When classes were delivered remotely during lockdown, attractive female students’ grades fell. This is according to a study titled, “Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching“, authored by Adrian Mehic of Lund University in Sweden.
According to Scrolla Africa, for several decades, the notion that beautiful people receive higher grades based on their appearance was considered a joke by other students, but it has now been proven to be true.
Some believe that professors award higher grades to more attractive students based on their physical characteristics.
However, some scientists have argued that attractive people tend to perform better in certain tasks due to their increased confidence.
The author of the new study, Mehic stated that, “The pandemic provided us with an excellent opportunity to determine whether this beauty premium is the result of discrimination or some productive trait.”
The research was conducted on 307 engineering students who attended college in Sweden both prior to and during the pandemic.
The attractiveness of the students was ranked from 1 (extremely unattractive) to 10 (extremely attractive) by a panel of 37 independent raters. The student’s age, gender, course & the gender of the professor was also taken into consideration.
Prior to the pandemic, male and female students with more attractive appearances had a tendency to earn higher grades.
However, once lectures and examinations were moved online, the advantage of the attractive females was lost.
The study revealed that facial attractiveness influences academic performance in face-to-face settings. As education moved online after the pandemic’s outbreak, the grades of attractive female students deteriorated.
During the remote learning period, the average attractiveness bonus for women decreased drastically.
Mehic, the study’s author, believes that the fact that the majority of professors are men likely plays a role.
However, the study also revealed that, prior to the pandemic, female professors gave attractive females higher grades.
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Mehic asserts that higher self-confidence can result in higher grades regardless of how one is taught.
