Covid-19 has clearly affected the lives of many of us. In different ways. Because the pandemic has not only had consequences in people’s health. Corona has also had a negative impact on female, attractive students. This is shown by the results of a new Swedish study. Here you can see that when the teaching was moved out of the classroom and onto the computer screen, appearance no longer affected grades to the same extent. But this was primarily applicable to pretty women. Little difference was seen in male colleagues. Discriminates The study was conducted among students at Lund University in Sweden. Doctoral student Adrian Mehic is behind it. – Most of the teachers were men, so it seems reasonable that they primarily discriminate against female students. But even female teachers gave the attractive ladies higher marks before corona. He says so in a press release. Mehic is nevertheless surprised that the attractive male students were not affected to the same extent. But he believes there is an explanation: – There is a lot of research in psychology that shows that attractive men are more self-confident and more hardworking. This should be of use to them, regardless of the way they are taught. Adrian Mehic is a PhD student at the Department of Economics and the Center for Economic Demography at Lund University. Photo: University of Lund Who is attractive? But how to decide who is prettier than others? A jury consisting of 74 students of the same age was selected for this task. They looked at pictures and then rated the appearance of the participants. They gave marks from 1-10. The researcher collected data from approximately 300 engineering students. These were distributed among five different cohorts. Mehic then analyzed the points they had received before and after the pandemic. Age and gender were taken into account, both among participants and teachers. The results showed a significant drop in grades among female students who were considered to be attractive. But only in qualitative subjects. That is, in subjects where teacher and student often have to interact, and where the answers are often subjective. You did not see the same trend in subjects such as mathematics and physics, where you do not have the same proximity. Not surprised Adrian Mehic is not surprised by the results of his own study. He says good-looking people are known to have higher salaries, and that they have other advantages in working life. A study from the United States, which was published last year, showed similar results. Here it was found that attractive people earn up to 9 percent more than other peers. People with a good-looking appearance are also believed to have greater self-esteem. Which in turn can lead to better presentations and that you are better at speaking in public. Mehic believes the pandemic has made it more difficult for teachers to discriminate. – It got worse when you couldn’t see the students’ faces as easily. But discriminating on the basis of gender is also possible online, as long as you have a name to deal with. It is still not easy to know why people are discriminated against because of their appearance. – Perhaps it is the case that when we see an attractive person, we attribute qualities to that person that they do not have. Such as intelligence. However, more research is needed to determine exactly why this happens.
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Pretty female students got worse grades during the pandemic – the computer screen is to blame – news Trøndelag
