Aside from our natural inclination toward attractive people in, oh, every aspect of society, this also seems to be because most of us view science as another form of entertainment. When someone says that they "love" science, they don't mean they're poring over the latest issue of The Lancet. They mean they half-watch Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest Netflix show while they fart around on their phones. This can create a bias in what issues are considered to be of public importance, which in turn affects research funding, with money going to whoever can make their subject seem fun and interesting, rather than objectively useful. Of course, all this raises a potential paradox: How hot were the scientists who conducted this study?

This trend appears to come from the assumption that attractive people expect better outcomes in their lives, and thus would soon grow dissatisfied with mundane work. If you look like your only prior work experience was ringing church bells while hiding from the taunts of villagers, then it's believed that you'll be happy to keep whatever work you can get. But if you have a chiseled face, then people think that you're only making do until you get an executive position and/or your own cologne line.

That's not necessarily true, of course. Plenty of conventionally unattractive people are professionally ambitious, and many attractive people are, for all sorts of different reasons, happy to keep whatever job is giving them a steady paycheck. But there's a subconscious bias that can screw over everyone, and one that we should find a way to combat without having to tell interviewers "Remember, hot people can be bozos lacking ambition too!"

This study only applied to men, and it was an experimental setting, but it was more evidence for what's long been assumed true: that an attractive man is inherently viewed as competent and ambitious, while an unattractive one doesn't get that same benefit of the doubt. This wasn't even supermodels versus dungeon ghouls, but more like sevens against fives. We feel compelled to hitch our wagons to sexy trains, because we think that they're going places and can take us with them. We are all subconsciously considering what someone's hot bod can do for our own careers.

Again, the solution isn't to just say "You need to suck it up and work with that butterface!" or "Don't worry, they're not as talented as they look!" But if we start from the default but inaccurate assumption that attractive people are more competent, then we're going to make what we think is a logical decision which instead leads us even further astray. And that's both bad for everyone's careers, and a logical flaw that explains the vast majority of human behavior that irritates you.

The results make some measure of sense for jobs that involve public interaction, like sales, because we still associate those roles as requiring attractive people. But it makes less sense for an office job -- at least, until you learn that 75 percent of the recruiters for the accounting position were men. (Men who were apparently lonely, despite the raw sexual thrill normally offered by accounting.)

This study had some, ahem, size limitations, but it's a compelling argument for ending the practice of including photos with resumes. In this day and age, candidates should be judged solely on their ability to strategically exaggerate their qualifications while selling blatant lies, like claiming that they're "passionate about enhancing strategic value."

The study accounted for education, upbringing, and so on, and in doing so, it flipped a common assumption around. People who are shorter and heavier don't fare poorer in life because they had a lousy, malnourished background; they fare poorer simply because society tends to look at them and say, "Eh, they probably don't need that much money to pay for what we assume is their hobby of knitting sweaters for the cats that are their only company in their cold, lonely apartment."

Yes, there are DeVito-sized exceptions, but on average, being a shorter man or a heavier woman limits your opportunities. Employers prefer tall men -- it's established that big shots in the business world tend to be taller -- and it's also possible that shorter men and overweight women are likelier to suffer from low self-esteem because of, you know, living in a society that says overweight women are hideous and short men are impotent little balls of rage.

And no, we're not saying that evil managers are getting together to plot against the short and the fat, but when you're bombarded with implications about certain body types from birth, it's impossible not to be influenced by them. At least we at Cracked are doing our part to combat society's stereotypes by not making much money despite looking like a gaggle of modern Adonises.

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For more, check out The Scientific Reason You Want To Have Sex With Jessica Rabbit:

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