What is attractiveness bias

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 by using a point scale, and not just when they belong to the same culture.

Next, you can correlate this score with a range of success indicators, from interview ratings, to job performance ratings, to promotion or salary data.

A pro-attractiveness bias already exists in education, with studies showing that physically attractive students tend to obtain higher grades at university, partly because they are deemed more conscientious and intelligent, even when they are not. Furthermore, attractiveness already helps students get into universities in the first place, by eliciting more favorable evaluations during college admissions interviews. In fact, meta-analytic studies suggest that even children are assumed to be smarter, more honest, and driven, when they are deemed more attractive — and children make the same type of inferences when they evaluate more or less attractive adults.

Unsurprisingly, the beauty bias transfers into the workplace, with scientific studies showing that less attractive individuals are more likely to get fired , even though they are also less likely to be hired in the first place.

For example, in an experimental study , researchers sent 11, CVs to various job openings, including identical CVs accompanied by candidate photographs of different levels of attractiveness.

Attractive women and men were much more likely to get a call back for an interview than unattractive or no-photograph candidates were. In the U. Note that this effect is found even among highly successful individuals. One delicate issue is the possibility — supported by much evolutionary psychology research — that the cause of the correlation between beauty and career success is not only prejudice or bias, but also actual talent.

In other words, could it be that, at least in part, attractive people do better in life because they actually possess more adaptive traits , such as intelligence or talent?

At times, this proposition is hard to test, not least because of the common absence of objective performance data that is not conflated with subjective preference. It is for this very reason that attempts to use AI to measure attractiveness have exposed racial preferences around what is found more or less attractive in a given culture.

If we teach AI to imitate human preferences, it will not just replicate, but also augment and exacerbate human biases. For example, physical attractiveness — just like psychological attractiveness EQ or likability — contributes to better sales and fund-raising potential, so is it sensible to stop employers from hiring more attractive salespeople or fundraisers?

It is no different from pretending to ignore race or social class, while selecting on academic credentials, which are actually conflated with race and social class. Although employers can mitigate this bias by eliminating appearance data from their hiring practices — by not only using AI, but also focusing on science-based assessments, past performance, and resume data — such measures will not be sufficient to eliminate bias, since they are also influenced by historical or past bias: if attractive people are evaluated more favorably in the past, they will show up as high performers in their CVs, etc.

Still, that is no reason to avoid the issue or perpetuate the beauty bias at work. Importantly, AI can be a powerful tool to detect and expose the degree of bias underlying human ratings of potential and performance. And, given the right inputs, AI can help us overcome our conscious and unconscious biases in hiring. You have 1 free article s left this month.

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.

Imagine you ask 10 people to rate people on physical appearance. 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 point scale, and not just when they belong to the same culture. Next, you can correlate this score with a range of success indicators, from interview ratings, to job performance ratings, as well as promotion and salary data.

A pro-attractiveness bias exists already in education, with studies showing that physically attractive students tend to obtain higher grades at university, partly because they are deemed more conscientious and intelligent, even when they are not. Furthermore, attractiveness already helps students to get into university in the first place, by eliciting more favorable evaluations during college admissions interviews.

In fact, meta-analytic studies suggest that even children are deemed smarter, more honest, and driven, when they are more attractive — and children make the same type of inferences when they evaluate more or less attractive adults. In a clever experiment , researchers asked kids to pick an imaginary boat captain for a game, and they were told to choose from photographs of actual politicians unknown to the 5-year old kids.

Unsurprisingly, the beauty bias transfers into the workplace, with scientific studies showing that less attractive individuals are more likely to get fired , even though they are also less likely to be hired in the first place. For example, in an experimental study , researchers sent 11, CVs to various job openings, including identical CVs accompanied by candidate photographs of different levels of attractiveness. Attractive women and men were much more likely to get a call back for an interview than unattractive or no-photograph candidates were.

Given these findings, one wonders how many countries — in particular Germany — request that job applicants include a picture in their resumes. In the U. Note that this effect is found even among highly successful individuals. One delicate issue is the possibility — supported by evolutionary psychology research — that the cause of the correlation between beauty and career success is not only prejudice or bias, but also actual talent. In other words, could it be that, at least in part, attractive people do better in life because they actually possess more adaptive traits , such as intelligence or talent?

To be sure, this proposition is hard to test, not least because of the common absence of objective performance data that is not conflated with subjective preference.

For example, physical attractiveness — just like psychological attractiveness EQ or likability — contributes to better sales and fund raising potential, so is it sensible to stop employers from hiring more attractive salespeople or fundraisers?

It is no different from pretending to ignore race or social class, while selecting candidates on academic credentials, which are actually conflated with race and social class.