Beauty, the key to success?
An investigation of the effect of physical attractiveness on
success in the labor market.
June 29, 2015
Eva Steenman – 10026517
MSc. in Business Administration
Leadership and Management Track
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Statement of originality
This document is written by Eva Steenman who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
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Contents
Abstract……….…….…………..4 1. Introduction……….….………...5 2. Literature review………7 2.1 Attractiveness…..………..………7 2.2 Theories ………..………….…….72.3 Attractiveness and success in the labor market………....……….……10
2.4 Mechanisms: why does attractiveness have this positive effect on success?………...……..12
2.5 Moderators: occupation and gender………....……….……14
3. Methodology……….…..……...……21 3.1 Research design………..………..…….21 3.2 Sample of LinkedIn………..………….…….21 3.3 Data collection……….……..22 3.4 Sample of surveys…..………24 3.5 Variables………..24 3.6 Data analysis………….……….………...…………...…………...24 4. Results………..………..26
4.1 Descriptive statistics & Correlations….………...………26
4.2 Regressions……….26
5. Discussion………..………....29
5.1 Main findings……….………….…...29
5.2 Practical implications………...……….……….……….32
5.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research……….33
6. Conclusion………..…….…..35
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Abstract
Beautiful people experience many benefits in both social and professional life. A lot of research has been done in this field of research, but the knowledge of the relationship between physical attractiveness and success in the labor market is somewhat limited. This research investigates this relationship and is the first to measure success as the reputation of the firm the employee is working for. The moderating roles of occupation and gender were also researched. With the use of LinkedIn the data was collected and through surveys the photos were rated based on physical appearance. The results show that attractive men are more successful compared to less attractive men, but attractive women are less successful than less attractive women.
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1. Introduction
Research gives clear evidence; good-looking people experience benefits in several aspects of life. Attractive politicians get more votes, jurors’ judgment is lighter for attractive criminals and attractive singles are more successful in the dating market (Hamermesh, 2006; Hosoda, Romero & Coats, 2003). People tend to give more positive attributions to attractive than to less attractive individuals and in this way attractive people are judged to be more socially desirable, to have better jobs, happier marriages and more fulfilling social and occupational lives compared to less attractive people (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972).
Beauty has been a field of interest for a long time, and after studies on the impact of physical attractiveness on a variety of non-economic outcomes, more and more interest is now on the effect of physical attractiveness on success in the labor market. In an important study done by Hamermesh and Biddle (1994), the relationship between physical attractiveness of employees and their earnings was researched. They found that plain people earn less than average-looking people, and that average-looking people earn less than good-looking people. Workers of above-average attractiveness earn between 10 and 15 percent more than workers of below-average attractiveness and this difference is known as the beauty premium. Many researchers from all over the world found the same positive relationship between attractiveness and income (Hamermesh, 2011). Success in the labor market was studied in other ways too, such as the hiring process, where attractiveness plays a significant role. When people are applying for a job, recruiters will evaluate their résumés and photos. It is found that attractive candidates are perceived to be more suitable for employment than unattractive candidates (Dipboye, Fromkin, & Wiback, 1975).
The literature on the effect of attractiveness on other labor-market outcomes is growing but still somewhat limited. This research looks for another possible relationship between
6 physical attractiveness and success in the labor market. It will investigate if physical attractiveness of employees is related with the successfulness of the firm they work for. In other words, do attractive employees work for more successful companies compared to unattractive employees? In this research, the reputation of the firm is used as a measure for successfulness. Additionally, the possible moderating effects of occupation and gender will be researched since the question ‘when does attractiveness plays a role?’ is not that much addressed in the literature. It is easy to imagine that occupational differences in the effects of attractiveness exist. For some jobs, such as being an actor, appearance is more important than for other jobs. Furthermore, there are indications in the literature that men and women are treated differently based on their appearance. However, it remains unclear how they are treated differently and therefore this study makes a start to research this.
More knowledge on the attractiveness-success relationship could be very useful for graduates entering the labor market and job applicants on the one hand, and for managers and recruiters on the other hand. Everyone should know the importance of appearance as it affects our lives in many ways, including our job success. This study will answer the following question: what is the effect of physical attractiveness on success in the labor market and how
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2. Literature review
2.1 Attractiveness
What is attractiveness and when is someone attractive? Answering this question is beyond the scope of this study, but some points are important to address. To start with, do people agree on who is attractive and who is not? ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, is an often heard saying, stating that different people have different ideas about who is attractive and who is not. This was questioned by Langlois et al. (2000), and with their meta-analysis they showed that there exist a high consistency among people who rate others based on physical appearance. Their conclusion is that people do agree about who is attractive and who is not, with no differences within and across cultures.Furthermore, age plays an important role; young adults are found to be more attractive than older adults (Hamersmesh, 2011).
Commonly studied topics in the literature on attractiveness are a person’s total appearance, its height, its weight and the face. In this study the focus lies on someone’s face. The face is viewed as unique, a stable measure of attractiveness and is seen as most important in communication (Jackson, 1992; Rule and Ambady, 2010). Dickey-Bryant et al. (1986) found that it is needless to judge people in person; photographs of faces are found to yield reliable judgment (Dickey-Bryant et al., 1986).
