Soc (2009) 46:347–349
DOI 10.1007/s12115-009-9219-4
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY
Never Pick a Fight with an Ugly Person,
They’ve Got Nothing to Lose
Rachel Rayburn & James D. Wright
Published online: 6 May 2009
# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract In the 1970s, social psychologists conducted
numerous studies analyzing physical appearance as a social
variable. More recent studies in the social sciences appear
to have abandoned this topic as unimportant; in any case,
very few social scientific studies have been found that
incorporate a measure of attractiveness into their analyses.
The present study seeks to revive the emphasis on physical
attractiveness as a social variable by testing the relationship
between crime severity and physical attractiveness, i.e., by
presenting evidence to suggest that physically unattractive
men commit more serious offenses.
Keywords Physical attractiveness . Unattractiveness .
Mate selection . Crime
Social scientists can be indifferent to the most basic things.
We wonder about the causes of social phenomena, deduce
or infer hypotheses, and then design elaborate tests. For
example, we might wonder what causes people to marry
one another. Common theories might implicate religious or
social class homogamy, gender role compatibility, common
educational backgrounds or racial and ethnic heritages, and
on through a familiar list. And if we found a survey (or
conducted one) with all these variables included, surely
they would help us predict who marries whom. But if we
ask Joe why he married Jane, he’d probably blurt out
something like, “Oh, that Jane. She’s a real looker.” And
Jane might say, “O-oh, Joe is s-o-o handsome.”
A basic fact, confirmable by the simplest of observa-
tions, is that some people are attractive and others are not.
R. Rayburn (*) : J. D. Wright
Department of Sociology, University of Central Florida,
4000 Central Florida Blvd.,
Orlando, FL 32816, USA
e-mail: rrayburn@mail.ucf.edu
Slightly more attentive observations will also confirm that
attractive and unattractive people are treated differently, and
surely, over a sufficiently long run, these differences in how
people are treated could have consequences for other areas
of life: status attainment, mate selection, marital well-being,
overall life satisfaction, development of social capital, and
on through a long list. And yet when was the last time
“physical attractiveness” was deployed as an explanatory
variable in a social scientific study of any of these
phenomena?
To the extent it is studied at all, physical attractiveness
has been in the domain of psychology and social
psychology. As we review below, studies in these traditions
have consistently shown physical attractiveness to be
important. Part of the agenda in this paper is thus to urge
social scientists to pay more attention to this variable.
Surely, attractiveness is socially constructed (witness the
vast differences across time, space and culture in what are
considered to be physically attractive traits) and one with
important social scientific consequences. Is it not therefore
obvious that this is something the social sciences should
pay more attention to?
In a wild departure from sociological research norms,
Richard Hamilton and James Wright (The State of the
Masses, Transaction Publishers, 2007) analyzed determi-
nants of life satisfaction in a national survey using
conventional predictor variables and interviewer assess-
ments of respondents’ physical attractiveness. The standard
stable of sociological horses performed predictably: Mar-
ried people were more satisfied with life than singles; those
in good health more satisfied than the sick; whites more
satisfied than non-whites; the affluent more satisfied than
the poor. But the analysis showed that physical attractive-
ness was also important, indeed, was a more significant
predictor of life satisfaction than race, gender and social
348
class combined. Black or white; male or female; rich or
poor: looking good makes life better.
This, of course, conforms to common experience and
every-day interaction. All of us, day in and day out,
whether consciously or not, pay more and kinder attention
to people we find attractive than to people we find to be
homely or plain. Indeed, even rudimentary observation will
confirm that discrimination against the unattractive is
rampant almost everywhere. Pretty people are sought out
for interaction, asked out on dates, chosen for jobs, and
given the benefit of the doubt more frequently than ugly
people. Unattractive people know and resent this but sooner
or later, they accept it as a sociological fact. When we
discuss the Hamilton–Wright finding with lay people, the
invariable reaction is, “Well, of course!”
