Do Attractive People Have Better Luck Getting Loans_

Interesting blog entry over at the Wallet (hi, Mary). Well? Do attractive people have better luck getting a loan? Research, using Prosper.com loan data, shows that better-looking people do have better luck. It should be noted — and the Wallet does make the point — that Prosper lenders are ordinary joes and janes. I wonder how well this research would translate if we were talking about real bankers and real banks. If lending was done face to face, would better-looking people have an advantage there? From the Wallet:The researchers took 12,000 photos of loan applicants posted on peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.com and handed them to 25 volunteers. The 25 survey takers were asked to look at all of the pictures and assign each a degree of trustworthiness, ranking the photos on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being not trustworthy at all and five being the most trustworthy. They were also asked whether they found the person in the photo attractive and, in either case, whether they would extend a loan to that person. The result: Better-looking people were more likely to get loans, at least from the 25 people surveyed.