For some reason, it’s common knowledge that rude people have above-average looks. I hope this article will convince you otherwise.
If personality traits and attractiveness are roughly normally distributed, then shouldn’t we see just as many attractive jerks as ugly jerks? Yes and no. There are two explanations for the rareness of unattractive jerks.
The first explanation is that, although both traits are normally distributed, they might hover on the upper end of the scale. When asked to rate people’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 through 10. The average is usually between 5 and 7 instead of being centred. The same could be said about people’s ratings of politeness. It could be the case however that the true population average is a 5/10 rating. It’s just that we don’t try to limit our interactions with ugly rude folks.
The second and more statistically interesting explanation is as follows. There are three types of people you go on dates with.
- Attractive people who are nice (Ideal).
- Attractive people who are rude.
- Unattractive people who are nice.
No one swipes right for unattractive people that don’t make up for it with their personalities. The result of this mate-selection mechanism is that all jerks are hot.
Look at the three categories above. The only rude people are attractive. It has probably nothing to do with the innate distributions in the general population.
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Affiliate Links
- How Not To Be Wrong – Jordan Ellenberg
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