Why

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Matter
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Hanka
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Why Beauty Matters

Identification of Article
Aristotle used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter.
-Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers (ca. 200 A.D.)
Few years ago we have witnessed events that showed how a beauty is essential. Small
Chinese girl although it has superior voice could not perform at the Olympic Games in
Beijing because it is not pretty enough. Because of its distorted teeth she was not allowed to
appear on opening at the stadium. In the background there was a recording of her voice, and
the more beautiful girl stepped in front of millions audience all around the world. Lin Miaoke
(9), "the inpersionation of an angel", was written on the cover of the New York Times, has
become the most popular kid in China just because they put it - yawn. Are beautiful people
more successful in life? How beauty is important for employers? Already in the school more
attractive students get a better assessment on the basis of "beautiful eyes", and their
colleagues want to hang out with them. Is beauty really so important for success in life?
Survey results from 2011, conducted by Harvard University and Massachusetts General
Hospital show that people assess competence and reliability in the quarter of second (250
milliseconds) and the attitude is based solely on how someone looks. People are very visual,
and that is a fact.
Online research conducted by Newsweek Web page composed of 202 corporate hiring
managers, human-resource employees and senior-level managers, as well as a telephone
survey of a nationally sample of 964 members of the public bringed clear conclusion ; Beauty
is matters. Namely, all respondents are asked to valuate nine character attributes from one to
10 (with 10 being the most important), looks came in third place (with a mean score of 7.1),
below experience (8.9) and confidence (8.5), but above where a candidate went to school
(6.8) and a candidate sense of humor (6.7) , (Bennet,2010). But, we sholud take in account
that confidence and sense of humor usually (which will be shown further in the paper) comes
with better physical look.
This topic has been recently, during the Internet era, globalization and artificial beauty very
popular and have been many studies published with the aim of proving this point. One of that
studies has been conducted by Markus M. Mobius and Tanya S. Rosenblat and published by
American Economic Association in The American Economic Review, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar.,
2006) . In this paper that research will be disccused.
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Why Beauty Matters

The aim of this research is to investigate how beuaty (and confiedence, which is suposed to be
strenghted by physical look) influence on wage rate set by employers.
Article Summary
The participants in this experiment are undergraduate and graduate students from Tucuman,
Argentina, who are divided into two groups, employers and workers. Workers are
required to solve as many computer mazes as possible in 15 minutes employment period.
Than employer estimates workers productivity and set the wage accordingly. But, researches
vary the degrees of oral and visual communication between employers and workers to
estimate the beauty premium on wages. Evaluators of beauty of workers was 50 high school
students from Tucuman. Facial photographs (in random order) which are previously were
shown to employers are presented to students, and they need to evaluate them on a scale from
1 to 5 ( plain to above average beautiful). Than researches constructed the variable
BEAUTY as a mean over all centered beauty ratings. In order to draw conclusion about how
confidence is related to beauty and how confidence is important for employers in setting the
wage rate, researchers are established estimation of ability test. Namely, after first 15 minutes
maze solving test, each worker is asked to an estimate of how many mazes of the next level of
difficulty he expected to solve in next 15 minutes test. This information is kept in secret from
all other participants and provides a measure of workers confidence. The worker receives rate
of 100 points for each solved maze, and minus 40 points for every mispredicted maze in
estimation. The researchers advocate that The misprediction penalty provides the worker
with an incentive to report truthfully the median of his perceived productivity distribution.
So, rate for every solved maze is 140 points, as long as they stay belong its estimation, and
60 points for each maze thereafter. It is important to admonish that at the beginning of the
game every employer starts with 4000 points, while workers have no points initially. All
participants submit their basic labor market characteristics ( age, sex, university, matriculation
year, previous jobs, major, extracurricular activities, and hobbies) and their digital photograph
taken. After solving the maze tests each worker is matched with 5 different employers in five
different ways (circumstances). The employers see the online resume of workers, but they
differ in they way of interaction with workers.
B (baseline): Employer B sees only the resume of the worker.
V (visual): Employer V sees the resume and frontal facial photograph of the worker.
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O (oral) : Employer O sees the resume of worker and conducts a free-form telephone
interview with the worker, up to 5 minutes of length.
VO (visual + oral): Employer VO sees the resume and photograph and also conduct a
telephone conversation with worker, up to 5 minutes in length.
FCF (face to face): Employer FTF sees the resume and photograph, and also conducts a face
to face free- form interview with worker, up to 5 minutes in length.
In this way , researchers are able to conclude how physical look can influence on a wage rate
set by employers. In order to conclude does employers base their opinion about employees
based on appearance, after reviewing all five workers, employers are asked to estimate the
expected productivity in maze solving test of every worker. Employer are provided with the
same points system as workers. Namely, employer faces a penalty of 40 points for every
mispredicted maze. For example, if employer predict that worker can solve 10 mazes and
worker solve 8, the incentive for employer is 80 points, which is subtracted of initially 4000
employers points. At the end of all this predicting, testing, interview and checking resumes
part, employers are asked to estimate wages for each worker, with providing an incentives to
assign wages equal to the median productivity of each worker. Each worker j receives 5
different wages from 5 employers, which is calculated as is follows: with probability of 0.8
employer is estimate is used to pay a worker Wij= 100wij , with probability 0.2 the average
estimate w of all employers across all workers in the session is used to set the workers wage
Wij = 100w . The system is made like this, because before the employer decides on her five
estimates, but after she has seen all the workers, she is told which of her estimates will
contribute to workers earnings. The exact timing of this randomization is important for our
design because it allows us to test for some types of direct taste-based discrimination: an
employer with a taste for physical attractiveness might want to sacrifice earning by reporting
a higher estimate and inquiring higher penalty as a result. To sum up, the total earnings of
worker consist of his piece rate earnings, minus his misprediction penalty plus all five wages.

