Attractive faces influence fairness decisions, reducing negative reactions to unfair proposals, finds a new EEG brain wave study involving female participants using male faces.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301051124000681

From the linked article:

Attractive faces influence fairness decisions, reducing negative reactions to unfair proposals

According to a new study published in Biological Psychology, facial attractiveness and positive personality traits independently reduce negative responses to unfair offers in economic decision-making.

Consistent with established norms of fairness in decision-making, the results showed that participants were more likely to accept fair offers than unfair ones. However, acceptance rates were also significantly higher for offers from proposers with high facial attractiveness or positive personality traits, suggesting that these factors biased decision-making in favor of more favorable outcomes, even when offers were objectively unfair.

Overall, this study demonstrates that facial attractiveness and personality traits independently influence both the behavioral and neural responses to fairness in economic decision-making.

Women make bad decisions when pretty men smile at them. Who knew?

Yeah, it’s called the Halo Effect. People are very aware of it.