Some fitness influencers may be too attractive

Pretty doesn’t mean profitable.

- Andrew Edelblum and Abby Frank

(ISTOCKPHOTO)

“Sex sells” has been a mantra in marketing for decades. As researchers who study consumer behaviour, we've seen plenty of evidence to support it: Attractive models and spokespeople have been shown to reliably grab attention, boost clicks and make products seem more desirable.

But our new research suggests that in a digital world full of influencers — tastemakers with large online followings — being too attractive can actually backfire, particularly in the fitness space.

We call this the “beauty backfire effect”, and we put it to the test in a series of laboratory experiments.

We showed hundreds of study participants mock Instagram posts from fictitious fitness influencer accounts. The posts were identical in every way, except for one key difference: how attractive the influencer was. We judged this by asking independent raters to evaluate photos of real influencers ahead of time.

The results were striking: We found that extremely attractive fitness influencers — or “fitfluencers” — got fewer likes and follows than their moderately attractive peers.

Why? Because people viewed them as less relatable.