bit.ly/3TvtuVo)

Attractive students of both sexes score higher in face-to-face teaching in subjects that require more interaction between teacher and students.

However, after the transition to distance learning due to the pandemic, the grades decreased only for beautiful female students, while male students did not change significantly.

It's no secret that appearance affects success in life. Attractive people earn more, get higher grades, and are less likely to engage in criminal activity.

This privileged position is called the "beauty premium", but scientists still disagree on how it is explained.

Some believe this is the result of discrimination: employers, for example, tend to favor attractive employees over ugly employees.

Other researchers believe that beauty is a sign of productivity: beauty can promote self-confidence, which helps in building human capital.

Also, attractive people have better social skills and are more popular with physically unattractive peers.

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THE STUDY
Now, a team of researchers led by Adrian Mehic from Lund University decided to study how the “beauty premium” works among students of that Swedish university.

The coronavirus pandemic helped, because due to the transition to distance learning, Mehic was able to better isolate the effect of appearance and compare changes in grades before and after.

For the study, Mehic chose industrial engineering students who had completed the first two years of a five-year degree program.

He used data from five cohorts of students who started in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Students who started the program in 2018 took 2 online courses in their second year, while students in the 2019 cohort took 2 online courses in their first year and 8 in their second year.

The team divided the subjects of the program into two categories:

• quantitative
• non-quantitative

The first group was mathematics and physics, and the second, all other subjects (business and economics, etc).

At the same time, non-quantitative disciplines are also distinguished by greater interaction between the teacher and the student:

• group classes
• seminars
• oral presentations

Courses in mathematics and physics are almost entirely based on final written exams.

Mehic therefore suggested that for non-quantitative items, the impact of the "beauty premium" would be higher.

After the transition to distance education, classes were held via Zoom, while there was no strict requirement for students to turn on the video camera.

That means the interaction between the teacher and the student, taking into account the appearance of the latter, decreased significantly compared to full-time education.

This suggested that if the difference in grades remains after the transition to online learning, then it will be due to discrimination based on personal preferences and taste, and not on the basis of performance advantage.

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THE RESULTS
A total of 307 students were included in the study, 37% were women.

To rate their appearance, Mehic assembled a jury of 74 people (44.6%) and asked them to rate the students' attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their photographs.

He divided the sample among the jury, so that each student received an average of 37 independent appearance ratings.

Data on student grades and assessments of their appearance were standardized.

The control variables were:

• the gender and age of students
• the average taxable income of both parents
• the average income of the municipality in which the student lives
• the sex of the teacher for each subject

The result of the analysis showed that before the pandemic, for all subjects, there was a positive, but statistically insignificant relationship between grades and attractiveness.

However, after dividing the subjects into 2 groups, it turned out that for non-quantitative disciplines, greater attractiveness (for both sexes) is associated with higher grades.

When adjusted for control variables, the coefficient decreased slightly, but still remained statistically significant.

For quantitative courses, no relationship was found between attractiveness and grades.

After the transition to online education, it turned out that the "beauty premium" ceased to operate, but only for female students.

When taking into account online learning, attractiveness and non-quantitative subjects, the coefficient showed a decrease.

For male students, the "beauty premium" remained even after the transition to distance learning.

These results show that the "beauty premium" in non-quantitative disciplines is associated with discrimination based on taste for women; and for men, physical beauty is more of a performance-enhancing attribute.

According to Mehic, these findings suggest that discrimination most likely explains the "beauty premium" for female students who no longer had higher grades when classes went remote.

But for male students, who continued to see higher grades with attractiveness even when student-teacher interaction was low, beauty appears to be a performance-enhancing attribute.

This is also consistent with previous studies that attractive male students are more influential among their peers and more assertive, which positively affects their academic performance.

Also, these traits are thought to be associated with creativity, and non-quantitative subjects involve more "creative" tasks than physics or math tasks.

Sources:

• Economics Letters: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652200283X#b4
• Lundagård: https://www.lundagard.se/2022/11/11/handledare-forsvarar-snygghetsstudien/
• PsyPost: https://www.psypost.org/2022/11/attractive-female-students-no-longer-earned-higher-grades-when-classes-moved-online-during-covid-19-64251

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#science #psychology #beauty #sweden #steemexclusive #news #nftmc