Judging Books by Their Covers: Teaching about Physical Attractiveness Biases

Sociologists have developed a wide range of pedagogical strategies to facilitate student learning about racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Despite the growing subdiscipline of the sociology of the body and evidence pointing to the prevalence of inequalities based on physical attractiveness, the pedagogical literature has yet to develop strategies for teaching students about biases based on physical attractiveness. In this article, the authors report on a pedagogical module that involves student evaluations of photographs (depicting individuals ranging in levels of physical attractiveness) using semantic differential scales, and discuss the results of this evaluation. The authors test for student learning outcomes through (1) a one-group pretest-posttest design and (2) an assessment survey with both qualitative and quantitative components. Because this photograph evaluation typically illustrates students’ beauty biases, a discussion of these results, paired with relevant readings, provides a powerful tool for the exchange of ideas about physical attractiveness biases.