Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What role does attractiveness play in everyday life, and is it ever truly objective? Marc, Jürgen, Stefan and Ingo join Dr. Yasemin Yazan to explore the halo effect, cultural beauty ideals, the fashion and beauty industries, and where conscious choice ends and unconscious bias begins…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you all. We’re starting a little late today, because my husband surprised me by closing my laptop, and there was a program running in the background overnight, which meant the last three percent still had to finish running this morning so we wouldn’t have all that fan noise on the recording. I figured I’d just wait it out quickly since 3% isn’t much, and we just about made it, hence the slight delay. So sorry about that, that’s the backstory. Now, though, I’m genuinely looking forward to tackling today’s room topic with you, as we already discussed yesterday: the power of attractiveness. What role does attractiveness play in everyday life, and what effects does it have? We already touched on the term “halo effect” a while back, and today we want to look at that more closely, and above all open up different perspectives. I think there are a lot of aspects we can address in this context, and many areas this ultimately has an effect on. So you’re all very warmly invited to join us again this morning, bring in different impulses, thoughts, perspectives, maybe even concrete examples we can work our way along, so that we can see together what emerges from the exchange this morning, what insights we can draw from it, and what that concretely means for us.
And as every morning, we have a recording running today too, which will be published afterward. So anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. We have three small room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, can of course use the chat as always to bring in questions or thoughts. And now I’m looking forward to welcoming whoever joins first at my side. We already have a hand raised, and Marc is joining. A very good morning to you, dear Marc — what are your first thoughts on this topic?
Good morning, everyone. Yes, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and the first thought is about the industry I work in — not promotional items this time, but the fashion industry. And the fashion industry makes a whole lot of money from attractiveness, because we don’t all buy our clothes just because we need something to wear — there are studies showing that 60 percent of the clothes in our closets never actually get worn, but we buy clothing because we want to have an effect on the other person: in a job interview, in a sales conversation, or because we feel more comfortable ourselves. But in the rarest of cases is clothing bought because we’re cold or too warm. And this industry is huge — in Germany alone, the clothing industry generates a total of 58 billion euros in revenue. And the second point that occurred to me on attractiveness is that social media has extremely changed how we feel about and personally handle attractiveness. Because if you realize how many young people nowadays use filters — where images aren’t just retouched to make the pictures prettier, but to make us prettier, taller, shorter, slimmer, broader, whatever — that takes on some pretty bizarre forms for me.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And there are so many different aspects to this. On one hand, you just mentioned the fashion industry, and that immediately made me think of the saying “clothes make the man,” I’m sure you all know it. So what’s actually true about that, and how can we interpret that here in the context of this room, the power of attractiveness, and what effects does it have? Then there’s the media, or social media — meaning we have certain beauty ideals, as you just mentioned, which of course can also vary from country to country or culture to culture. There might be certain overarching threads, but on the other hand also deviations, so to speak, that are country- or culture-specific in part. And, yes, a memory popped into my head from the past few days — we were at the bank together with my mom to take care of something and had to wait a bit. And of course, when you’re sitting there, you look left and right and observe people a bit, what they’re doing and so on. And I remember there was a relatively young girl standing at the counter with her mother, waiting, and I noticed her leg hair. I think that counts here too, because of course summer, beach, and so on, short clothing — and she was still fairly young and had leg hair, and I noticed my various impulses about it, and then the wheels started turning in my brain, so to speak. On one hand, I was fairly certain she’d probably start removing that leg hair within a few years at the latest. Then I looked at different legs and thought, it’s somehow interesting that it’s perfectly fine for men to have leg hair. And very few men I know — there are individual exceptions who do groom their leg hair, so to speak — but very few do anything about it. For women, it’s completely taken for granted that they have to take care of their hair, body hair. And if they don’t, the impulse is often, “something’s not quite right there,” along those lines. And I remember very well, sitting there a few days ago, noticing these impulses on one hand, and at the same time reflecting and observing what that actually does to me. And I find that really exciting too — just observing yourself, in the sense of self-perception, and becoming aware of it. And of course that brings us straight to beauty ideals — what gets impressed on us from a relatively young age, in early childhood already, so that we grow up with it to some extent, and it becomes something we take for granted, something that — and here we’re back at unconscious bias — if we don’t question it, we’re to some extent at its mercy. Marc, would you like to add something here?
