A friend once attended a family function at my house. Though she did not interact with my relatives, she got to observe them from a distance. After the event, she told me that my cousin, whom she only saw, but didn’t speak to, seemed really “happy-go-lucky.” I wasn’t surprised that she noticed this cousin who is extraordinarily good-looking. What took me aback is that my friend, who is normally slow to warm up to people she doesn’t know, took a strong liking to my cousin. In other words, my friend fell prey to the halo effect.
In another instance, I was at a wedding, sitting next to a distant relative. A friend’s daughter, who again happens to be very attractive, walked by. My relative wanted to know who the young charming lady was. When I told her she was X & Y’s daughter, she exclaimed, “What a wonderful child they’ve raised.” Here is another instance of the halo effect being played out. Based on the young lady’s striking looks, my relative was making positive attributions about her character.
The allure of looks
In an article in Psyche, Chris Westbury and Daniel King discuss the pull of the halo effect, which is a “psychological bias” where an aspect of a person influences our perception of other unrelated facets. The most common form is the “attractiveness halo effect” that involves forming conclusions about a person’s character based on their appearance. This bias predisposes us to think that attractive people are also smart, competent, friendly and helpful.
How does the halo effect manifest at the workplace? From hiring to performance reviews to promotions, the halo effect can rear its ‘not-so-beautiful’ head in umpteen ways. In an article in Harvard Business Review, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic writes that the beauty bias or lookism is prevalent in the workplace. In one study, researchers mailed 11,000 resumes to various job postings. They included identical resumes but with different photographs, of people with varying “levels of attractiveness.” Good-looking candidates of both genders were more likely to get interview calls than less attractive or no-photograph candidates.
Chamorro-Premuzic also notes that there is a positive correlation between “attractiveness and long-term income.” Those who are “above-average” in terms of looks earn 10 to 15% more than their less striking peers.
If you think lookism is unlikely to surface in academia, the data tell a different story. In an article in The Conversation, Christopher Warhusrt and Dennis Nickson cite a study that was conducted at the University of Memphis. Good-looking professors tended to receive better ratings by students than their more ordinary looking colleagues. Unsurprisingly, this effect was more pronounced for women faculty compared to men.
And if you think working from home should free us of this bias, Warhurst and Nickson discuss a survey that was conducted by a law firm of 2000 individuals. Thirty-five percent of women reported that they received “at least one sexist demand from their employer,” with the most common one alluding to what women wore for video meetings. Women received requests to “wear more makeup” or “dress more provocatively.”
Reducing the pull of lookism
What can we do to mitigate lookism at the workplace? Not asking candidates to share photographs of themselves during the application process is a step. Be aware of this bias in the interview process and examine why you find some candidates appealing. Though it’s hard to enforce complete objectivity in the interview process, it’s definitely possible to demand more accountability when people are being appraised. When employees are being rated by their bosses, ask them to spell out more objective criteria.
Further, we may also try to dilute cultural forces that perpetuate lookism. In a blog post on HuffPost, Heather Laine Talley asks us to examine our roles in perpetuating this bias. As lookism is explicitly promoted by the cosmetics industry, she urges us to buy fewer cosmetic products. We may also refrain from joining in jokes and jibes that target people’s appearances. Be watchful of the media’s role, especially advertising, in conflating beauty with intelligence and inherent goodness. And regardless of the picture-perfect social media posts you see online, know that everyone has bad hair days and that beauty, as the cliché goes, is skin-deep.
About the Author
(Aruna Sankaranarayanan is the author of Zero Limits and the co-author of Bee-Witched along with Brinda S. Narayan.)