2.2 Theories
As stated in the introduction, being physical attractive has many positive outcomes, because attractive individuals are rated more positively and are treated more favorable than less-attractive individuals (Langlois et al., 2000). This results in attractive politicians getting more votes, a lighter jurors’ judgment for attractive criminals and more success for attractive singles in the dating market (Hamermesh, 2006; Hosoda, Romero & Coats, 2003). But why
8 does attractiveness have these positive effects? There are several theories that can be used to explain the effect of attractiveness on various outcomes.
First of all, fitness-related evolutionary theories explain this effect of attractiveness. The ‘good genes theory’ is one of them (Langlois et al., 2000), where attractiveness is seen as an indicator of fitness and health of people. These characteristics are important in human interactions, and cause different judgment and treatment of attractive and unattractive people. People prefer attractive persons, since attractiveness is a signal of good health and good health is critical to survival. This combined with the idea that the traits and behaviors a person possesses are also a reflection of the quality of its genes (Rennels, 2012), gives an explanation for the positive outcomes (e.g. higher income, more success in dating market) attractiveness has (Langlois et al., 2000). Furthermore, in the ‘human mate selection theory’, where it is about finding the right partner, attractiveness is an indicator of the reproductive value. Although some state that attractiveness has the same importance for both sexes, it is also argued that attractiveness is more important in women than in men. Attractive women give signals of youth and reproductive fitness, which are important to men. Argued is that women are looking for other things in men, such as intelligence and resources, stating that attractiveness is less important in finding a man (Langlois et al., 2000). Thirdly, the ‘differential parental solicitude theory’ explains that parents will invest more resources in the child that will be the most successful one, based on its fitness, quality and reproductive potential (Langlois et al., 2000). This different treatment influences the traits and behavior of children and due to this different treatment, it is expected that they will behave differently compared to their siblings. In a study done by Langlois et al. (1995) on the relationship between infant attractiveness and maternal behavior, support is found for this theory. Mothers of more attractive children were more affectionate and playful towards their children than mothers of less attractive children. On the
9 other hand, mothers of less attractive children were found to show more ‘routine caregiving’ – behavior.
Additionally, general socialization and expectancy theories are a way to explain the positive effects of attractiveness. Here, attractive persons are treated differently compared to unattractive persons. An attractiveness stereotype exists, often called the ‘beauty is good’ stereotype, which was proposed by Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972). When people see someone who is beautiful they automatically think that this person will possess plenty of other positive characteristics too. In their study attractive persons were judged to be more socially desirable, to have better jobs, happier marriages and more fulfilling social and occupational lives (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972). For unattractive people it works the other way around, people gave more negative attributes to them (Fleener, 2005). The effects this stereotype can have, are nicely described by Langlois et al. (2000) as a causal multi-step mechanism. First, the (un)attractive appearance of someone causes expectations for certain behavior. Then, perceivers enact on this by certain judgment and treatment of these (un)attractive people. Third, this judgment and treatment will cause the development of behavior and traits in these (un)attractive people. Lastly, the (un)attractive persons will internalize these judgments and treatments and this will result in the development of certain behavior and self-perceptions.
The following example shows that this above described effect of attractiveness could start very early in life. Evidence is found that attractive children get more attention from the teacher compared to unattractive children. The attractive children will, as a consequence, get more individual instruction, learn more and in this way get better grades. The experience of getting good grades has a positive effect on the self-concept. If this process would happen multiple times, the effect may become cumulative, and therefore attractive persons are expected to surpass less attractive persons (Umberson and Hughes, 1987).
10 2.3 Attractiveness and success in labor market
Attractive persons are experiencing more benefits than less attractive persons, and this has implications for their success in the labor market as well. Research is done on the effect of attractiveness on labor-market outcomes, such as the hiring process. It is easy to imagine that one’s attractiveness is important in the hiring process, where the first impression is really important. The hiring process usually starts with a recruiter screening all the applications. In a study by Dipboye, Fromkin, and Wiback (1975) students and professionals rated photos of applicants. Their results showed that attractive applicants were favored over unattractive applicants, highlighting the importance of someone’s appearance. Watkins and Johnston (2000) investigated this effect as well. With applications that include photographs of the applicants, it was investigated if attractiveness still plays a role when other information was given as well. It was found that applicants with a résumé of average quality had an advantage when they were attractive, but attractiveness had no impact when the quality of the résumé was high (Watkins & Johnston, 2000).
Other research is done on the relationship between attractiveness and income. Hamermesh and Biddle (1993) were one of the first to study this phenomenon of discrimination in the labor market, with a possible favoritism for beautiful over ugly individuals. They found a beauty premium, people who have above-average attractiveness earn 4 (men) to 8 (women) percent more than people with average attractiveness. The below-average earned less than the average attractive people, with men earning 13% and women 4% less than people from average attractiveness. This is known as the plainness penalty. The plainness penalty is somewhat bigger than the beauty premium. It seems that being ugly has a stronger effect than being beautiful. In the literature these numbers are normally added together to get the beauty premium and in this way, attractive persons earn between 12 to 17 percent more than less attractive persons. The question whether attractiveness actually leads to an increase in income was researched by
11 Hamermesh and Biddle (1998). In their longitudinal study they found that attractiveness and income are not only correlated, but that attractiveness actually causes income.