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Critical Discussion
In the results of presented research is observable a large gender gap between maze solving
productivity: man solved, on average, 10,9 mazes during 15-minute employment test, while
woman solved only 7,8 mazes. This can mean that men are more confidence than woman, or
that men function better under the pressure, and in stressful situations. In this research
difference between men and women productivity is very significance, and marked with two
stars in program output ( one star means 1% significance, two stars means 5% significance,
and three stars means 10% significance). Also, it is concluded that physical attractiveness do
not influence actual productivity, so we can say that men are not more beautiful than women,
if we follow that logic. But, we can draw general conclusion based on one research, and
sample of one research. Another research on similar topic named Performance in
competitive environments: Gender difference conducted by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle,
Aldo Rustichini concluded that according to two-tailed Mann Whitney U test, there is no
significance difference between men and women productivity in maze solving test. Authors
stated: There is no signifcant difference in performance under the two noncompetitive
treatments, the random pay and the piecerate for men ( p-value 0.6449) or women ( p-value
0.6130); the somewhat higher performance under the random pay scheme is not signifcant.
So, difference between results of these two tests can be based on difference of maze which
participants needs to solve. So, we can draw general conclusion that men are more productive
than women, because that can be dependent of type of problem, equipment used, and type of
responded in sample, because different people, and different samples has different skills and
preferences in work. It is important to mention that in both researches is used one tape of tests
mazes, but not the same ones.
Next research conclusion is that physically attractive workers are more confident ; one
standard deviation increase in BEAUTY raise confidence by between 13 and 16 percent
authors stated. Beautiful people are more satisfied in their body, so this can lead to higher
confidence. Also, one of the explanations of this phenomena can be halo effect. One of the
findings in social psychological research is that, compared to people with average looks,
beautiful people are considered to be more intelligent, interesting, more creative, better
leaders meaning: they have a whole range of socially desirable characteristcs. Psychologists
call this the halo effect: the attractiveness of pretty people impart a positive halo on their

