暨南经院学术系列活动之经济学系列Seminar第276期
主题：College Admissions, Status-seeking, and Facial Characteristics in China and the US
主讲人：David Ong（暨南大学）
主持人：杨仁琨（暨南大学）
时间：2023年11月7日（周二）下午15:00-16:30
地点：暨南大学石牌校区经济学院大楼（中惠楼）102室
摘要
Emerging evidence from psychology and finance links facial characteristics to cognitive and non-cognitive abilities in males. Prenatal testosterone relates to facial masculinity in men and mathematical aptitude while circulating testosterone correlates with facial-width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and effort in status-seeking behavior. To explore how these associations might influence the labor market beauty premium via college admissions, we analyze photos from 450 online social media profiles of alumni from Chinese universities ranked 1-200. Chinese universities use standardized tests almost exclusively for admissions. Thus, the rank of alumni can serve as a measure of academic ability and effort in test preparation. We use 450 profiles of US university alumni who are admitted based on additional factors such as grades, extracurricular activities, personal statements, letters of recommendation, and interviews as a comparison group. The alumni’s photos were rated for facial beauty and fWHR. Our findings support the prenatal testosterone hypothesis, as male alumni in China in "Hard" majors exhibit significantly higher attractiveness at high-ranked colleges. Additionally, the fWHR of male alumni in China increases with university ranking, regardless of major, supporting the influence of circulating testosterone on test preparation effort hypothesis. No significant associations were found for US male alumni. These results suggest that college admissions solely based on standardized tests may introduce biases related to male facial beauty and personality traits.
David Ong is an professor of economics at Jinan University-University of Birmingham Joint Institute, Guangzhou. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on experimental and behavioral economics, particularly gender differences in competitiveness and marriage search and matching. He also has worked on the labor market beauty premium, co-author matching, price dispersion, and choice overload. He has published in the Journal of Development Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior, and Organization, and Economics Letters.
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校 对 | 李仲达
责 编 | 麦嘉杰
初 审 | 黄 振
终审发布 | 郑 贤