Yes, I want to give you a hug for that, dear Yasemin, because I think that’s such an important topic you just raised — the power of attractiveness and the power of the fashion industry telling us how we should be. That really does lead to young people today having problems because they no longer fit the beauty ideal. And I think this is such an important topic that educators, at least in schools, need to address — that we learn what you’ve taught us too, namely: who says we have to look like this, is that really true, and can we also look different and still be successful? And on cultures, I also brought something along that I found very interesting — there’s a difference in attractiveness, there’s no universal validity, because different things can be considered attractive in different cultures and different regions. And that can actually be explained. I brought along two examples. First, skin color — there’s white and, let’s just say, colored, though I know there are now terms where I really have to concentrate on what I’m still allowed to say so as not to offend anyone, but you know what I mean. White skin stands for living indoors. And if I lived indoors, I had a good job, an office job. That always used to mean I was richer than someone who lives outdoors. And I noticed this on my first trip to Asia, that there’s sunscreen that doesn’t necessarily have the function I buy sunscreen for, to avoid sunburn, but sunscreen meant to make sure I don’t get any more tan at all. I absolutely don’t want to get any more color, because that’s a status thing. And having the status of living outdoors means I’m poorer than someone who lives indoors. And the second thing, which you mentioned, is the beauty ideal of thin versus heavy. Here in Europe, or let’s say Germany, I don’t know how it goes in all European countries, being tall and slim counts as the beauty ideal. In another country, say if we go to the African region and someone comes along who’s stick-thin, that person is rather seen as sick and not having enough to eat — and not just sick, but also poor, because if someone is that thin, they simply don’t have the money to buy proper food. Quite fascinating too.
Yes, absolutely, wonderful, thank you so much. What I also find really exciting here is, perhaps for context, why we have this topic here at all. Independent of the fact that you all already touched on the halo effect a few days ago, I actually saw, in the news feed I get on Xing — I always glance at those headlines to keep myself up to date — there was an article called “The Power of Clothing: Your Hidden Compass for the Job Interview.” And just clicking on that link and looking at the various headlines, I find that quite exciting. Let me just throw them in as impulses: “Clothing is a status symbol” is one of the headlines. “Clothing sends signals.” Then we have “Clothing, mirror or shackle” posed as a question. “Unconscious bias and discrimination” is raised as a topic, and then there’s this aspect, “you decide.” Though that raises the question for me of to what extent I can actually decide anything here, because biases automatically kick in in the background in so many places. That means I might be able to decide to live it differently, but that, so to speak, comes at a price. And I’m really curious to look at that direction too. The fact is, ultimately, whether it’s clothing or hairstyle — for women, for example, it’s a very classic norm that women tend to wear long hair. Little girls start early with hairclips, barrettes, braids, whatever. For boys, it’s more the short hair. And that gets impressed on one hand, and it’s observable everywhere accordingly. And when deviations from this norm occur — we could say we define certain norms, and when deviations from that norm happen, whether it’s thin, heavy, body hair, or clothing, which also symbolizes status, for example — deviations get noticed immediately, and that has an effect on the person I’m interacting with. Of course, if I work with certain people, or apply to an employer or whatever, I can quite consciously and deliberately decide, so to speak, not to go along with that to a certain degree. But the question really is, what’s the effect of that, what actually happens then? And at the same time, of course there are studies proving that, say, more attractive people — whatever counts as attractive, which varies culturally — have better career chances, better advancement opportunities, higher income, and so on. So it’s really, really exciting to look at this, and above all to raise awareness. Jürgen, a very good morning — what are your thoughts on the topic?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning, Marc, and everyone in the room. On the topic of the halo effect, there’s a connection to a room we had in the past on unconscious bias. And for me, the first question that comes up with your room title — I’m going by the room title again, “the power of attractiveness” — is: what actually makes us attractive to others? Or what do we even perceive as attractiveness in the first place? And I think that’s the first, sharply defined criterion. Among the three of us on stage right now, there’s certainly, I’d venture to say, a very different understanding or view of what makes others attractive — stemming from socialization, from the cultural environment, from upbringing, and not least from the path toward education, self-determination, and self-positioning. So I think attractiveness is, to a large extent, an extremely individual matter. But nonetheless — and I’m now paraphrasing extensive findings from the field of psychology — there quite obviously are such general, let’s call them, general positions of sympathy that exist. And the first thing, which each of us can surely remember when looking back at people we’ve found sympathetic, is that there are, on one hand, people, and also, importantly, things — you can have sympathies toward things too — that get fixed onto physical traits. You mentioned it just now, clothing, the power of clothing. I’d call it the overall appearance of a person. I’d include height in that, I’d include tonality, their voice, how they carry their self-confidence through their voice. That’s what constitutes physical attractiveness for me — mind you, for me. And here we’re back at the point that Marc, or you, dear Yasemin, might evaluate quite differently under certain circumstances. And the second point I consider very important, for a reason I’ll explain in a moment, is this emotional attractiveness. If, say, someone steps onto a stage or comes toward me and radiates an aura — I actually can’t really pin it down in the first moment, but this person strikes me as attractive and sets an anchor. And now I’m at the point that settles in me unconsciously, something I can’t consciously categorize as such, but it’s there. And so, to conclude my remarks, I’d say that beyond the types of attractiveness that exist both individually and, to a certain extent, universally, I think there’s also a distinction between those things that determine our assessment and appreciation or aversion toward people and objects completely unconsciously, and those that I consciously reinforce, even adopt, try to imitate, to be just as attractive, because it impresses me. So here too we have, I think, these two levels of the conscious and the unconscious, even though the halo effect, in most of the publications I’ve found at least, is clearly attributed to the unconscious. And I’m putting that somewhat in doubt here. Thank you for listening, admittedly at length.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to follow up here? Yes, I can only underline what Jürgen said, and I have an example too, where I actually want to appear unattractive, where I use unattractiveness as a weapon or a tool to pay less. That’s when I take my car to a workshop, or anywhere I have to pay money, where I’m just handing over an object and paying money — then I make sure not to show up in a suit or with a nice watch or all groomed, but I also don’t want to look poor, just decent, but not so much that they think, well, this guy won’t feel it, he’s a businessman, it doesn’t matter what we charge him for the repair. I do the same thing at the dentist — I need work done on my teeth, and I will absolutely not signal to the dentist, hey, go ahead and charge me 100% more, it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s the opposite when I travel — then I sometimes have clothing in the car, a blazer in the car, because then I want to appear as a businessman, because I’m signaling, listen up, friends, I travel a lot, make sure you give me a good room. I’m someone who comes back, you can do business with me multiple times, so don’t give me the worst room. Whether that actually works or not, I can’t tell you. Subjectively I always think it works, but since I don’t really know whether I got the best room, just as I don’t know whether I actually got a cheaper price at the workshop, for me it’s a conscious bias I’m betting on. Whether it really works, I obviously can’t measure.
