Although attractiveness is not objective, which is why there are always disagreements between people rating the same person, it is also not entirely subjective, so most people will tend to agree on whether someone is more or less attractive, for instance on a 1-10 point scale, and not just when they belong to the same culture. Imagine you ask 10 people to rate 100 people on physical appearance. Now the good news: the attractiveness bias is easy to spot, so any employer interested in eliminating handicaps against less attractive people cannot just detect this bias, but also evaluate the efficacy of interventions designed to mitigate it.įirst, you measure attractiveness, which is typically a function of consensual ratings of physical appearance – multiple ratings of others’ attractiveness. For instance, in order to join the Chinese Navy “good looks” are an official requirement, and though Abercrombie & Fitch had a $50-million settlement for hiring WASPY looking retail assistants, it was not banned from imposing attractiveness standards in its recruitment policies, so long as the attractive people it recruited were ethnically diverse. Common manifestations of appearance-based discrimination may include bias against obese, oddly-dressed, or tattooed employees, or any individuals who don’t fit a society’s dominant aesthetic criteria.īroadly speaking, the beauty bias concerns the favorable treatment that individuals receive when they are deemed more attractive, regardless of whether this happens consciously or unconsciously – and few individuals, let alone employers, actually admit to preferring to work with others on the basis of their higher levels of attractiveness. As comprehensive academic review summarized: “Physically attractive individuals are more likely to be interviewed for jobs and hired, they are more likely to advance rapidly in their careers through frequent promotions, and they earn higher wages than unattractive individuals”. The existence of a beauty premium in the labor market is well-documented.

Yet one of the most pervasive and prominent biases is hardly ever acknowledged, namely the beauty bias – also known as “lookism”.

Actor observer bias social norms