Is Beauty/Handsomeness An Advantage At Work?
Are beautiful and handsome people really always one step ahead of others? It is common to think that beauty or handsomeness gives people an advantage in general. So how far can this thing go?
“BEAUTY IS GOOD” (OR IS IT NOT?)
We can say that the idea of ”beauty is good” is a stereotypical thought that settles in people’s minds.
People with this mindset (you can get it without realizing it) see people who meet their beauty standards one step ahead of others.
Here, the standards change from period to period as well as according to the society and do not give place to the distinction between men and women.
In other words, facial elements, waist thinness, etc. determined by the society as beautiful. a woman with different elements can also enter this title; likewise men.
In this thinking, beautiful people are automatically expected to be successful and healthy.
Likewise, people with this mindset expect people they know to be healthy and successful without seeing their faces (directly or indirectly) to conform to beauty standards. So there may be pressure on them without realizing it.
HERE BEAUTY
According to the news of Webtekno, in a study signed by Professor of Psychology Madeline Heilman, university students are given CVs of new graduates and they are asked to examine and evaluate them.
As expected, the students who evaluated their gender according to the professions that society sees as male and female rated the CVs of beautiful (photo) people with higher scores.
Men evaluated as beautiful were considered suitable for both occupations. But beautiful women had an advantage in jobs deemed only for women.
The reason is simple. It was believed that women who were seen as beautiful had more feminine features, so they would be inadequate in jobs that required masculinity. Note that this is a 1979 study.
So why can’t we just accept this as true? Since this study was conducted in a laboratory setting, the people observed may have been particularly impartial because they were aware of the results of this experiment.
Because of this effect, there is a possibility that events will affect beautiful people badly. To see this, we took a look at a study by Psychology Professor Comila Shahani-Denning.
In the aforementioned study, Shahani; They work with observers to deal with employees who are seen as attractive, unattractive, and average, and are asked to discipline them.
As a result, beautiful people are held more accountable when they make mistakes. For unattractive people, these mistakes are considered just “bad luck”. In other words, we can say that the effect we mentioned is reversed here.
IS BEAUTY AT THE WORKPLACE GOOD OR BAD?
Shahani’s data from different studies supports that good people have an advantage in the workplace.
When we look at the idea that beauty is an animal effect, we see that such effective results cannot be obtained from different studies. At least that’s the case with hiring.
Finally, something we can discuss:
What methods can employers use to ensure that candidates are not biased about beauty in the selection of recruiters?
Here we take a look at John E. Stewart’s 1980 research paper focusing on the effects of attraction in judgment.
In the study here, observers evaluated the attractiveness of the accused by attending certain hearings.
When the 67 defendants and their sentences with various attractiveness values were examined, it was seen that the attractive ones were sentenced to shorter sentences than the others.
Of course, gender can also play a role in this situation:
Research by Angela Ahola and Åke Hellström in 2009 sheds light on this issue. In the said study, photographs of people with varying degrees of beauty and crimes that may have been committed are given to the observed group.
As a result, it is seen that there is a slightly softer attitude towards women. But let’s point out that this is only against beautiful women. This was not seen in men.
Let’s take the Casey Anthony case as an example.
As we know in education, your appearance doesn’t matter. At least we know that beautiful/handsome people don’t fill papers faster.
However, according to some studies, ‘expectations’ from beautiful people are higher than others.
Don’t think of it as putting pressure on those people, because that’s something we keep out of our business. This is where the idea of “should be clever, must be clever” arises. But this is not even noticeable.
In this context, teachers may automatically expect better results from their relatively beautiful students.
There are also situations where students see a bright future and think they will develop qualities such as leadership.
This expectation can arouse a special interest in those students and enable them to be more successful. But can we say that they are successful because they are beautiful or handsome? We can’t say of course, but there is no place for stereotypes in science.
For this reason, a lot of research has been done on whether real success (rather than externally expected) has anything to do with beauty.
Looking at the work of Dorian G. Mitchem, we can see that handsome people are automatically expected to get good grades.
When it comes to hard data, Mitchem, along with many other researchers, shows that beauty and academic success are not linked.
It has been seen that the factors closest to academic success are regularity, rigor and hard work.
So what does all this mean when we look at studies on education?
We said that beauty misleads people in predicting academic success. Simply put, if this goes away, more accurate predictions will be made.
Of course, getting rid of this situation is not so easy. It requires controlled objectivity.
WHAT EXACTLY IS ATTRACTED FOR THE FACE?
If two people at a job interview offer the same things, one has a sleepy expression on his face and his general cleanliness is not better than the other, he may appear inferior with the illusion of beauty.
More importantly, since well-groomed and sleepless faces are thought to indicate health and order, these faces almost comply with beauty standards.
BEAUTIFUL FACES ARE HEALTH AND ORGANIZATION REALLY IMPORTANT?
S. Michael Kalick of the University of Massachusetts Department of Psychology focused on this in one of his studies.
As a result of his research, he found that such estimates based on people’s appearance actually preceded the ‘real’ health estimate.
Of course, let’s open parenthesis here and point out that unconscious facial expressions or other facial expressions that may change over time are excluded. After all, we all look paler when we’re sick.
In this study, healthy individuals who were not sick were included and estimates were made accordingly.
In other words, when you go to a job interview where you meet your every need, you may not get the job just because your appearance does not match the beauty requirements of that period.
In other words, at this point, a standard is formed and the necessity of the work is moved beyond the field of view, even if no one notices it.