Yes, thank you so much, and the question really is — maybe we can look at that a bit more closely, Jürgen? Maybe you have a few examples where you’d say, this is something where, if I find it attractive, I myself, so to speak, deliberately and consciously buy into it through my own behavior, or in terms of how I present myself, my effect, my clothing? So not just this unconscious side, but also this conscious side. Maybe you have a concrete example or two where we can make this differentiation clearer, where exactly this distinction you’re drawing lies.
Let me try it on a somewhat general level, by saying: for me, this kicks in whenever my goal is to reflect and mirror certain attractiveness traits myself, whenever I’m striving for group belonging, whenever I want to be part of something somewhere. So, quite spontaneously, looking back, my youth naturally comes to mind, my own teenage years. And back then — I can only recall one of the terms now — there was, originating from Great Britain I believe, a youth movement. One group was called the “Poppers,” and the other group was called — I don’t remember anymore. But the two groups differed quite significantly, I’d say, in their appreciation, or assessment and positioning, toward wealth and showing off, while the others were, looking back, essentially the forerunners of the punk movement, in my view. And this naturally spilled over to us too, and one had to — well, not had to, but many wanted to — decide. They wanted to belong somewhere, and out of certain appreciations regarding attractiveness traits, they signed up to this group belonging by imitating or adopting the obvious traits of attractiveness that were valued in this group, within the scope of their means. Back then it was a huge hurdle, for example, if you didn’t have rich parents, then you had no chance, no way at all, of being accepted into this group. But people tried anyway. They tried, through imitating these attractiveness traits, to move closer to this group belonging, or to eventually become part of it. And for me, that’s an expression of this conscious steering of attractiveness in my own person, but also in recognition of the positive effects for me that another group offers, because I want to belong there.
Thank you. Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And in part, that’s conscious, but the other part is possibly still unconscious after all. Because to what extent am I even free in my choice? I might well be free to choose whether I want to belong to one group or another, but this wanting-to-belong, this sense of belonging, is itself again a need, so to speak, that I have as a human being, as a social being, and accordingly I’m quite obviously placing myself again into a certain grouping, whichever I prefer, and not, so to speak, staying completely outside of it in order to just be who I am. Thank you again for letting me weigh in, sorry Stefan, but I’ll keep it as brief as possible. Exactly, dear Yasemin, that’s the unconscious part for me — this “wanting to want,” to put it a bit exaggeratedly. We had this topic once with the topic of will too, whether you can even want at all. But I believe that’s exactly this unconscious part that leads to the conscious steering of a conscious bias, because something in my subconscious tells me, I feel closer to the Poppers than to the punks. I believe that terminology, that distinction, was even used back then.
