Improving your looks will increase your chance of success according to a paper published by a U.S. economist.

The paper, authored by Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, is based on historical elections for the American Economic Association.

Hamermesh used the different photographs that accompany election ballots each year to show that increases in physical beauty raise a candidate’s chance of electoral success.

In most cases candidates submitted different pictures each year they appeared on the ballot, thereby presenting voters with a different image in each candidacy. Even though the same person was on the ballot, the candidates’ appearance varied.

The goal was to analyze whether a candidate’s appearance affected electoral chances and how an individual’s changed appearance affects the chance of victory.

Hamermesh had a group of subjects who didn’t know the candidates rate the attractiveness of each candidate in each photograph. Photographs rated to be more attractive usually belonged to a candidate elected to office that year.

“This study has not shown that there is discrimination against bad-looking people or reverse discrimination in favor of the good looking,” the paper says. “Rather, I have demonstrated that a particular real-world outcome becomes more favorable for the same person when perceptions of his/her looks improve exogenously.” Individuals who are perceived to be more attractive have a better chance of success.

“The results support the inference that differential outcomes are inherent in agents’ responses to an ascriptive characteristic and do not stem from correlations with unobserved differences in productivity-enhancing characteristics,” the paper suggests.