This positive effect of attractiveness on income has been confirmed by many researchers all over the world: in the book of Hamermesh (2011) the following countries were included: Australia, Canada, China, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States; the beauty premium was found in all these countries. Several other researchers found the same effect. Langlois et al.’s (2000) meta-analysis showed that 68% of attractive persons scored above the mean on occupational success (including income), compared to 32% of unattractive persons, which also suggests that attractiveness has a positive effect on success. A more recent study done by Judge, Hurst and Simon (2009) also showed that one’s income prospect is improved by being physical attractive. Regarding the plainness penalty, Harper (2000) found that the plainness penalty was even bigger compared to the findings in the study of Hamermesh and Biddle (1993), with 14,9% for men, and 10,9% for women. Meaning that, as has been mentioned above, plain people get strongly penalized in the labor market.
Income is one way to investigate the effect of attractiveness on success, but success is researched in other ways as well. Being physically attractive also helps employees to get promoted. Attractiveness only explained two percent of this effect but it was found to be a significant relationship (Morrow et al., 1990), meaning that when two employees are applying for promotion, their appearance could be the deciding factor. Tao (2008) studied the effects of an attractive physical appearance and found that the graduates who are satisfied with their looks, are more likely to be full-time workers and are less likely to be unemployed. This clearly has to do with more than only being attractive to others. When someone is satisfied with his/her appearance, this will result in having a higher self-esteem, which of course has its own effects on labor market outcomes. Harper (2000) developed a study on the prospects of children dependent of their attractiveness. Even with very young children, the attractiveness effect was
12 found; unattractive children were found to have less success in adulthood in the labor market than attractive children.
Pfann et al. (2000) looked at another possible relationship, the one between the attractiveness of a CEO and the revenues of the firm. They found that when firms have attractive CEO’s, the revenues of these firms were higher. This impact on revenues was even bigger than the expected effects of physical attractiveness on the CEO’s own earnings. The research hereby suggests that being attractive creates firm-specific investments, with the returns shared by the firm and the CEO.
2.4 Mechanisms: why does attractiveness have this positive effect on success?
In his book ‘Beauty pays’, Hamermesh (2011) explains that being physical attractive can be seen as human capital that is scarce and tradable, and that in this way, income is affected. People who are physical attractive will trade their beauty and will get compensated for this. This is just one way to explain what happens in the ‘black’ box between attractiveness and income/success. Mobius and Rosenblat (2006) tried to decompose the beauty premium in order to find out how this premium arises. Their results show that 15 to 20 percent of the beauty premium occurs through the confidence channel; people who are more attractive are more confident which will result in higher wages. 80 percent of the beauty premium is explained by the employer’s beliefs. Employers expect good-looking workers to perform better than their less attractive employees under both visual and oral interaction. This visual channel and oral channel both count for 40 percent. These three channels together will result in the beauty premium.
Hamermesh and Parker (2005) investigated whether attractive people are considered as being more productive, resulting in differences in income. In their study they used a sample of student instructional ratings for a group of university teachers. Their results show that
13 instructors who are viewed as better looking, received higher instructional ratings. Two reasons for this outcome were given, the productivity effect, which explains that students pay more attention to attractive instructors and learn more from them, and the discrimination effect, meaning that the higher productivity comes from students’ treating them differently from their ugly colleagues. The distinction between these two explanations is very hard to make.
The literature’s main focus is on the effects mentioned in the previous paragraph, the productivity effect and the discrimination effect. The productivity effect can work in various ways. To begin with, attractiveness can have a direct link to productivity. Additionally, attractiveness may affect employees’ productivity in a specific occupation. In industries where looks are important, physical appearance will play a bigger role. Related to this is occupational sorting; workers are assumed to choose the occupation offering them the highest wage. Attractive employees can also effect productivity through their co-workers, since beautiful managers are expected to have better relationships with their employees and co-workers (Harper, 2000; Pfann et al., 2000). As proposed by Hamermesh (2011), being physical attractive also has an inspirational role. Attractive workers will inspire their co-workers which will also result in increased productivity. It is partly because of this inspirational role, that attractive employees are the ones that get promoted into managerial roles.
The discrimination effect is often split up in two, customer discrimination and employer discrimination. The first, customer discrimination, describes the effect an attractive employee can have on customers. Customers have the ‘beauty is good’ stereotype as well, and will therefore prefer doing business with attractive rather than with unattractive employees. This type of discrimination results in higher productivity, so it is also a form of the previous mentioned productivity effect. Second, employer discrimination could result in only hiring attractive applicants and giving unattractive employees less job opportunities and/or lower pay.
14 Distinguishing the proportion of the earnings differential which may be attributed to discrimination as opposed to greater productivity is found to be problematic (Harper, 2000).
Another effect often mentioned by researchers is occupational sorting. People are expected to choose for particular occupations that reward certain attributes and stay away from jobs where penalties exist (Harper, 2000). So attractive individuals will work in occupations where their looks are a benefit and unattractive individuals will choose for other jobs. Given the ‘beauty is good’ stereotype (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972) it is likely that similar selection effects will occur on the side of the employers. It is expected that successful, high-reputation firms are likely to be able to choose between many different applicants and will likely choose for the most attractive employees. This will result in a match between the employer’ and employee’s choices, and therefore it is expected that attractive employees work for successful, high-reputation firms. This, in combination with the literature stating that attractive employees are more successful in the labor market (more likely to get promoted (Morrow et al., 1990), more likely to get hired (Dipboye, Fromkin & Wiback, 1975; Watkins & Johnston, 2000) and more likely to have high incomes (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1993)) and working for a successful, high-reputation firm is assumed to be a success, the following hypothesis is drawn:
H1: Attractive employees work for more successful, higher-reputation firms compared to less attractive employees.