Thank you. Wonderful, thank you so much. Stefan, a very good morning — let’s bring you in too, then we can make some cross-connections. What are your thoughts? Yes, good morning everyone, good morning Yasemin and everyone else in the room. Well, first of all, yes, it was Poppers versus punks back then. That was just how it was — I’d say, neither was particularly attractive to me, neither punk nor Popper. But it was simply, I think, a time when people started forming these “new future” generations, so to speak. Some decided to be attractive in their own particular way, and of course punks found themselves attractive too. They were the rebels, in that sense, who’d go out on Saturdays and make the city center feel unsafe. But of course that’s all a cliché too, because there were also very sweet, nice punks who just chose that style. It carried a somewhat negative connotation for many in society, though, because punks were partly equated with skinheads, which is of course total nonsense. But just in terms of clothing style, the hair was of course something completely different. What I’m saying is, ultimately, defining attractiveness that way was one thing — wanting to belong to one group, and, as Jürgen defined it too, adopting that, wanting to demonstrate a certain kind of belonging, because you thought that would automatically make you more attractive too. Maybe that’s the background to it. For me personally, attractive — well, there are many things. There’s a person who’s attractive, that’s clear, the visual aspect is obvious, everyone has their own type preferences, or at least responds more to one type or another, type of woman, type of man, whatever. But I still think, and this was mentioned earlier too, it’s the aura. If you’re a bit attentive and among those people who allow for reflection and are generally well-informed and open, maybe people who haven’t just gone to get rolls in the morning and back home, or just work or whatever, but who’ve seen a bit of the world and experienced different cultures, different people. I think a lot of people go by smell too — there are people, and it’s not for nothing that you say, I really like the smell of that person, or whatever, correct me if I’m wrong. I always find the voice very attractive, in both women and men, whether it’s that radio-announcer voice in a man or in a woman, or something particularly special. There’s that thing where, if someone’s super attractive but has this squeaky voice or something that’s bothersome, or in a frequency range where even pets start reacting, then it’s of course not quite as attractive anymore. But ultimately, one point I made earlier was that attractiveness can also be interpreted negatively. Yes, in professional life or such, it’s of course generally true that you’re more successful. That’s just how it is. You walk into a room, and in that moment, if you have the right aura, the right attractiveness, if you’re well-groomed — and attractive doesn’t always just mean you’re the super gorgeous person from page one of the catalog, but also if you generally make a well-groomed impression, a cultivated impression, a polite impression, all of that can be very attractive too. Then looks are almost secondary. Those are my first thoughts, a bit unordered, but that’s what I’d say first.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And above all, I think expectation plays a really important role here too. Let me paint a picture so you can imagine it — say someone you’d classify as attractive comes onto the stage and wants to say something — well dressed, the right height, whatever that means for you, the look fits, a positive aura, all before even having said a word — and then the person has a completely squeaky voice, or something that doesn’t fit at all with what you expected, that does something to you. And that happens in both directions. Conversely, it can happen that someone steps onto the stage who doesn’t match what you expected at all, and then you think, not even curious. We get such impulses quite often. And then the person opens their mouth and the first sounds come out, and you think, I wasn’t expecting that. So the expectations we have of someone, through this unconscious bias making certain connections, assuming something bad or good is coming, that this person will surely speak well or poorly and so on — all of that plays into this expectation too. I saw something in the chat I’d like to briefly address — that rich versus poor doesn’t equal attractive. You can absolutely look attractive as a poorly dressed man too, of course, but rich versus poor was just an example to illustrate the point. Ultimately it’s still about attractiveness and what attractiveness means in our eyes. That doesn’t mean that someone who lacks the means can’t still come across as attractive to others. But if something specific gets symbolized in some way through clothing, that has a corresponding effect on attractiveness, or on the perception of it, which can also be connoted differently among us, universally, but also individually.
I’d like to add a few more impulses before we make some cross-connections and maybe consider a few raised hands, provided the room rules are being followed — I’d rather repeat them again, because I’ll check in on that once I’m done, while you all are already making cross-connections. We have three small room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that can use the chat. And we record the entire time, so anyone joining automatically agrees to that. I also consulted ChatGPT beforehand, just to see what aspects we could bring in and discuss. We’ve already touched on a lot of them, but I find a few things here interesting still, so let me quickly go through this list. First: attractiveness bias — how is our perception of people influenced by their appearance, how do attractiveness and beauty affect our judgments and decisions? I find that an interesting question. Social advantages — what advantages do attractive people enjoy in everyday life and social contexts, preferential treatment, access to resources, etc. Also a very interesting question. Professional success — we already touched on this — how attractiveness influences career opportunities, salaries, and professional recognition. Here it’s definitely worth looking in both directions, as already mentioned, that it can have negative effects too, especially when there are certain biases regarding certain positions. What happens, for example, when a very attractive young woman applies for a higher-level leadership position — that might actually work against her, in ways that could have worked in her favor for other positions. So that’s worth considering too, down to hair color playing a role — whether someone’s a brunette or a blonde and so on, and how that gets stored in us. Then marketing and advertising — how do companies use attractiveness in advertising to sell products and services, how is that deliberately deployed? The first thing that popped into my head was, we know this from all these food contexts, where there are these beautiful burgers that make you really hungry when you see the ad, or ice cream or whatever. Basically, if you know what’s happening behind the scenes — there are videos exposing how these commercials are made to create that feeling, “that looks so delicious” — but really they’re using, I don’t know, motor oil to make the food look pretty. Completely absurd things we’d probably never think of if we didn’t know what happens behind the scenes. So worth thinking in that direction too. Then self-worth and self-confidence — how does attractiveness affect self-image, self-confidence, and general well-being? How am I perceived by others, what resonance do I get, so to speak, a kind of feedback from my environment regarding my person, personality, my appearance, and what does that do to me? Evolutionary perspective — how has our understanding of attractiveness developed over the course of human evolution, what role does attractiveness play in mate selection? Also an interesting question. Cultural differences — how do beauty ideals and attractiveness norms differ across cultures and societies, which we already touched on. Cosmetic surgery and cosmetics is an interesting area in this context — what role do cosmetic surgeries and cosmetic products play in enhancing attractiveness, how do they influence our self-image and our perception of beauty? Then sexuality and relationships — what influence does attractiveness have on romantic relationships, sexual attraction, and mate selection? Media and beauty ideals is next — how do media and entertainment industries present beauty and attractiveness, what influence do they have on our perception of beauty standards? Health and fitness — how are attractiveness and health connected, what role do fitness and healthy nutrition play in the perception of attractiveness? Age and attractiveness — how does the perception of attractiveness change over the course of life, what role do age and experience play in judging attractiveness? And the last point is critique and reflection — what negative effects can overvaluing attractiveness have, how can we critically engage with beauty standards and attractiveness norms? So quite a range, and I find some really nice aspects in there. We certainly won’t be able to discuss all of them this morning, but now we have a few more impulses in the mix that one or another of you might want to pick up on. I saw that Jürgen had raised his hand in the meantime, before I started reading, so I’ll hand the floor to Jürgen first. Sorry, I had some issues again.
