CREDIT: TEKSOMOLIKA / ISTOCK / THINKSTOCK
A recent study found that women who are considered more attractive get higher grades, but only in traditional classroom settings as opposed to online classes.

A study originating from an American university found that women who are deemed more attractive get higher grades than their less attractive classmates.

The study, which took place at Metropolitan State University of Denver, rated the attractiveness of students based on their student identification photos. The researchers looked at more than 6,500 student photo cards and over 168,000 course grades according to Inside Higher Ed.

The study found there was a grade increase of 0.024 in a woman’s GPA on a 4.0 scale with every one standard increase in attractiveness.

Rey Hernández-Julián, one of the lead researchers in the study, said via email that he was not surprised by the results.

“We know that appearance matters, many studies have shown this but we don’t always know why,” Hernández-Julián said.

He said the study’s main contribution was to find out if there was a difference in grades depending on whether a course took place in a traditional classroom setting compared to an online course, not just to see if attractiveness had an effect on grades, as many studies have already proved correct. The study found that the difference in grades based on levels of attractiveness did not occur in online courses.

Hernández-Julián said this is the most interesting fact to come out of the study.

“What I see as the key finding here: as the students appearance increases, the difference in grades between online and traditional classes gets larger, with traditional courses being the ones with the higher grades,” he said. He added this suggests that the return to appearance does not come from unobservable traits, such as higher ability or higher effort.

Hernández-Julián said there are many possible factors that contribute to more attractive students earning higher grades.

“It could be the case, though, that students who know they are attractive have higher levels of confidence when they know they can be seen, and not in online environments, and that this confidence translates to higher grades,” he said. “We know that confidence matters, and we believe that discrimination is a factor.”

The study found that men’s grades were not affected based on their level of attractiveness.

Students should not be too worried about the results of this study, as the grade increase is not drastic. A student who earned a D grade will not magically earn an A grade just because they are considered beautiful. More realistically, an attractive student may earn an A- grade where a less attractive student may have earned a B+ grade.

“The fact that appearance matters so much more when you can be seen suggests that the explanations that argue that appearance is capturing information about other productive traits is not as convincing as that the appearance itself is the source of the difference in outcomes,” he said.

Does the fact that a student’s level of attractiveness can earn them a higher grade mean a lack of academic integrity? Hernández-Julián said no.

“It could be that in traditional classroom environments peers help the better looking students, or that better-looking students are particularly adept at the kind of assignments that are present in traditional classrooms and not online, such as oral assignments,” Hernández-Julián said.