Attractiveness Bias: Researchers Identify Simple Trick To 'Level The Playing Field'

Attractiveness can help someone fare better at work, but a team of researchers found that it isn't just their attractiveness that contributes to their success. They also found a simple trick that other workers can employ to "level" the gap.

Decades of studies have shown that attractive individuals are "more likely" to get ahead in their careers, the researchers of a study, published in Personnel Psychology, said. As the University at Buffalo (UB) news release noted, they have better chances of getting hired, getting paid more and receiving better performance evaluations.

According to the researchers of the current study, previous studies have suggested that the evaluators' biases are the "source" of this advantage, but there is also evidence that how attractive people behave and perceive themselves may also be contributing to their success. In the study, they took a closer look at this "attractiveness bias" by looking at people's nonverbal communication.

"We wanted to examine whether there's an overall bias toward beauty on the job, or if attractive people excel professionally because they're more effective communicators," study co-author Min-Hsuan Tu, PhD, said in the UB news release.

To do this, they conducted two experimental studies that looked at 300 video interview pitches in a mock job search. In the first study, the researchers found that the "attractive" people had a "greater sense of power than their less attractive counterparts," hence displaying "a more effective nonverbal presence" that contributed to managerial rating of their hirability.

As UB explained, the more attractive people have had more chances to develop their nonverbal communication through the world's response to their attractiveness.

For the second study, the researchers instructed some participants to do a "power pose" in that they are standing with their feet shoulder-width apart, their hands on their hips and their chins up.

"Adopting a powerful posture was found to be especially beneficial for individuals rated low in attractiveness, enabling them to achieve the same level of effective nonverbal presence as their highly attractive counterparts naturally displayed," the researchers wrote.

"What we found was that while good-looking people have a greater sense of power and are better nonverbal communicators, their less-attractive peers can level the playing field during the hiring process by adopting a powerful posture," Tu said.

However, it's not just the powerful posture itself that helps people project a nonverbal presence, the researcher explained.

"(A)nything that can make you feel more powerful, like doing a confidence self-talk, visualizing yourself succeeding, or reflecting on past accomplishments before a social evaluation situation can also help," Tu noted.