This is hardly surprising. This is something that can be seen in children: the most popular kids in school were usually the good-looking ones, and unattractive kids had a harder time. I wonder if these unconscious prejudices are ingrained early in life by the family, or are maybe already present to some degree as some sort of deeper signal. There have been some really interesting studies done across cultures that looked at traits like how symmetrical the features, or how childlike the shape of the skull, and that found people in general seemed to prefer certain types and rate them more attractive.

The hypotheses included that these were signals of fitness indicating the health of the person, hormonal balance, degree of developmental stability, I guess ultimately how ideal that person is as someone to have children with. Animals use these signals all the time in social interactions, I wonder how far we are really removed from that?

Evolutionary or not, I think that awareness of these unconscious prejudices is the best way to see how irrational they are and work to overcome them. Makes me think of a commercial for some cholesterol drug (can't remember which) with all of the gorgeous people who don't show (of course) that they are actually very unhealthy and at high risk for heart attacks!