Adolescent Facial Attractiveness and Later Life Morbidity, Cognition, and Mortality

Abstract

Are associations between ratings of adolescents’ attractiveness and their adult health, cognitive functioning, and longevity plausibly causal, or are they confounded by factors correlated with judgements about attractiveness? How do these processes differ for women and men? Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, the authors estimate the impact of judgements about adolescent facial attractiveness on 35 cognitive, health, and mortality outcomes through age 72. Ratings of adolescent facial attractiveness are predictive of later life outcomes among women, but mainly because ratings of young women’s attractiveness are closely connected with women’s socioeconomic standing and body mass in early life. The same is not true for men. People use different standards to evaluate the attractiveness of women and men; these differences induce largely noncausal associations between ratings of young women’s attractiveness and their cognition, morbidity, and mortality.