The other day I was involved in a Facebook conversation with somebody who made a statement to the effect that children who attended a particular elementary school were “beautiful.” I responded that this isn’t too surprising, since the school is located in an extremely affluent section of Los Angeles, and there is a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and physical attractiveness. He disagreed with me, and since he’s somebody who didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and is better educated than I am, I naturally questioned my own statement. I’ve always been led to believe that the correlation is an established tenet of social psychology, and never had any reason to doubt it. The reasons why this is true have been explained to me at various times as being (among the following) that
1). Affluent males are more likely to attract and procreate with an attractive woman.
2). Physically attractive people just generally have it easier in life, because people react to them positively from an early age, which favorably affects their personality and leads to behaviors which tend to foster a higher socioeconomic status in adulthood.
3). Wealthy people can more readily afford preventive dentistry and medicine, and other things which lend themselves to physical attractiveness, such as a healthier diet.
Is there any validity to this line of reasoning? Bear in mind that I’m just positing that there’s a positive correlation; I’m not saying that the correlation coefficient is 1. So please don’t start jumping up and down screaming “but I personally know a butt-ugly rich person, so there!”