2.5 Moderators: occupation and gender
How does attractiveness play a role when other variables are also investigated? The literature on attractiveness and labor-market outcomes is quite young and therefore not too many research is done on when certain effects appear, though some moderators are researched. Harper (2000) looked for the moderating role of academic results. He did not find evidence that
15 physical characteristics are more important than academic characteristics. His explanation for this findings is, if attractive physical appearance is considered to be a type of human capital, its value will decline with age. This will not be the case for academic results since they are an indication of someone’s IQ (Harper, 2000). In another study, done by Andreoni and Petrie (2008), it was found that the beauty premium disappears when information is provided on individual contributions, and then even becomes a beauty penalty. This suggests that it is not discrimination but the expectation that attractive people would be more productive than unattractive people.
In industries where employees have many interactions with customers, attractive workers could be a competitive advantage to firms. In these outward facing jobs discrimination based on appearance is more likely to happen. As Jeffes (1998) states: “The more an organization deals with the public, the greater the likelihood that an attractive person will be hired, promoted, and receive greater compensation than the less attractive person” (p.35). Likewise, Tews, Stafford and Zhu (2009) showed that attractiveness has an effect on employment suitability ratings across positions. The effect of attractiveness was greater when jobs included high customer contact, suggesting that attractiveness could be seen as more job-relevant for positions where employees have a lot of customer contact.
Additionally, Landry et al. (2006), did research in a non-profit organization, where employees had to raise money for charity in a door-to-door format. A job where there is clearly intensive customer contact. It was found that the attractiveness of the employees mattered, those who were more attractive raised more money than the less-attractive employees did.
According to Hamermesh and Biddle (1993), occupational sorting arises when attractive persons choose for occupations where they get rewarded for their looks, whereas unattractive people will go for jobs where they get rewarded for other skills. In another study of Hamermesh and Biddle (1998) the differences between lawyers in the private and public sector were studied.
16 They found that more attractive lawyers work in the private sector, and more unattractive lawyers in the public sector. The reason given for this phenomenon is that working in the private sector requires more ‘selling’ of the self and the law firm to the customers, so a lawyer actually is a salesperson as well. This is not the case in the public sector since the lawyers are then assigned to an individual or firm. This research is a clear example of occupational sorting.
When applied to attractiveness, occupational sorting describes the phenomenon that attractive people choose for jobs where they get rewarded for their looks (Harper, 2000). Jobs that involve customer contact are often mentioned as jobs whereby this type of occupational sorting is likely to occur. Many studies found this phenomenon; attractive employees have jobs with more customer contact compared to less attractive employees (Jeffes, 1998; Tews, Stafford & Zhu, 2000; Hamermesh and Biddle, 1993; Landry et al., 2006). This combined with the expectation stated in hypothesis 1, that attractive employees have more success in their career (Morrow et al., 1990; Dipboye, Fromkin & Wiback, 1975; Watkins & Johnston, 2000; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1993), results in the following expectation: attractive employees have more success when they have a lot of customer contact than employees with less customer contact. Therefore:
H2: The type of occupation (customer contact) will moderate the effect in H1, meaning that attractiveness will have a greater impact on success when employees have more customer contact compared to employees with less customer contact.
A second interesting moderator to study is gender. Do men experience the same level of discrimination based on appearance as women do? In general, the effects for women and men seem to be the same, being attractive gives a higher chance to get hired and to receive higher salaries (Frieze, 1991; Etcoff, 1999). However, differences between men and women
17 exist. Frieze et al. (1991) found that attractive men have higher starting salaries than unattractive men, but that there were no differences between attractive and unattractive women. For attractive women, differences in earnings compared to unattractive women arose later in their careers. Hereby suggesting that there are differences in the attractiveness effects of men and women.
When looking at the beauty premium, the effects of attractiveness on income are stronger for men than for women (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1993). In addition, in the study of Hamermesh and Parker (2005) on teachers, better looking instructors received higher instructional ratings, and this impact was larger for male than for female instructors. The question now is: how do these differences occur? The stronger effect of attractiveness for men is in another direction from the literature on the relationship between gender and attractiveness, which all point to the fact that attractiveness is more important for women than for men. When studying sociobiological (reproductive potential) and sociocultural theories, physical appearance has greater implications for females than for males. According to the sociobiological perspective, physical appearance is more important for women than for men because appearance has a stronger relationship with reproductive potential for women than for men. So here the gender differences come from the “reproductive significance of appearance” (Jackson, 1992, p.8). Although this theory explains the underlying motives of people when they are choosing a partner, and this investigation focuses on the labor market, it is still a useful theory to include. The reasons explained in the sociobiological perspective could be the base of the following perspective, the sociocultural theory (Jackson, 1992). The sociocultural theory explains the gender differences in appearance effects with the use of cultural values. It is suggested that our culture values an attractive appearance more in women than in men (Jackson, 1992), which could be explained by the sociobiological theory. In accordance with the sociobiological and the sociocultural perspective, Jackson (1992) also found that women seem
18 to feel the importance of physical appearance more than men do. They show more appearance enhancing behavior and they often feel dissatisfied with their appearance. This clearly is a result of the mechanisms described in the sociobiological and sociocultural theories.
