When Ilmo and I were at Berkeley, he and Hayzell would try to shepherd my young, lost self on the ways of the world. One day over dinner, they pointed out that it was going to be challenging for me to meet a smart woman if I was dressed the way I like to dress–big, green basketball shorts and an oversized hoodie.

But being the scientist that he was, Ilmo wanted to demonstrate this empirically. And so they took me to the Cal student store and positioned me behind a glass wall. Hayzell then recruited women passing by to rate me, everything from appearance to how intelligent they thought I was to whether they would go out with me. After a few hours of data collection, Ilmo and Hayzell gave me a make over and we did it again!

The data, as it often is, was surprising! While I was rated as more attractive and more intelligent post-make over, I only got slightly better marks for whether they would go out with me. And the person who liked me the most saw the original version. There’s something to be said for person/market fit!

Alex Kogan