In the 1970s, social psychologists picked up on the
importance of physical attractiveness and began doing experi-
ments. A 1977 study found that physically attractive people
are often treated as “good” and “lovable” and thus may come
to think of themselves in those very terms, as labeling theory
would suggest. Conversely, unattractive people are shunned
or treated as “bad” and “unlovable” and may eventually come
to incorporate those traits into their self-identities. Other
studies (based on the perceptions of public school teachers of
pre-school students) suggest that the advantage of being
attractive may start as early as preschool, continue through
college, and eventually contribute to occupational success.
Whereas it is illegal to discriminate based on age, race, or
religious practices, employers can discriminate on the basis of
looks—and studies show that they do. More attractive
individuals have an easier time getting jobs and tend to end
up with better jobs.
Studies in criminology have also shown that unattractive
offenders are punished more harshly and cited with more
serious offenses than attractive ones. Others have found
discrimination based on physical appearance within jury
deliberations. Homely, average, or “plain-looking” defend-
ants are more often found guilty of crimes.
These criminological findings seemed consistent with
informal observations one of us (Rayburn) had made during
a casual inspection of the sex offender registry in Brevard
County, Florida. In Florida and most everywhere else, these
registries are public information and publicly accessible
through a web page. Information about the nature and
seriousness of offenses and, in the present case, a
photograph of the offender are included. Casual observation
seemed to suggest that the least attractive offenders had,
with some consistency, been convicted of the more serious
offenses. How might this casual observation be confirmed
through more systematic study?
The sex offender registry provides approximately 700
registered sex offenders whose public records included a
photograph. From the data provided, we created two
Soc (2009) 46:347–349
categories of offenders: (1) violent offenders with multiple
offenses and convictions; and (2) non-violent offenders
with only single offenses. Offenders who did not fit either
of these two extremes were eliminated from further
consideration. We then randomly picked 12 people from
each category, 24 in total, and uploaded the resulting 24
photographs to a web site to have volunteers anonymously
rate the attractiveness of each of the persons in the photos.
The website is www.hotornot.com and it exists specif-
ically so that people can find out where on a scale from one
to ten their physical attractiveness (or that of their spouses,
friends, acquaintances, etc.) is rated by others. Individuals
upload photographs that are posted publicly for anonymous
reviewers to rate on the ten-point physical attractiveness
scale (where ten is, of course, the most attractive and one
the least). So the rating task is evidently one with which
visitors to the web site are very familiar.
We gave each offender a code name to insure anonymity.
Raters obviously had no idea a scientific study was
underway and certainly had no ideas about what crimes
these men had committed, or for that matter, that they had
committed any crimes at all. The only information available
to raters was the fake name and the photograph. Our
question was whether the average ratings of the more
serious offenders would be lower (less attractive) than the
average ratings of the less serious offenders.
Approximately 42 anonymous participants rated the
attractiveness of these 24 individuals over a time span of
7 months. Each photograph was rated by a variable number
of people, but the total number of ratings averaged 42 for
each of the 24 men.
As we expected, men in the “less serious offender”
group received higher average attractiveness scores than
men in the “violent, multiple offender” group. In this study,
the relevant N is not the number of raters, but the number of
ratings. Specifically, 1,008 different ratings (42 different
ratings of 24 different photographs=1,008 total ratings),
about 500 ratings in each group, were used to calculate
means and standard deviations for each group and then to
calculate the statistical significance of the mean difference.
The difference between the means of 5.79 (for the more
violent group) and 6.74 (for the less violent group) was
statistically significant at α ≤ 0.01. More violent sex
offenders are significantly uglier than less violent offenders.
We need to be clear on what this difference might and
might not mean. It certainly does not mean, for example,
that people attribute greater ugliness to more serious
offenders (which in other designs might be a plausible
hypothesis). Our raters could not possibly have been aware
of either the fact or the nature of the criminal offenses these
men had committed. Instead, the result seems to imply
either that less attractive men in fact commit more heinous
offenses, or in any case that they are convicted of more
Soc (2009) 46:347–349
heinous offenses whether they in fact commit such offenses
or not. The result, that is, may be showing us that less
attractive offenders are charged with more serious offenses,
receive longer sentences, are less likely to be offered a plea
bargain, or are otherwise treated differently in the criminal
justice system. Either possibility is consistent with theory
and previous research.
