Why Good-Looking People Fancy Us So Much?
Haven’t we cultivated a habit of presuming the good-looking people innocent? Haven’t we let off smart-looking people just because we believed they were too innocent to commit a crime? Haven’t we resigned ourselves to the self-held credo that the beautiful, sexy criminals shouldn't be punished to the culpability of crime committed? The recent incident involving Jeremy Meeks, whose photogenic mugshot became the latest global viral sensation, quintessentially lends gravity to this long-held prejudice. The question – Can beauty influence our perception? If yes, then to what extent?
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| The Beautiful People are Addictive Temptation to Eyes |
Remember the Britney’s famous rap, “Mama I'm in love with a criminal. And this type of love isn't rational, it's physical”?
So the thing is, when I heard about the handsome mugshot becoming international viral sensation with people advocating against his sentencing, I had this song whirling in my mind picturing an individual’s perception of beautiful people. Though I have personally ran a check on the status of the striking mugshot going viral as alleged in media reports, quite surprisingly there are indeed people advocating against his jail terms for weapon felony.
If the media reports are to be believed, Jeremy’s photogenic mugshot attracted overwhelming response from sympathizers (86k+ likes and 11k+ shares) soon after its posting on Facebook by police department in Stockton, California. I got this information from one of the celebrated Indian newspapers, TOI, which alleged that the mugshot inspired some fans to go to an extent of bailing the convicted out of the jail!
Why the beauty the concept of presumed innocence?
Beauty is in the eyes of beholder. Hence, it depends upon an individual’s receptive understanding to interpret someone’s beauty.
However, the fact of the matter – smart-looking people (male or female) create such an unavoidable impression that the onlookers or beholders find themselves smitten with the beauty which translate their coveted approval to the innocence of the handsome.
According to the Wikipedia, there is psychological reasoning behind such a cognitive assonance of people with the beautiful criminal. This is called HALO EFFECT signifying that a beholder’s observance to a person’s facial expression and body language affects his cognitive reasoning with regards to the characteristic attributes of the person.
To state otherwise, whether a person is good or bad largely depends on conclusion of your observance to his/her body language.
I believe most of you have observed this eccentric fact of HALO EFFECT at workplace wherein your handsome colleague often steals the show and average-looking is not recognized for their talent to the annoyance of entire team, you included.
Though the performance at workplace is subject to ergonomic analysis of workforce, yet the beauty often eclipses other factors. To this context, some mistakenly believe women are given privileges not in commensurate with their talent, but they are considered for such privileges on the ground of their attractive-looking.
The beauty of anything or anyone directly strikes us in a positive way. We tend to hold on good views about it. For instance, if someone offers you fresh and nice-looking apple, but forbids you from eating it by giving this reason that the fruit is rotten inside, and thus, it may contain harmful bacteria, you will probably disbelieve on him. Or may be you will shoot a couple of questions.
Why?
Because you just can’t digest the fact that how such a nice looking apple could be rotten inside? This is our attitude with good-looking people as well; we tend to blithely escort the term, beauty, we actually believe in the ‘abstract’ fealty of beautiful people.
UK-based study report reveals that smart-looking convicted can influence jury’s decision to their favor.
To substantiate this theory, the researchers from UK-based Bath Spa University gave half of the volunteers the photogenic mugshot of convicts (subjects) and the other half were given ugly-looking mugshot of convicts.
On summary conclusion, it was revealed that the volunteers with photogenic mugshot urged acquittal of the convicts after reading their transcripts of mugging case (despite the presence of criminal evidences) while the others with ugly-looking mugshot of convicts favored their jail terms. (Source – Times of India).
Strikingly beautiful girls at workplace or in public places earn the constant gaze from different male beholders. Likewise, handsome males are irresistible temptation to their female counterparts.
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