But why do researchers find stronger attractiveness effects for men compared to women? A reason for this weaker effect for women is given by Hamermesh (2011). In his book, he describes that women are considered to have the choice to stay at home or to work, more than men do. In general, it is expected that attractive women will decide to work, while unattractive women will avoid the labor market. This will result in a high average of the attractiveness of working women, resulting in a weaker effect of attractiveness on income.
Studying gender and attractiveness biases could also be a useful way to look at the differences between men and women in order to find out how exactly the differences between men and women occur. The attractiveness bias comes from the earlier mentioned ‘beauty is good’ stereotype (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972), whereby attractive people are expected to have plenty of other positive characteristics too. The occupational gender bias has to do with the stereotype that exists with certain, especially managerial jobs. These jobs are often classified as typical masculine occupations, and consequently, people look for characteristics that are normally linked to men, such as assertiveness, independence, and willingness to take risks (Powell, Butterfield & Parent, 2002).
In line with these stereotypes existing in the labor market, Heilman (1983) explained the effects of gender and attractiveness by the perceptions of ability. With the use of her ‘lack-of-fit-model she explains that due to occupational gender and attractiveness biases a poor fit is the result of the discrepancy between the perceived skills and characteristics of a person and the perceived requirements of the job. This lack of fit was also found by Cash et al. (1977), in their study attractive women were judged to be less suitable for masculine gender-typed jobs than unattractive women and their chance to get hired for these jobs is smaller. As Marlowe et
19 al (1996) state: “Because the job of a manager may still be male gender- typed, and an attractive woman is perceived to be more stereotypically feminine than an unattractive woman, the result is a poor fit between an attractive woman's skills or abilities and the managerial role” (p.12). Gender differences in the effects of attractiveness were also found by Heilman and Saruwatari (1979). For attractive men, their looks were an advantage for both managerial and non-managerial jobs, whereas the attractiveness of women was only an advantage when they were applying for non-managerial jobs. It was even stated that for women that want to work in a managerial job, their attractiveness was a handicap. As written in their study, this indicates that physical attractiveness exaggerated the perceptions of gender-related attributes. This effect occurred also in the study done by Hatfield and Spreecher (1986). Attractive men were judged to be suitable for clerical, professional and managerial roles, whereas attractive women experienced benefits only for clerical roles (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1993). The bimbo-effect relates to this as well. This effect is mentioned in Hamermesh’s book (2011). It occurs when extremely good looking women are penalized in the labor market. This also has to do with the gender stereotypes, super attractive women are judged to be very feminine, and therefore seen as less suitable for (masculine) jobs. Up till now, not too many evidence was found for the bimbo effect. In his own study (Hamermesh, 2011) some evidence was found; attractive women were less likely to achieve partnership than attractive men.
The above described literature on gender differences and attractiveness is clear about the fact that women and men are treated differently, because of sociobiological and sociocultural effects (Jackson, 1992). When we put this into a work-related context, theory on attractiveness and gender stereotypes is used to explain the phenomenon that attractive men will be more successful than unattractive men, but that attractive women will experience discrimination based on their appearance in such a way that attractive women are less successful than unattractive women. When certain jobs are seen as very masculine, and attractive women
20 are viewed as really feminine, a lack of fit will be the result Heilman (1983). Therefore the following is expected: attractive women will be less successful than less attractive women. Additionally, the opposite is expected for men; attractive men will be more successful than less attractive men. Therefore:
H3: Gender moderates the effect in H1, meaning that the effect of attractiveness on success of the firm is different for men than for women. Men will have a benefit of being attractive while women will be discriminated for being attractive.
To summarize and to create a clear overview of this research:
Figure 1. Research model Physical attractiveness
Moderators Occupation Gender
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3. Methodology
3.1 Research design
The data needed for this study was gathered using a quantitative method. In order to be able to test the hypotheses that were introduced in the section before, multiple sources of data were used. First of all, the social networking website LinkedIn was used to collect photos and résumé data from 120 people, in the following paragraphs it will be explained how exactly this was done. Then, the collected photos were rated based on physical attractiveness through a survey. And lastly, the reputation of the firms the 120 people work for, was found on websites that rank firms according to their reputation. With the use of these three sources of data, all the variables needed for this study will be collected.
3.2 Sample of LinkedIn
The focus of this study is on Dutch, high-educated employees with an age under 35. This study uses a 2 x 2 design resulting from the following two variables: reputation of the firm (high/low) and customer contact (high/low). In order to be able to test gender differences as well, half of the sample must be male and the other half female. In total, data is collected from 120 people. In table 1 the composition of the sample is shown.
Table 1. Composition of the sample
High reputation Low reputation High customer contact 15 males
15 females 15 males
15 females Low customer contact 15 males
15 females
15 males
22 3.3 Data collection
Firstly, some choices were made to be able to collect the data from LinkedIn. In order to make a clear distinction between high and low customer contact, two industries were chosen: consultancy firms (high customer contact) and research/R&D- firms (low customer contact). In order to determine which research/R&D company has a high or low(er) reputation, the reputation ranking made by the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and het Reputation Institute was used. Philips had the best reputation in 2014 (“Reputation Institute Awards”, 2014). Therefore, Philips is chosen as the high reputation research/RD-firm, also because they are a Dutch firm. The high reputation consultancy firm chosen for is KPMG, since their headquarter is in the Netherlands and they score very high on consultancy ranking lists (“100 Best Companies”, n.d.). For the lower reputation companies several Dutch companies were used. These were companies that were not in the ranking lists, meaning that their reputations are lower than of KMPG and Philips.