Yes, thank you, dear Yasemin. I actually wanted to respond to your second-to-last remark, on the topic of expectation — that expectation plays a big role in this topic. And I think, among all these definitions you find and that you presented too, these are examples of that. But a really essential aspect of this unconscious bias — mind you, the unconscious bias of the halo effect, of attractiveness — is this fact of the effect of the first impression. You gave the example of a speaker stepping onto the stage with, I’d say, an aura, due to their perceived attractiveness in terms of clothing, height, posture. And then they start speaking, and out comes a squeaky voice. That’s, for me, a very good example of unconscious bias in two respects, because we actually expect, given the attractiveness of this person as they present themselves, a completely different voice. And a categorization effect kicks in within us, a reflex, so that I’d say, if it still goes okay, it results in a certain doubt, asking, is this really the speaker I expected? And that’s such an important aspect for me, that you — I hope I’m interpreting you correctly — concretized as expectation, and where I’d say, yes, and this expectation gets particularly reinforced, or disproven, or rejected as not being followed through, at this position, with the first trait — and this trait is important to me, but doesn’t constitute the importance of this person. So, let me also briefly say — and then comes a second aspect I consider very important with the halo effect — that you have to ask yourself, is that set in stone, or can such a halo effect, such a supposed or, for me, definitive attractiveness that this speaker up there on stage just lost by having a squeaky voice, can that be revised? And I’d say yes. Namely, the moment that this aura, this halo effect of the aura, kicks in because he delivers incredibly intelligent contributions on stage, then this decisive first impression dies, so to speak, and gets replaced by a different form of attractiveness in this person, namely intelligence, or knowledge, or professional competence, whatever you want to call it. And I think that can be very aptly applied to a lot of job interviews, both in a corporate context and in personal contexts too. Thank you for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. Let me bring in another aspect here. The moment I’m only looking at one person, I arrive at thoughts like that being possible — and I don’t want to rule out that it’s possible at all. But the moment we’re looking at a comparative position — say, a job interview, let’s assume we’re in HR and have different personalities coming into the room one after another that we talk to — then, looking at each individual person, I can correct such expectations and correct my own stance accordingly, and so on. I don’t want to dispute that at all. But if I have two people in comparison, and there are statistics that back this up, where, say, an expectation might not be met for one and, conversely, this attractiveness suddenly plays a role for the other — let’s say they bring the exact same competencies — one looks more attractive than the other. Then a decision suddenly falls in favor of the more attractive person, even though, argumentatively, rationally speaking, there might be no real basis at all for not giving the other one the chance. That’s when things really start getting interesting.
Yes, Jürgen, go ahead. May I say something briefly? Absolutely correct, dear Yasemin. I’ve experienced this myself several times, as the one affected — where people tried to do exactly this, I really felt it like a little game, working through the attractiveness scale, who do I find this in, who do I find that in. But there’s a third person in the room — let me put it this way, dear Yasemin and everyone else. The third person in the room is your ideal person, your ideal candidate, that you fix on or let yourself fix on. If I asked you what the candidate should look like, you’d immediately tell me, from physiological to cognitive abilities to their group behavior, and you’d — and that’s the third person still in the room, and it’s very, very important, because it holds a very concrete, very firm position. Thank you again for letting me add that.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Then let’s bring in Ingo here first, so he can speak too, before we make cross-connections again. Ingo, a very good morning. Yes, a very good morning to the group, greetings from Mallorca, I’m there right now and listening with interest. You’ve completely confused me, Yasemin, because earlier I wanted to react to a specific thing that was said, and through your great impulses you completely erased my train of thought. But no matter. On the things that were said — a few quick impulses from my side. You mixed the topic of attractiveness a bit, once as visual attractiveness, which I think was what you were getting at, and another aspect was the community idea. We had the Poppers topic earlier, and that’s about whether I, for whatever positive or negative reasons, want to belong to a community. And of course, if I want to belong to that community, I have to, let’s say provocatively, follow the community’s rules. So as a punk I need a certain outfit, and as a Popper I need a certain hairstyle, etc. That’s how it was back in the 80s, and of course it’s exactly the same today. Today it’s also about which community I want to belong to, and today that’s often regulated less through, let’s say, purely visual things, and more through these classic status symbols — do I have my Rolex watch, do I have my Louis Vuitton item, and these superficial, materialistic