"She's a star," Jiang said.
Galm was a second-semester senior in Jiang's course in investment analysis and portfolio management last fall, when the class was asked to design a research project. The challenge was to find a correlation between two unrelated modalities.
For the last two years, Galm had been waitressing at Chickie's & Pete's sports bar in Northeast Philadelphia. "I noticed that girls like to go lighter for the summer and darker in the fall," she said. "And I wondered if the stereotype about blondes being more attractive would make a difference in their tips."
She made up a flier asking for volunteers and persuaded nine of her coworkers to participate in the 60-day experiment. Two of the women were blond, the rest - including Galm - were not.
Throughout March, they reported their tips from each shift. The two blondes consistently earned more than their darker-haired coworkers. Then on April 1, they all were asked to switch their hair color - blondes going dark, brunettes and redheads going blond - and continue to report their daily take.
One of the blondes was removed from the study because she did not report all her tips and was always dying her hair a different color, Galm said.
Eight of the other compliant nine, however, began experiencing hair bias within a week. All the newly blond waitresses received higher tips, averaging a 5 percent increase. The one blonde who turned brunette, however, saw no noticeable drop in earnings.
"We need a few more people in the study," Galm said.
Galm and Jiang cowrote a report showing the initial findings:
"The tip earning is increased from 17.26 percent to 18.63 percent - a 1.37 percentage-point increase (or 7.94 percent increase)."