Why would less attractive men commit more serious
crimes? One plausible explanation can be found in the so-
called “frustration–aggression hypothesis” developed in
psychology by Leonard Berkowitz and others. In its
simplest form, the hypothesis suggests that frustration
results when people are unable to attain their goals. In the
case of the physically unattractive, a lifetime of discrimi-
nation (remember: studies suggest that the advantage of
being attractive starts very early in life) may well have
thwarted one’s educational and occupational goals or one’s
social and marital aspirations, as well as goals in other areas
of life. The ensuing frustration over persistent discrimina-
tion on the basis of something that you cannot do very
much about must be intense. Theory further suggests that
the ensuing aggression is usually directed towards the cause
of the frustration, but if the cause is society-wide patterns of
discrimination, aggression maybe displaced onto other
persons or objects, i.e., one’s crime victims.
Our suggestion, in short, is that ugly people commit
more serious crimes because of greater aggressiveness born
of a lifetime of discrimination. Our society has only
recently condemned discrimination based on skin color,
gender, and religious affiliation, but we encourage preju-
dice against the unattractive. Is it not at least plausible that
this continual, underlying, and accepted form of discrimi-
nation leads unattractive individuals to aggressive tenden-
cies including sexual offenses?
There is also ample evidence that the attractive and the
ugly are treated differently in the criminal justice system
and this too might explain part of the pattern we observed.
Studies show that prosecutors charge more attractive
offenders with less serious offenses and that juries are
more likely to convict physically unattractive people than
they are handsome or pretty defendants. (Rape cases are a
partial exception in that convictions are apparently easier
with unattractive victims, apparently because of subtle
beliefs that good-looking women are somehow more
responsible for calling forth sexual aggression in men.) So
it may be that our more serious offenders are less attractive
not because they committed more intrinsically heinous
offenses but because they were more likely to be arrested,
less likely to be plea-bargained, or more likely to be found
349
guilty and punished than good-looking offenders would
have been.
Our small study and many other areas of research thus
converge on what is, in any case, a pretty commonsensical
but often-overlooked conclusion, namely, it is better to be
good-looking than ugly. The advantage enjoyed by good-
looking people seems to be quite ubiquitous, but clearly
there is a need for more research. Although these studies
have not been done so far as we can tell, we would guess
that attractive people come to possess more social capital,
have more and closer friends, are more likely to be elected
to office, are more influential in their communities, even
have an easier time when they go to apply for food stamps
or car loans or interview for graduate school admissions,
than the homely and unattractive. If people in general
attribute benign motives, higher talents, or superior virtues
to attractive people, they will treat attractive people
differently, and sooner or later, those differences will be
internalized into self-identities. One would be hard-pressed
to find a more important social variable that has received
less systematic research attention than this.
Further Reading
Baumeister, R. F., & Darley, J. M. 1982. Reducing the biasing effect
of perpetrator attractiveness in jury simulation. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 286–292.
Hawley, P. H., Johnson, S. E., Mize, J. A., & McNamara, K. A. 2007.
Physical attractiveness in preschoolers: relationships with power,
status, aggression and social skills. Journal of School Psychol-
ogy, 45, 499–521.
Jacobson, M. B., & Popovich, P. M. 1983. Victim attractiveness and
perceptions of responsibility in an ambiguous rape case.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 8, 100–104.
Stewart, J. E. 1980. Defendant’s attractiveness as a factor in the
outcome of criminal trials: an observational study. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 10, 348–361.
Rachel L. Rayburn is a teaching assistant and Ph.D. student in the
Department of Sociology at the University of Central Florida.
Rayburn has recently served as a reviewer for the journal Social
Forces and as a graduate research assistant. She received her BS from
Florida State University in 2005 and her MA from the University of
Central Florida in 2008.
James D. Wright is an author, educator, and the Provost’s
Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at
the University of Central Florida. He was an Associate Editor of
Society from 1988 to 1997 and published his first scholarly article in
the magazine (nee Trans-ACTION) in 1972. This is his tenth Society
paper. The title for this article is a quote from Robin Williams, access
at http://thinkexist.com/quotation/never_pick_a_fight_with_an_ugly_
person-they-ve/346806.html.