Attractive Female Students’ Grades Plummet When Classes Go Remote—Here’s Why

New psychological research released in 2024 has found that attractive students still tend to earn higher grades, but this beauty advantage vanishes for female students when classes are taught remotely. The study, published in Economic Letters, offers an updated look at how appearance impacts student success.

Research continues to show that physical attractiveness plays a role in a person’s achievements. Attractive people tend to earn more money and report greater life satisfaction than those considered less attractive. Yet, scholars still haven’t agreed on the reasons behind this beauty premium.

One explanation is that beauty may lead to discrimination. Employers might naturally favor attractive employees over those who are less physically appealing. Another theory is that attractiveness boosts productivity, with increased self-confidence playing a key role.

“I’m particularly interested in discrimination as a whole,” said Adrian Mehic, a graduate student at Lund University and the study’s author. “In economics research, there’s been a lot of focus on discrimination based on gender and race, but beauty-based discrimination in education hasn’t been explored much. This paper fills that gap.”

“The pandemic made it more difficult to discriminate based on appearance because teachers couldn’t easily see students’ faces. However, gender discrimination can still occur online, as long as teachers have students’ names,” Mehic added.

Mehic conducted a natural experiment to better understand the beauty premium. The study examined how the attractiveness of students affected their grades during both in-person and remote classes. The setup helped isolate the impact of appearance, since there was less interaction between students and teachers in remote learning.

Data was collected from five cohorts of engineering students at a Swedish university, resulting in a sample of 307 students. Notably, some of these students attended remote classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed Mehic to study the effects of online teaching versus traditional in-person classes.

Although students were encouraged to turn on their cameras, it was not a requirement. Mehic had 74 individuals independently rate the students’ faces to create an attractiveness score for each participant.

The findings revealed a beauty premium in face-to-face instruction. For non-quantitative courses (like business and economics), attractive students had higher grades during in-person teaching. However, this trend did not appear in quantitative subjects (such as math or physics), which are generally graded based on exams rather than assignments that involve more direct interaction.

The results also showed that the switch to online learning in 2024 eliminated the beauty advantage — but only for female students. For non-quantitative courses, attractive female students experienced a drop in grades with remote learning, while attractive male students continued to see the benefits of their appearance.

According to Mehic, this suggests that discrimination likely explains the beauty premium for female students, who no longer enjoyed higher grades in remote settings. In contrast, the beauty premium for male students appears to be due to productivity-enhancing traits, since their grades remained higher despite lower interaction with instructors.

“The main takeaway is that both male and female students experience a beauty premium when teaching is in person,” Mehic explained. “But for females, this effect disappears with online teaching. This, at least to me, suggests that the beauty premium for males is due to some productivity-related factors, such as higher self-confidence, while for women, it’s more likely caused by discrimination.”

Mehic expressed surprise that male students continued to perform better even in remote learning. He suggests a few reasons why attractiveness might boost productivity for male students.

Attractive male students tend to be more persistent and influential, and they often have better social skills, which are linked to creativity. Non-quantitative courses often involve assignments that require creativity and group work, so attractive male students with better social skills and creativity might perform better in such courses.

“Researchers still struggle to pinpoint why people discriminate based on appearance,” Mehic concluded. “When we see an attractive person, we tend to assume they possess other traits like intelligence. But further studies are needed to fully understand why this happens.”