Well, it turns out that there is a simple explanation for this phenomenon.

If we make a little graph of Niceness vs. Good Looks, we can start to get an answer.

First, we have to assume that people are equally spread across this chart;

meaning some people are mean and ugly, some people are ugly and nice, some are good looking and mean, and some are good looking and nice!

Of course, this is based on your subjective taste, and what you find beautiful and nice.

Now if you think about it, you probably have zero interest in people who you find mean and ugly, meaning your pool of potential mates gets a bit smaller.

And truthfully, you probably prefer a certain combination of niceness and good looks.

Ultimately, we’re left with a triangle of people you find acceptable and give attention to in the first place.

But now, 100% of the people left in your pool who aren’t that attractive to you are nice—they have to be otherwise you wouldn’t pay them any attention.

After all, if somebody is nice, you’re less likely to be critical of their appearance, which brings down the average of nice people's looks.

To the same token, almost half of the people that are beautiful to you are mean.

Again, if somebody is mean, you likely require that they be really attractive for you to give them any attention, which makes it seem like more attractive people are jerks.

If we take this a step further, we can assume that people who are both hot and nice are the best catches, and get swept off the market more quickly, further increasing your perception and bias.

We can see a similar thing happen with food. Do you ever wonder why it seems that healthy foods just don’t taste as good?

Well, let’s use our chart—Yumminess vs. Healthiness.

Of course, in reality, this chart probably isn’t evenly distributed, because food is often created to specifically taste good, so the right-hand side of the graph is likely more dense.

Regardless, we can take out all the foods that don’t taste good and aren’t even good for you because why would you bother eating them?

But of the foods leftover that you do eat, now 100% of the foods that don’t taste good are good for you!

Just like the dating graph, it’s because of the people or the foods that you don’t pay attention to, that your perception becomes skewed.

Back to dating, and it’s true. From your perspective, good-looking people are more likely to be jerks, but it’s because of who you’re paying attention to in the first place.

You simply ignore the ugly jerks!

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