Many people believe that life is easier for beautiful people.
But studies suggest that beautiful women have a tougher time in the workplace than average-looking women or men, says Wendy Patrick.criminal lawyer and professor at the Fowler School of Business at Statue of Liberty University in San Diego.
Beautiful women are seen as less trustworthy, more manipulative and “dangerous.”
In addition, good-looking women are more likely to be objectified, which puts them in positions where their careers are compromised, Dr. Patrick explained.
Studies suggest that good-looking women are seen as less competent in male roles and as less trustworthy leaders, Dr. Patrick said.
This is due to primal feelings of jealousy and competition, Dr. Patrick wrote in a column for Psychology Today.
“Very attractive women can be seen as dangerous,” said Stefanie Johnson, an associate professor of organizational leadership and information analysis at the University of Colorado who has studied the topic. San Diego Union Tribune.
It’s not all bad news for the beautiful people. A Harvard study from 2022 suggested that attractive people are more likely to perform better in job interviews and earn more money than average-looking people.
Furthermore, a 2023 study from the Polish Academy of Sciences found that people who were rated as attractive even as teenagers were more likely to outearn their parents 20 years later than those who were not rated as attractive.
However, these benefits were much more pronounced for men than for women.
Although attractive women have an advantage when it comes to landing a new job, they may find it harder to prove they’ve earned it and deserve to keep it. Two influential studies have cemented this idea, Dr Patrick said.
The first one, published in 2012 by Professor Susanne Braunwho specialises in psychology and leadership at Durham University Business School in the UK, found that attractive women were judged to be less competent when applying for “male jobs” such as construction.
The second study One such paper was published in 2018 by Professor Johnson and Leah Sheppard, an adjunct professor at Washington State University, and made headlines.
Study participants were asked to rate the performance of attractive and unattractive men and women who were announcing hypothetical layoffs. They were also asked whether that person should be fired.
The authors found that participants rated attractive women as more deserving of being fired, less trustworthy, and less truthful than their unattractive male and female counterparts.
This, the study’s authors suggest, is due to ancient evolutionary instincts: Women are taught to view their attractive counterparts as competition, and men are taught to view attractive women as desirable, but potentially untrustworthy.
“We suspect it’s the evil seductress trope – a subconscious anxiety among people of both sexes that beautiful women will use their looks to manipulate people, primarily men,” Professor Sheppard said. Harvard Business Review.
Plus, there’s the obvious factor that attractive women are more likely to be sexually objectified than unattractive women, which can lead to dangerous and unprofessional situations in the workplace, Dr. Patrick said.
It’s not impossible to overcome these biases, Dr. Patrick said. It may just take longer for good-looking people to win the support of their peers than for average-looking people.
“Physical attractiveness is only one aspect of the employment experience. Kind, compassionate and courteous behavior can overcome appearance-related biases,” said Dr. Patrick.
