While browsing the latest dating app, have you ever stopped and wondered “Why are so
many of the good looking people jerks?” Well, it turns out that there’s a simple
explanation for this phenomenon.
If we make a little graph of Niceness v.s. Good Looks, we can start to get an answer.
First, we have to assume that people are equally spread across this chart; meaning some people
are mean and ugly, some are ugly and nice, some are good looking and mean, and some are
good looking and nice! Of course, this is based on your subjective taste, and what you
find beautiful and nice.
Now if you think about it, you probably have zero interest in people who you find mean
and ugly, meaning you’re pool of potential mates gets a bit smaller. And truthfully you
probably prefer a certain combination of niceness in good looks. Ultimately, we’re left with
a triangle of people you find acceptable and give attention to in the first place.
But now, 100% of the people left in your pool who aren’t that attractive to you are nice
- they have to be otherwise you wouldn’t pay them any attention. After all, if somebody
is nice, you’re less likely to be critical of their appearance, which brings down the
average of nice peoples looks. To the same token almost half of the people that are beautiful
to you, are mean. Again, if somebody is mean, you likely require that they be really attractive
for you to give them any attention, which makes it seem like more attractive people
are jerks.
If we take this a step further we can assume that people who are both hot and nice are
the best catches, and get swept off the market quickly, further increasing your perception
and bias.
We can see a similar thing happen with food - do you ever wonder why it seems that healthy
foods just don’t taste as good? Well let’s use our chart - Yumminess vs Healthiness.
Of course, in reality this chart probably isn’t evenly distributed, because food is
often created to specifically taste good, so the right hand side of the graph is likely
more dense. Regardless, we can take out all the foods that don’t taste good and aren’t
even good for you, because why would you bother eating them? But of the foods left over that
you do eat, now 100% of the foods that don’t taste good are good for you!
Just like the dating graph, it’s because of the people or foods that you don’t pay
attention to, that your perception becomes skewed.
Back to dating, and it’s true. From your perspective, good looking people are more
likely to be jerks - but it’s because of who you’re paying attention to in the first
place. You simply ignore the ugly jerks!
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