Then, the photos and résumés were collected with the use of LinkedIn. With a premium account at LinkedIn I was able to have access to view more profiles of people than only my own network. It was easy to search for the 4 different groups with the use of the search engine within LinkedIn. For example: for the first group (high customer contact & high reputation), I searched for: KMPG, the Netherlands, under 5 years of experience, management consultant. A list of people appeared, and I just followed this list. I tried to include everybody following these lists. Sometimes this was not possible because of missing data or poor quality of a photo.
In the low-customer contact groups, it was very important to look for real ‘R&D jobs’ without or with little customer contact (e.g. research scientist, technical engineer), because at Philips there is more than only R&D-research activities, they of course have marketing and HR departments as well. The information gathered from LinkedIn includes: gender, education level, working experience, firm, industry and a photo. Unfortunately, age was not available on
23 LinkedIn, thus working experience was very important. This variable made it possible to select people that were all around the same age. As we have seen in the literature, age is very important in judgements of someone’s attractiveness, so this really was something to give special thought. To make sure that I was not biased during searching LinkedIn, I covered a part of my computer screen with a paper, so I could not immediately see the photos. Only when the information on résumés were complete and thereby suited for my research, the photos were checked, because some photos were of poor quality which meant that I could not use this particular person.
Thereafter, the photos were rated through a questionnaire with respect to the physical attractiveness of the persons depicted in the photos. In total 120 persons are in this research and since asking respondents to rate 120 photos in a row would be too much to ask, the decision was made to make three surveys with each including 40 photos. The questionnaires were distributed using qualtrics.com and thus available for all subjects having internet access. Distributing the surveys online had some advantages. It made it easy to reach people in different geographical locations and in a relatively short time. It also saved a lot of time since the data did not had to be entered manually One disadvantage of collecting data through the internet is that people engage in self-selection; people choose if they want to participate or ignore the invitation. The surveys were written in English so people from all nationalities were able to fill it out. The survey starts with a small introduction so the respondents knew what to expect and what the purpose of the survey is. Also the anonymity was guaranteed. Then the respondents were asked to rate the physical attractiveness of the people in the pictures on a scale from 0-10. Thereafter the gender and age of the respondents were asked and the last question was if the respondents recognized someone in the photos. This was done to be sure that the respondents really rated the first impression of the persons in the photos. The survey finished with a short text in which the respondents were thanked for their participation.
24 People from my network were approached by e-mail and some other people were asked to send the questionnaire through their network. Also Facebook was used to have a bigger reach. This sample is clearly a convenience sample. But since the literature states that people agree about who is attractive and who is not, it does not matter who is rating the photos (Langlois et al. (2000).
3.4 Sample of Surveys
In total 239 respondents (69 participants in survey 1, 91 participants in survey 2, 79 participants in survey 3) completed the survey, from which 23% was male, and 77% was female. The average age of the respondents was 25,39 years.
3.5 Variables
After collecting all the data, the following variables are included in this study.
Gender: male/female
Education level: HBO or university (bachelor and/ or master) Working experience: in years
Successfulness of the Firm: high/low reputation Occupation: high/low customer contact
Attractiveness: number between 0-10
3.6 Data analysis
The collected data will be analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program. First some descriptive data will be shown. This will be followed by regression analyses of the variables. The regression analyses helps to understand the relationships among
25 variables. After the data has been analysed, answers to the before mentioned hypotheses and the main question can be given.
26
4. Results
4.1 Descriptive statistics and Correlations
Before immediately continuing to test the hypotheses, first some descriptive statistics and correlations are explored (Table 2). Three things are worth noting from this correlation matrix. Firstly, gender is negatively correlated with attractiveness (r=-0.373, p<0.01). Gender uses a dummy variable (with 0=female and 1=male). The correlation is negative, meaning that ‘the higher the gender, the lower the attractiveness’. Briefly said, females were found to be more attractive than men. Secondly, customer contact is positively correlated with attractiveness (r=0.411, p<0.01). Customer contact is a dummy variable as well (with 0=low customer contact and 1=high customer contact). The correlation is positive, meaning that the higher the customer contact, the higher the attractiveness. People working in industries with a lot of customer contact are found to be more attractive. Lastly, gender is positively correlated with education, in such a way that in the sample of this study, men are higher educated than women.
Table 2: means, standard deviations, correlations
Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1.Working Experience 2.52 0.50 - 2.Gender 1.50 1.73 -.155 - 3.Customer contact 1.50 0.50 -.165 .000 - 4. Reputation 1.50 0.50 -.039 .000 .000 - 5. Attractiveness 5.11 1.09 -.076 .373** .411** -.086 - 6. Education 0.88 0.33 -.062 .227* -.076 .126 .012 -
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
4.2 Regressions
In order to test the hypotheses several regression analyses will be done. To start with, the effect of physical attractiveness on success (reputation of the firm) is investigated. A linear regression is used to examine the extent of the unique variance explained by the variables. Table 3 provides an overview of this regression analysis. There were also some control variables included (gender, education and working experience). Unfortunately, after running this regression, the relationship was found to be non-significant. Therefore, H1 is not supported.
