Even more so when pretty women work in so-called male jobs; they can be seen as violating gender norms, writes Stefanie K. Johnso

Johnson, Stefanie K.

LSE Research Online

4/13/2017The effects of good looks on professional success: It’scomplicatedblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2017/04/13/the-effects-of-good-looks-on-professional-success-its-complicated/Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, and profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, and chilling. Itcan affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed;it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it issurely because they do not perceive it. – Roger Scruton, BeautyAfter I did a presentation on the downsides of attractiveness for women, a person in the audience asked me if Ithought my appearance had helped me get ahead in my career. I was not quite sure how to respond. The individualeither thought I was unattractive (and was so bold as to publicly state this fact) and was asking if being sounattractive had helped me get ahead or thought I was attractive (still a bold move to call me out) and clearly hadnot paid attention to the presentation. I chose to answer with, “I dunno,” and point out that in academia our researchis generally reviewed “blind” so the reviewers don’t know who you are and, therefore, don’t know how you look. Inany case, it is clear that most people think that looks matter and don’t feel at all sheepish about pointing that out. Iwould agree that looks matter – but it is not always in the way that most people think.Most research shows that good looks are beneficial for men and women at work. For example, research often showsthat attractive individuals earn more money than less attractive individuals – about 20 per cent more! But this well-known finding has come under question as new research shows that very attractive people and very unattractivepeople tend to earn more than their less extreme counterparts. The study of 20,745 participants further suggeststhat the findings don’t really demonstrate a bias. In fact, attractive individuals only earn more because they are moreintelligent, more healthy, and have better personalities than those with more average levels of physicalattractiveness. So much for the beauty premium.Moreover, there is evidence that attractiveness can sometimes be detrimental for women applying for masculinejobs, a phenomenon referred to as the beauty is beastly effect. The beauty is beastly effect was first identified in the1970s and the findings showed that women applying for masculine jobs actually suffered a pretty penalty because1/4their attractiveness results in inferences that the woman is more feminine. If a job is more masculine (such asmanager), then the inferred femininity represents a lack of fit with the masculine requirements of the job. Over thenext 20 years several more studies emerged on this effect although most research suggested that attractiveness isa benefit.Some time ago, my colleagues and I conducted research to determine when beauty is beastly. In a study using amultitude of jobs, we asked people to rate the employment suitability of over 200 photos of men and women varyingin attractiveness. We found that attractive women were seen as less suitable for masculine jobs than less attractivewomen – but only for masculine jobs for which attractiveness seemed unimportant to the job itself. Car salespersonis a masculine job but one can imagine that attractiveness would be beneficial to the job because it is a sales-oriented, customer-focused job. Engineer is also a masculine job, but one for which attractiveness would not beseen as beneficial so attractive women would be penalised. Attractiveness was not always a benefit for men, butwas rarely a cost. We replicated the finding using experiments and again found that attractive women are penalisedwhen applying for masculine jobs for which attractiveness is not relevant.As shown in the chart, women tended to be seen as more suitable for feminine jobs than masculine jobs. Moreover,attractive women (the checkered bars) tended be rated as more suitable for employment than less attractivewomen. The exception, of course, was an attractive woman applying for a masculine job for which appearance wasnot important (the graph depicts the results of the job of prison guard but other jobs used in the study that weremasculine/appearance unimportant were manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanicalengineer, director of security, hardware salesperson, construction supervisor, and tow truck driver).Figure 1Of course, most people would say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We, no doubt, find our children, friends,and romantic partners to be particularly attractive. But the majority of evidence suggests that attractiveness isactually pretty objective. For example, infants who are unlikely to be influenced by cultural standards of beauty, tendto stare longer at faces that are rated as conventionally attractive. There are also clear neurological effects oflooking at pictures that have been deemed attractive. Specifically, looking at attractive faces activates severalreward centres in the brain including the nucleus accumbens, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulatecortex. Even across cultures, most people agree on the facial attractiveness of men and women.2/4So what makes someone attractive? Attractiveness for women has been associated with a smaller waist-to-hip ratioof 0.6 to 0.7 and a body mass index of 17 to 20 in western cultures. For men, there is some evidence that a lowerwaist to chest ratio is associated with attractiveness. Facial attractiveness is characterised by masculinity/femininity, averageness, and symmetry. Masculinity/ femininity is a secondary sexual characteristic and reflects anindividual’s health. Average faces are preferred because of our general preference for well-known rather than novelcues. Symmetrical faces also are perceived to be healthier.So why would feminine, symmetrical, average women be discriminated against in a male dominated workforce? Ofcourse, some of it is the lack of fit we mentioned between the femininity of the pretty woman and the masculinity ofthe job. But other factors seem to be at work. When pretty women apply for masculine jobs they are also violatinggender norms for women. They might be seen as trying to be more masculine and people tend to react negatively tomasculine women (or feminine men for that matter). So, the woman is either too feminine to do the job or is trying tobe masculine, which elicits equally negative reactions.But, there may be other more subtle biases at play. Work with some of my colleagues suggest that there issomething slightly untrustworthy about beautiful women – a sort of femme fatale effect. It is possible that peoplesomewhat unconsciously, believe that attractive women could take advantage of them so they don’t trust them. Inaddition, some recent findings suggest that people may want to retaliate against attractive women to make up for thepresumed benefits that they receive based on their looks. If we all believe that attractive women are getting ahead(despite evidence to the contrary), it creates a feeling of unfairness and we want to penalise attractive women tomake up for the inequity.As a result, people may punish attractive women even if they have never actually benefitted from their looks. What isinteresting is that these effects do not seem to extend to men. As such, the bias against attractive women reallyrepresents a subtle form of gender discrimination. Maybe the best advice would be to stop judging people (positivelyor negatively) based on their appearance and really consider things like actual work performance when determininghiring and salary decisions.♣♣♣Notes:This blog post is based on the author’s paper Physical Attractiveness Biases in Ratings of EmploymentSuitability: Tracking Down the “Beauty is Beastly” Effect, co-authored with Kenneth E. Podratz, Robert L.Dipboye and Ellie Gibbons, in the Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 150, 2010 – Issue 3The post gives the views of its author, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Mae Jemison, first black woman to travel in space, by NASA, Public Domain.Before commenting, please read our Comment Policy.Stefanie K. Johnson is an assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado,Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. She did her PhD at Rice University and is particularlyinterested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities with thegoal of finding ways to mitigate those biases. Stefanie has published 40 journal articles and bookchapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and TheAcademy of Management Journal. She has presented her work at over 50 meetings around theworld including at the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America onNational Equal Pay Day and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She hasextensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership development training with an emphasison evidence-based practice. She has received multiple million dollars in federal and other grant funding to study3/4leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuringStefanie’s work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal. Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics4/4

The effects of good looks on professional success: It’s complicated

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