Is beauty good?
Friedrich Schiller, the German poet, once wrote: “Physical beauty is a sign of inner beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty...”. About 50 years ago, psychologists discovered that beautiful people are often attributed positive personality traits.
“It’s good to be pretty,” concluded American scientists in a 1972 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They conducted an experiment in which participants were shown photos of attractive, average, and unattractive people. The subjects were asked to rate the people in the photos on a range of 27 different personality traits on a scale of 1 to 6. The results were clear: More attractive people were assigned more positive personality traits than less attractive people.
However, just a few years later, in 1979, researchers at Yale University (USA) made an important discovery. This was reported in the article “When Beauty Becomes Ugly: The Effects of Appearance and Gender on the Evaluation of Applicants for Managerial and Non-Managerial Jobs.” These researchers designed and conducted an experiment to test the hypothesis that physical attractiveness is always an advantage in the business environment.
According to Forbes, researchers gave participants job applications from similarly qualified candidates—but with very different photos attached to each application. Half included headshots of attractive candidates, the other half included photos of less attractive candidates. Other than that, there were no differences between the applications or candidates.
Unlike the experiment described above, the researchers added a variable to their experiment: They described the first job as a mid-level paid position at level 8 in a large company's 21-level hierarchy. The second job was a highly authoritative and highly paid position at level 16 in a 21-level hierarchy.
The results were interesting. For male candidates, good looks were a clear advantage when it came to management jobs: 43.5% of test subjects said that more attractive male candidates were better suited for the top position. Only 13% of test subjects said the same about less attractive male candidates.
Conversely, for women: 30.5% of test subjects rated the least attractive female candidate highest for a management job, while only 13% chose the attractive female candidate. The situation was completely reversed when it came to applications for non-management positions.
In this case, 47% of test subjects preferred the more attractive female candidate, compared to 16% who chose the less attractive candidate.
“This data clearly shows that whether attractiveness is an advantage or a hindrance to job applicants depends on the gender of the applicant and the nature of the job they are seeking. While physical attractiveness consistently proves to be an advantage for male applicants seeking leadership positions in the office, good looks are only an advantage for female applicants when the position is not at the management level,” the researchers concluded.
The researchers suggest that this distinction is based on the fact that management positions are associated with “masculine” rather than “feminine” traits in women. As a result, the researchers recommend that women looking to advance their careers be aware of the power of first impressions during the job application process.
“This finding sadly implies that women should try to appear as unattractive and masculine as possible if they want to succeed and advance their careers by applying for positions of power,” the report said.
When beauty is a disadvantage
In a 2019 study, two American researchers - Leah D. Sheppard (Washington State University) and Stefanie K. Johnson (University of Colorado Boulder) also concluded that for women in business, beauty is a disadvantage. However, these two researchers gave different reasons to explain the negative impact of attractiveness on women's careers.
They conducted six different experiments to test whether people were more likely to trust attractive female corporate leaders than less attractive ones when they reported positive or negative news about the organization. But regardless of the news, the bias against beautiful women persisted.
According to the book “The Rich in Public Opinion,” when people judge others to be superior to them in one area, they will subtract points from them in other areas. This strategy allows the inferior person to maintain his or her self-esteem and identify areas where he or she can feel equal to or even better than the superior person. This is why the wealthy are perceived as being more likely to do unethical things. Perhaps this is similar or very similar to the case with physically attractive women.
Regardless of the field, a rich, intelligent, and attractive person will cause feelings of envy and inferiority in some people who are not as rich, intelligent, or attractive. These feelings of inferiority are then compensated for by attributing negative traits to the superior person in other (often moral) fields, such as “selfish” or “cold.”
Still, Johnson says, beautiful women have significant advantages in the workplace. They tend to receive higher salaries, better performance reviews, higher college admission rates, better reviews in elections, and more favorable rulings in court.