27 Table 3. Regression – dependent variable: Reputation
B SE β t Step 1 Attractiveness -.040 .042 -.086 -.943 Step 2 Attractiveness -.042 .046 -.091 -.912 Gender .000 .103 .000 -.003 Working experience -.011 .027 -.038 -.406 Education .189 .143 0.125 1.316
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Hypotheses 2 and 3 are about a possible moderating effect of the variables ‘occupation’ and ‘gender’. The model for a moderating analysis is presented below.
Figure 2. Moderation Model
Firstly, to avoid multi-collinearity the variables ‘occupation’, ‘gender’ and ‘attractiveness’ were mean-centered. After this, two regressions were run to see if these two interaction effects exist. Results of these analyses are presented in Table 4 and Table 5.
As can be seen in Table 4, the moderating effect of occupation is not significant. Therefore, H2
is not supported.
Table 4. Moderation of Occupation – dependent variable: Reputation
B SE β t
mAttractiveness -.046 .047 -.099 -.974
mCustomercontact -.041 .101 -.041 -.402
mAttractiveness x mCustomercontact -.032 .051 .058 -.631 *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Predictor
Moderator
Predictor x Moderator
28 Table 5 shows that the interaction effect of gender (b=-.181) is significant with a significance level of 0.05. Thereby H3 is supported. Hence gender moderates the relationship between attractiveness and success in the labor market. This means that the effect of attractiveness on success is different for men than for women. In figure 2 this effect can be seen.
Table 5. Moderation of Gender – dependent variable: Reputation
B SE β t
mAttractiveness -.053 .045 -.114 -1.166
mGender .044 .098 .044 .444
mAttractiveness x mGender -.181* .090 -.182 -1.998
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
In figure 3 it can be seen that when men are attractive, they are more successful than when they are less attractive. However, attractive women are less successful compared to less attractive women. This finding is supported by the literature described in the literature section of this study. This result will be further discussed in the following chapter, the discussion section.
Figure 3. Moderation effect of gender.
1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2
Low Attractiveness High Attractiveness
R epu tat ion f ir m
•
= Male▪
= Female29
5. Discussion
5.1 Main findings
More and more has been written on the different effects physical attractiveness could have and especially outcomes in the labor market are now a field of interest by researchers. Since the literature is somewhat limited, the aim of this study was to expand the knowledge on the effects of physical attractiveness. The focus of this study lies on success in the labor market which was measured as the reputation of the firm. People are seen as successful when they work for successful firms. But do attractive people really work for firms with a higher reputation compared to less attractive people?
In the literature it is found that being physically attractive has many positive effects; beautiful people are more likely to get promoted (Morrow et al., 1990), are more likely to get hired (Dipboye, Fromkin & Wiback, 1975; Watkins & Johnston, 2000) and will have higher incomes (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1993). These positive effects are explained by ‘fitness-related evolutionary theories’, which state that attractiveness is an important indicator of fitness and health, and ‘general socialization/expectancy theories’, explaining among others the ‘beauty is good’ stereotype (Langlois et al., 2000). These positive effects of attractiveness in the labor market could be caused by the productivity effect (beautiful people are more productive), discrimination effect (employers and customers prefer attractive employees) and occupational sorting (employees choose jobs where they get rewarded for their beauty) as well (Harper, 2000). Although everything in the literature led to the first hypothesis; attractive employees work for more successful, high reputation firms, it was unfortunately not significant and therefore not supported. Since the literature in this field of research state that physical attractiveness has many positive effects, and that working for a successful firm is seen as a positive effect, it is plausible that the limitations of this research caused this non-significant
30 result. Additionally, since this study tried to expand the literature by using a new measure of success in the labor market, the non-significant relationship between attractiveness and success could also indicate that reputation of a firm is not a good success measure. More research on this topic is needed in order to find out if reputation is a good measure of the successfulness of a firm and if attractiveness is related to this type of success in the labor market. Because up till now, the literature suggests that in general, attractiveness has a positive effect on success in the labor market, but is this really true?
Furthermore, the ‘when’ and ‘how’ questions in this field of research could be further explored. This study made a modest start to address this, by investigating two moderators. The first one is occupation. In the literature occupational sorting is mentioned to explain the phenomenon that in general, people will choose for jobs where they get rewarded for certain characteristics or skills. Thus, attractive persons will look for jobs where they get rewarded for their looks (Harper, 2000). This research focused on the effect of the degree of customer contact, since there is empirical evidence that attractive employees have jobs with more customer contact than less attractive employees (Jeffes, 1998; Tews, Stafford & Zhu, 2000; Hamermesh and Biddle, 1993; Landry et al., 2006). But after running this regression to test this second hypothesis, occupation (customer contact) moderates the effect of attractiveness on success of the firm (reputation), this interaction effect was found to be non-significant. Therefore hypothesis 2 is rejected. This is an interesting finding, since all the research on the relationship between attractiveness and occupational sorting is clear, in jobs where customer contact is a key activity, the appearance of the employees is very important and has a positive effect on success. In this research a positive correlation was found between attractiveness and customer contact, so they do relate in the way the literature suggests. However, this research indicates that the effect of attractiveness on success does not change by the degree of customer contact. Regardless the limitations this study has, it is important to keep in mind that this is the
31 first time that reputation is used as a success measure, and consequently, it is also the first time occupation (customer contact) is studied in this moderating role. So the comment that is made about hypothesis 1; the reputation of a firm may be not the best indicator for the successfulness of a firm, is something that applies here as well. It seems that whether or not having customer contact is not a condition under which the relationship between attractiveness and successfulness of the firm exists.