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Why Beauty Matters

other characteristics. So, reason for the relationship between confidence and attractiveness is
that attractive people are generally aware of the halo effect.
However, if we look at this phenomenon from a different angle, we will see that there are
things other than beauty that can affect the self-confidence of workers. One of these things is
charisma. If the worker is aware of his inherent charisma and how it affects the other, it will
increase his self-esteem. Also, one of the important things is the causal connection of beauty
and self-confidence. In some cases, self-confidence is not the result but the cause that
someone feels beautiful. People which have more self-confidence will feel and look more
beautiful than those with lower levels of self-confidence. All of the above proves that beauty
can be one of the causes of increasing self-confidence, but not only, because there are some
other reasons that indicated level of self-confidence which this researches did not take as one
of the variables.
One of the most important results and conclusions of this research is one that prove the first
researchers hypothesis ; Beauty of worker influence on wage rates set by employers. There
is no beauty premium in treatment B in which employers access only resumes without any
oral or visual stimuli. In contrast, there are significant beauty premia in all other treatments
(V, O, VO, and FTF), ranging from 12- to 13- percent increase in wages for one standard
deviation increase in beauty in treatment V, O and VO to a 17- percent increase in treatment
FTFThe fact that we do not observe a beauty premium in treatment B suggest that we are
indeed identifying returns to looks and not just the effect of some correlated omitted
variable. This is prove that beauty really have impact on wage rate set by employers. The
same worker which is ranked as beautiful had 17- percent increase in wage rate when
employer seen his/her picture or conduct face-to-face interview. Workers references are same
in all cases, but in visual treatments there is beauty premium. Greatest evidence supporting
this conclusion is provided by a recent survey of dozen of employers. One of them is research
coducted by Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle, in which employers were asked, "How
important or unimportant is attractive physical appearance (for the job most recently filled)?"
Eleven percent responded that appearance was very important, while 39 percent believed that
it was somewhat important. (Hamemesh and Biddle, 2008)
Also, support for this hypothesis has been found in meta-analyses of both social psychological
research and industrial/organizational psychological research conducted by Robert Dipboye .
Physically attractive individuals are seen as more likely to achieve success (Croxton, Van
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Rensselaer, Dutton, & Ellis, 1989) and more hirable as managers and management trainees
(Cash & Kilcullen, 1985; Dipboye, Arvey, & Terpstra, 1977; Dipboye, Fromkin, & Wiback,
1975; Gilmore, Beehr, & Love, 1986; Marlowe, Schneider, & Nelson, 1996) than less
attractive individuals. Physically attractive individuals receive higher offers for starting salary
(Jackson, 1983) and receive higher performance evaluations (Drogosz & Levy, 1996).
(Dipboye, 2010)
Some would say that this results are discouraging and discriminatory. Why would an
employer hired and give a higher salary to physically attractive people? In the workplace we
spend more than 8 hours a day, and it is natural and logical that person for that time want to be
surrounded by more beautiful people, because such persons usually act more cheerful and
make the working environment better. Also, the beauty of workers an employer can lead to
higher profits. That happens in jobs involving direct contact with customers. For example, in
sales, beauty of seller can affect the amount that it sells. One study found that ice cream
saleswoman who is physically attractive sell more ice cream in the same place at the same
time than the one that is less attractive. Also, the beauty is a big advantage in jobs that involve
any form of negotiation. More beautiful negotiator in negotiation with the opposite sex is
more likely to achieve a better deal for company, and higher profits. Good-looking people
make better persuaders (Chaiken, 1979). This may be because attractive people tend to have
better communication skills and possess more confidence or just because we like beauty.
Chaiken's study results indicate that attractive (vs unattractive) communicators induced
significantly greater persuasion on both a verbal and behavioral measure of making
agreement. Also, female indicated greater agreement than male. Data gathered from
communicator Ss (undergraduates) during an earlier laboratory session indicate that
physically attractive and unattractive communicators differed with respect to several
communication skills and other attributes relevant to communicator persuasiveness, including
GPA, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, and several measures of self-evaluation. These findings
suggest that attractive individuals may be more persuasive than unattractive persons partly
because they possess skills and characteristics that makes them to better communicators.
Whatever the reason, beauty can make us to change our minds. Also, one of the important role
of beauty in employment is because beautiful people achieve a better first impression. The
first impression of a person is a concept in social psychology, which represent the
establishment of a comprehensive image of individual on the basis of very limited
information. The first impression is created in the process of observation in a few seconds (a
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maximum of seven). First we perceive instinctively (if we are in danger or not), and then
build the attitude of the attractiveness (if someone is assessed as attractive we will endeavor to
maintain contact in the future and if a person is assessed as unattractive, and avoiding further
contact with her). Because of psychological fact more beautiful people will be employed
easier.
Like all things in the world and the beauty have positive and negative sides. Beauty can
sometimes have a negative impact on employment. Beauty is beastly. Namely, heres evidence
that female beauty can be a problem in jobs with strong gender stereotypes. For example a
beautiful woman may be at a disadvantage when applying for a job which is associated with
masculinity, like a prison guard or a mechanical engineer (Johnson et al, 2010). This case is
some weaker in cas of men, because they can apply for jobs whcih are labeled as feminine
such as nurses, lingerie salespersons or HR managers without their beauty counting against
them. This is moustly visibl in the types of socitety with strong stereotipes, like is for example
Bosnia. Than, one of the problems witih hiring beuatiful people is the case when employer is
same sex, because when employers are making a decision about someone of the same sex,
they can let their jealousy get the better of them. One recent study has showed that people
who are highly attractive are at a disadvantage in the hiring process when the decision-makers
are the same sex (Agthe et al., 2011). It seems we perceive beautiful people who are the same
sex as a threat. Previous studies of organizational decision making demonstrate positive biases
to highly attractive individuals. The current research, in contrast, showed that when the person
being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator, attractiveness is disadvantage, rather than
advantage. Three experiments assessing evaluations of potential job candidates (Studies 1 and
3) and university applicants (Study 2) demonstrated positive biases toward highly attractive
other-sex targets but negative biases toward highly attractive same-sex targets. This pattern
was mediated by variability in participants desire to interact with versus avoid the target
individual (Studies 1 and 2) and was moderated by participants level of self-esteem (Study
3); the derogation of attractive same-sex targets was not observed among people with high
self-esteem. Findings demonstrate an important exception to the positive effects of
attractiveness in organizational settings and suggest that negative responses to attractive
same-sex targets stem from perceptions of self-threat (Agthe et al., 2011). This pehonmena is
also more strongly visible in the case of women, because they percived to be more jeleous,
which is psychological fact.

