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Beauty, closely studied, seems nearly indistinguishable from quick math. Men seem to prefer women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. Women prefer men with optimally long jaws. For reasons we don't entirely understand, humans find symmetrical faces consistently bewitching. A 2005 study found women can accurately guess the symmetry of a man's face just by smelling his tee-shirt. These calculations are made with breathtaking speed. We decide whether we like a face in no more than 13 milliseconds, according to a 2005 study. (That's 30x faster than an average blink.) The quick math of judging beauty has long-term consequences for the judged. Attractive people simply have an easier time with life. As the Association for Psychological Science aptly sums up: Mothers give more affection to attractive babies. Teachers favor more attractive students and judge them as smarter. Attractive adults get paid more for their work and have better success in dating and mating. And juries are less likely to find attractive people guilty and recommend lighter punishments when they do. As we've reported, the workplace offers a heavily concentrated dose of beauty biases. Consider: Attractive CEOs raise their company's stock price when they first appear on television, according to a working paper by Joseph T. Halford and Hung-Chia Hsu at the University of Wisconsin. Taller people are richer. In fact, every inch between 5'7'' and 6 feet is "worth" about 2 percent more in average annual earnings. | 