things — but through that you’re signaling, I want to belong to this community, dot dot dot. I’d like to find a partner from within this community, or precisely not, by rejecting those exact status symbols outright. And neither is right or wrong, it’s an individual decision. On the topic of attractiveness itself, I think it’s elementary to bring in the aspect — the common saying is, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Of course, when discussing beauty, there are men and women where everyone, regardless of taste, would say, okay, that person really looks great or attractive, let’s make it gender-neutral, and they’re beyond any doubt. But that’s a small tip of the iceberg. Otherwise it’s always an individual matter of taste, in my view. And the most important thing for me is — do you find yourself attractive? Because you touched on the topic of self-confidence, radiance, etc. earlier — I walk onto the stage as a speaker, I’m in a job interview, all these things that are secondary effects of one’s own attractiveness, you generate those, in my view at least, or from my life experience, by being satisfied with yourself. And everyone has their own individual story there — every woman and every man tries, more or less, every morning in the mirror, to get the best out of themselves. I don’t mean that negatively at all, it’s completely legitimate — everyone wants to appear attractive to themselves. And everyone has their own idea of themselves, what do I find most beautiful about myself, how do I present my best. Because of course everyone wants, and that’s completely normal social, human behavior, to come across positively to others and wants recognition and wants to belong to a community. And that’s where it gets regulated, in which direction I actually want to go. And someone who we’d, say, in a survey of ten people, nine would say looks unattractive, that person would still try every morning in the mirror to get the best out of themselves.
And I find that completely natural and legitimate, and I wouldn’t demonize that at all, because everyone has to try to get along in life with their own sense of self-worth, their own self-confidence. I could go on for hours, but let me leave it there for now. Mainly, as a conclusion, I wanted to say two different things: one is visual attractiveness, which everyone determines for themselves and tries to get the best out of, versus, a completely different aspect but also important, this community idea — you want, or every social being wants, to belong to a certain community. And that’s more important than ever in our impulse-driven world. And that’s why these little groups exist too, that’s why the Deep Talk Club group exists, that’s why Clubhouse exists, because that was extreme during Corona. You saw it yourselves on Clubhouse — there were various groups that even became friends with each other, they suddenly belonged together. And here in Hamburg, where I live, the Hamburg group, they suddenly all liked each other and even met up. Or your group here, this #949 edition — everyone looks forward to Deep Talk. You belong to the community. Yes, that’s it from my side for now, warm regards.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I think it’s difficult, in part, to differentiate between community and pure attractiveness or clothing and things in that direction, because they lie relatively close together and quickly blend into one another. We touched earlier, I don’t know if you were in the room yet, Ingo, on things like leg hair or short hair, long hair for women, and conversely for men in the direction of short hair and so on. And community, on one hand, can be a small grouping, like Deep Talk or something, where you belong, and it can also be larger communities. But if we think even bigger, we ultimately arrive at society. And it gets interesting, and maybe this makes it clear too, how vehement this actually is — when we say attractiveness lies, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder, there are nonetheless certain tendencies we automatically fall subject to, unconscious-bias-wise, within the socialization of a society, without really realizing it. There are exercises we do in trainings, for example, where the halo effect gets tested. That means people who don’t know each other at all beforehand are asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 — 1 being the lowest, 10 the highest — what their first impression is, the halo effect, just to look at this scaling effect. Interestingly, when there are ten people, or you do this with large groups split into small groups, the numbers end up very close together. They’re not scattered, like one says one, another says two, another says three, and so on — not spread out at all, but interestingly they cluster very closely. And then the next question is, what do you think this person does for a living? It’s striking how close the answers are there too, and how accurate the answers often actually turn out to be, even though these people had never seen each other before and don’t know each other’s professions or where they’re from. This is done in a setting where the groups haven’t gotten to know each other yet, in breaks or such. And that shows that quite a lot here is apparently — and I mean, these are basically statistics that exist on a large scale, and it’s fascinating when broken down to small groups. They’re not representative, of course, but they confirm what happens and comes out as a result in large surveys or studies, that it can be confirmed relatively quickly in small groups too. And that’s fascinating. Ingo, would you like to add something, since your mic is still on?