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Why Beauty Matters

Taking into account all the arguments, in the end, we can conclude that to be beautiful have
more positive than negative effects on employment. Beauty is more a gift than a curse in this
era of globalization, the world's media and the Internet.
Final evaluation and recomendation
Methodology of the study, which was conducted by Markus M. Mobius and Tanya S.
Rosenblat is relevant, but there's always room for improvement. The variable that contributed
to more relevant results is the one that determines whether the employer is the same sex as the
job aplicant. In this way, the study could determine in what way and how much sex of the
employer affects the employment and salary levels of employees. Lack of these variable can
spoil the results so that we do not know whether the man hired a woman because it is a
beautiful members of the opposite sex, or women not hired a beautiful woman, because
jeaolusy and threat of competition. The absence of mentioned can contribute to this fact being
lost in the results, and can be interpreted as the result of another phenomenon, which leads to
misinterpretation of the results of research, and omitted variable bias can occur. Research like
this is very difficult to implement, and it is very difficult to generalize the results of such
research, because every person has a different perception of beauty. Although there are ideals
of beauty imposed by world media and the Internet, still these ideals are different in the
subconscious of every individual. What is beautiful to one person (employer), to another may
not be, and because of it is very uncertain, and even foolish to rely on physical beauty in a job
interview. Physical beauty of worker during interviews can be a bonus, but not the main
trump.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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Why Beauty Matters

References :
1. Massachusetts General Hospital | Research. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2015, from
http://www.massgeneral.org/research/about/overview.aspx
2. Bennet. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2010, from http://www.newsweek.com/poll-howmuch-beauty-worth-work-74305
3. Gneezy, U., NIEDERLE, M., & RUSTICHINI, A. (n.d.). PERFORMANCE IN
COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS: GENDER DIFFERENCES. Retrieved April 17,
2015, from http://web.stanford.edu/~niederle/Gender.pdf
4. Hamermesh, D., Biddle,J., (2008, September 16). Beauty and the Labor Market.
Retrieved April 8, 2015.
5. Dipboye, R., (2010). Physical Attractiveness Biases in Ratings of Employment
Suitability: Tracking Down the Beauty is Beastly Effect. Retrieved May 20, 2015,
from
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Dipboye/publication/44797457_Physical_
attractiveness_biases_in_ratings_of_employment_suitability_tracking_down_the_bea
uty_is_beastly_effect/links/0912f50f80929c47d0000000.pdf
6. Chaiken, S. (1979). Communicator physical attractiveness and persuasion. Retrieved
May 19, 2015, from http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1980-32482-001
7. Agathe, M. (2011). Does Being Attractive Always Help? Positive and Negative Effects
of Attractiveness on Social Decision Making. Retrieved May 12, 2015, from
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/37/8/1042.abstract
8. Johnson, S., Dweck, C., & Chen, F. (2010). At the Intersection of Social and Cognitive
Development: Internal Working Models of Attachment in Infancy. Retrieved May 20,
2015, from
http://ambadylab.stanford.edu/pubs/JohnsonDweckChenOkSternBarth2010.pdf

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