Oh, sorry. Yes, this halo effect — you’re completely right about that. But you know what a result of this — it’s really a statistical evaluation at the end of the day — and nobody ever wants to admit that. Then the outcry is always immediate. What that means in reality is that attractiveness isn’t as subjective as we always try to diplomatically put it in discussion rounds like these, but rather the naked truth — and this is always a somewhat provocative statement that always leads to an outcry — is that attractiveness actually contains a significant degree of objectivity. Because otherwise exactly what you demonstrate with the halo effect wouldn’t happen. So if there’s a man standing there and 100 people, and everyone has to rate this man’s attractiveness level on a scale of 1 to 10, and by chance 75 percent say, let’s say attractiveness level 7, then the people who don’t want to accept that attractiveness is extremely important and that it has a certain objectivity, they should be outraged that this statistic proves them wrong — how does it happen that out of 100 people, 75 say this person has an attractiveness of 7, and the other 25 don’t say the person has an attractiveness of 1, but maybe say a range of 5 to 8? I think you just have to accept that that’s how it is, and it follows from that — you indirectly criticized this earlier, I think, or at least wanted to provoke a reaction — of course attractive people have it easier in life. Nobody admits that, of course, but who wouldn’t rather surround themselves with attractive people than unattractive ones? Of course nobody wants to hear that, but it’s a plain fact, because you gave the hiring example. I’ve hired so many people in my career, and I don’t exempt myself from this, and by the way I don’t even want to exempt myself from it — I stand by it: if I have two candidates and they’re equal in everything — it’s of course never exactly equal, but let’s pretend they’re one-to-one equal — of course I’ll take the more attractive candidate. Why wouldn’t I? With what justification should I take the less attractive candidate in my eyes? Equal opportunity was given to both, they both had the same documents, the same degree, the same qualifications, the same résumé, everything the same. But one, to put it plainly, looks, well, better than the other, in my view. And ten other people would see it that way too. So why should I take the not-so-good-looking one? There’s no logical reason for that. And to consider that unfair isn’t right, because it’s natural human behavior. And, well, as Warren Buffett would say, the ovarian lottery. You have no control over where you’re born, no control over who your parents are, and no control over what genes you have and how you look. What can you do? You can educate yourself, you can develop your own personality, you can dress properly, you can groom yourself. But your basic substance, whether you’re a beautiful or a not-so-beautiful person, you can’t influence that. And now we come to the beauty industry — that’s why I find it completely legitimate, and I’m not pointing a bare finger at any men or women who alter their appearance or optimize themselves, from their own perspective, based on supposed beauty ideals. Why shouldn’t a man or a woman get their wrinkles removed? Some say, why doesn’t he accept his age? Isn’t it great, he’s showing his life experience. And he looks in the mirror in the morning, or she does, and says, I’m getting older, I don’t find myself as attractive anymore. What happens to that person? Their self-confidence sinks, because they don’t find themselves as attractive anymore. So why shouldn’t they do what’s possible today? Everyone has to individually decide whether it’s worth the money to them and whether they can handle having something changed about their own structure. Just as many women get lip fillers — some go so far that you think, does it have to be that much?
Ingo, let me jump in briefly here, because of course I’m keeping an eye on the clock, since we usually wrap up after about 60 minutes. Great, thank you so much. There were a lot of aspects in there. On this point about objective attractiveness, I’d like to add one more impulse — it’s still not objective attractiveness, because we already opened the door earlier with cultural differences, for example. That means, depending on which society and cultural background we’re looking at, attractiveness gets shaped differently. So what applies in the West may be different in the East, and so on. So we still can’t necessarily speak of objective attractiveness here, just as a point of differentiation. But I know what you mean, and I find that aspect very exciting — to say, so is attractiveness then maybe not quite so individual after all? I’d say attractiveness is indeed quite individual, but we get, so to speak — and this is my perspective on the whole thing — consciously and unconsciously shaped to some extent by community, by society, by the culture we’re socialized in. And through this shaping, a certain norm emerges. And that brings us naturally back into this aspect of belonging that we already had earlier. And whoever wants to belong starts following the corresponding rules of the game — things like women making sure they have no body hair, or tending to grow their hair long rather than cutting it short, and so on. We could give a lot of examples for that. And that could be completely reversed in another country with a different culture. So this objectivity doesn’t really apply here. But we should be aware that, on one hand, to belong — whether that’s a small community, a grouping, or a larger society — there are different levels, and we organize ourselves in some way, and I don’t want to judge it at all, it’s just that, since we already got into judging it, I’ll leave the judgment to you, each of you can make your own assessment here. What matters to us is just opening up these different perspectives to reflect on the whole thing, to make clear that it exists and what consequences that can have. And each of you can make your own judgment, so to speak, after the room. Now I’d like to give Marc and Stefan the chance too.
Yasemin, may I say one more sentence, because I think it’s important overall regarding objectivity. I’m 100 percent with you on this idea of objectivity. But you brought in an important aspect that I can completely confirm from my own life experience, and that’s exactly what you said about community. We’ve indirectly adopted societal norms, so to speak. I once had a partner from Tehran — Persian women have a beauty ideal, and they get a lot of surgery done, and pretty much always following the same logic. They actually end up looking, in a sense, relatively similar to one another. That means, in that culture, there’s a beauty ideal among women that they all pursue. In Saudi Arabia it’s different — there it’s often the case that women prefer to be, so to speak, a bit curvier, because Saudi Arabian men tend to prefer a somewhat curvier woman. In Europe, the beauty ideal is again completely different. So in that sense I’m with you — you obviously can’t view it globally, but you’re completely right, it’s about which society you grow up in, what the norms are there, what rules of the game have developed, and from that follows, practically, the requirement regarding attractiveness. So in your world, the world you live in, there is an objectivity, but there’s no worldwide objectivity.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Then, Marc and Stefan, I’d like to give you both the chance too, since you haven’t spoken in a while, to add something if you have anything else, and at the same time to combine that with your closing word for today’s room. So Marc, Stefan, and then Ingo too with his highlight of the room for today. Marc.
I want to say something from the heart to Ingo. Yes, Ingo, you’re right, but I noticed we’ve been talking this whole time only about outward appearance. If I present myself in a suit for this decision of who you find more attractive, I claim I can influence any statistic — you get a different result than if I present myself in torn clothes, ungroomed. And what I want to say with that is, attractiveness doesn’t just include outward appearance, which is what gets measured when I can’t talk to people — attractiveness also includes unconscious bias, body language, self-confidence, humor, empathy, interests and passions, and shared values. And my closing sentence to Stefan is, yes, aura. I’ve met a lot of people who walk into a room and have an incredible aura without having said a word. And it only became clear to me many years later that I can’t fake that. This aura has to grow, and I agree with you, dear Stefan, from my experience aura, this attractiveness, can grow with self-assurance, because you can feel that then. Self-assurance can’t be faked, it’s something inside you, but it also doesn’t come overnight either. That was my closing word too. Thank you for this exciting topic. I wish you all a good start to the week.
Great, thank you so much. Stefan. Yes, well, we didn’t quite get to some points. I’d brought in the topic of smell, or generally attractiveness through various other aspects, but that’s alright, I still found it very, very interesting to reflect on perspectives here generally. I have to say, before I give my closing word regarding Ingo — I’ve also often been in the situation of hiring many, many people, or where an HR department relied heavily on my judgment of character, my instinct for who’s good for the team and who can drive the project forward. In the media industry back then, I can say, sure, of course it’s nice when you have attractive people in front of you in a job interview who also perform well, so the attractiveness isn’t just surface-level, but they really have substance and are engaged and generally good for the project and the team. But I wouldn’t agree that this is a general rule — that’s my own practice. I’ve very often chosen the “less attractive person” because I always had a certain gut feeling about whether that person fit even better into the team. And for me it wasn’t about having the most attractive team in the world, but about having the strongest team in the world — in quotes, of course, everyone claims otherwise. But what I want to say is, I wouldn’t generalize that people in hiring necessarily prefer the more attractive person, because otherwise they’d be lying — that’s not true. It’s often the gut feeling that this person might be more reliable or maybe push harder or whatever. That’s one thing. The other thing, to close on the topic of attractiveness, is that it’s so complex — it’s above all about human culture, about psychology, about biology, about whether humans can reproduce, to put it that way, that constitutes a large part of attractiveness too. What’s important, in any case, is self-acceptance — paying attention to individual traits in people, that an attractiveness that initially appeals to you can still be evaluated for yourself, what’s important to you if you stay in contact with this person longer, and so on. Above all, understanding what cultural influences also contribute to a person being the way they are. And at the same time, if you say you’d like to belong to a certain group, which we also discussed, and you imitate something or try out a beauty ideal on yourself, you should never put health on the back burner. And I think that’s important too, that you approach the topic of attractiveness with empathy and respect. So I wish you all a wonderful start to the week, and attractiveness — try to address it in communication, and above all, keep attractiveness and a person’s worth clearly separate.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Ingo? I think Ingo’s no longer with us, I just noticed. Okay, alright, so Ingo’s closing word won’t happen. Yes, thank you so much for all these perspectives, I think we could have kept talking for another three hours. I couldn’t even glance much at the chat in between, I just took some screenshots of one thing or another so we can maybe consider them tomorrow in the summary. So just a note, not because I didn’t want to consider it, but because of this heated exchange with valuable impulses from all sides — and you just said yourselves that we couldn’t even address every point, which was expected, so it wasn’t possible to address everything that came in through the chat either. I’ll look through it later in peace, I just took screenshots, and tomorrow we’ll continue with reflection and bringing things together, because we’ve now covered the overarching theme of power and violence together over several weeks, and now it’s about bringing these different perspectives we’ve opened up into some connection, to see what’s stuck with us, and so on. And at the same time, I’d also like to discuss with you — I mentioned that this time we relied heavily on ChatGPT to develop the room topics, these rooms under the overarching theme of power and violence, down to the subheadings, the questions largely formulated by ChatGPT, as a kind of test balloon to see how that’s received, whether people even notice it, or whether ChatGPT really has good ideas. Following that, to really carry out a test phase, we only made marginal changes or adjustments, nothing really big or significant, and that’s why I’d like to go into reflection with you on that too — how did you experience it, so we can make a decision based on that too, to what extent we can actually make use of ChatGPT to some degree under the overarching theme — the overarching theme will of course still be set by me, but to what extent we can draw on it too, to gain some efficiency there. So I’m curious about your experiences, how you assess it, and then tomorrow we’ll do a proper reflection and bring things together, and then, against that backdrop, start with the next new overarching theme. And tomorrow we have room 950, and I’m bringing a little surprise along too. So it’s worth joining tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it, tomorrow morning at 8am again in Deep Talk. Until then, I wish you well. Ciao, ciao!