The second moderator investigated in this study is gender. The gender-appearance relationship (Jackson, 1992) is an often studied topic and many researchers found differences between males and females in attractiveness effects (Frieze et al., 1991; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1993; Hamermesh & Parker, 2005). The sociobiological perspective, stating that men appreciate appearance more in women than women in men, and the socio-cultural perspective, where it is said that beautiful women are more valued in our culture than beautiful men, could both be used to explain the fact that physical appearance is more important for women than for men (Jackson, 1992). But how does this work in the labor market? Through gender related attributes and stereotypes existing for men and women (Marlow et al., 1996), which state that a lot of jobs are seen as typical male-jobs (e.g. manager), a discrepancy can occur between the expectations people have of the ‘expected’ employee and the actual employee. Especially when a women is very attractive, she will be seen and treated as very feminine, and not as the typical manager. Some empirical evidence was found for this phenomenon, showing that attractiveness is a benefit for men but can be a disadvantage for women in the labor market (Hamermesh, 2011; Heilman & Saruwatari, 1979; Marlow et al., 1996; Spreecher, 1986). Therefore the following hypothesis was tested; gender moderates the effect of attractiveness on success of the firm (reputation), meaning that men experience benefits when they are attractive, but attractiveness will work as a disadvantage to women. Fortunately, this interaction effect was significant, and thus, hypothesis 3 was supported. Our study found that attractive men are more
32 successful than unattractive men, but that it works the other way around for women. Less attractive women were more successful compared to attractive women. This is a confirmation with the existing literature, but success was never measured as the reputation of a firm like it is in this study, so this definitely is a contribution to the literature on the effects of physical attractiveness. Gender is thus a condition under which the relationship between attractiveness and successfulness of the firm exists, so we could argue that reputation can be used as a measure for successfulness.
5.2 Practical implications
In this paragraph, the practical implications of this study will be discussed. First of all, what became clear after reviewing the literature is that appearance is very important in several aspects in our lives. The fact that we discriminate people based on their appearance is something everyone should realize. The focus of this study was on the effects of physical appearance on success in the labor market since appearance also affects someone’s professional life. Attractive applicants and employees are experiencing benefits, so it definitely is a good idea for applicants to look in the mirror twice before going to the job interview. Employees as well, should be aware and take care of their appearance, since it influences their customers and colleagues.
Additionally, the significant result of this study, namely that attractive men have a benefit but that attractive women experience a disadvantage in the labor market, is very important to recognize for managers and employees as well. This is a form of gender discrimination and people must be aware of this fact since it can really disadvantage women. Especially for managers, who are in charge of hiring people or promoting employees, this bias could influence their decisions. When people are more aware of this phenomenon, they could correct themselves or make their processes more objective in order to make fairer decisions. On the other hand, against all feminists, women could adjust to this finding as well, by adapting
33 their style and appearance of clothes to the type of job they apply for, since there exists a strong gender stereotype in the labor market. When they look too feminine, their appearance could be a disadvantage to them. For men, the same advice applies as was mentioned in the first paragraph, take care of your appearance, because it really can be the key to success.
5.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research
Like all other studies, this study has limitations as well. First of all, the sample (120 employees) is quite small. Especially when taking into account that the sample exists of 4 groups of 30 people. Since all the data had to be collected in a short period of time, there was no other option but for future research, it would be useful to take a greater sample. Second, it would have been interesting if more variables were included in the study, so more moderators could be studied: such as age, more résumé information and more precise job description. Because LinkedIn was the source of the résumé data, there was only a certain amount of information available. Third, the data is collected manually from LinkedIn and therefore a bias is hard to avoid. Although several steps (e.g. partly covering the computer screen) were taken to make it as objective as possible, it would have been better if the data was randomly selected with the use of a computer program in order to make it more objective. Finally, the sample of the people that filled out the survey was quite homogeneous. 77% of the sample was female, which is a clear majority. It is easy to imagine that differences exist between the way men and women rate others. Furthermore, the average age of the sample was 25,4 years old, with a low standard deviation, meaning that there was not too much variety in the age of the respondents in this study. However, the literature suggests that people do agree about who is attractive and who is not, there exists a high consistency between what people think is attractive (Langlois et al. (2000), and with this reasoning, it does not have to be seen as a real limitation. These limitations could cause the fact that two of three hypotheses in this research were found to be non- significant.
34 With these limitations taken into account, there is enough space to further investigate this relationship. Additionally, it would be interesting when the effect of attractiveness on more different success measures than only income are going to be studied. This study made a little start with this by investigating the effect of physical attractiveness on the successfulness of the firm, measured as the reputation. The results of this study suggests that this relationship exists when gender is included as a moderator. More research on this relationship is needed in order to see if this is a good indicator of successfulness. Next to the variable ‘reputation of the firm’, other interesting success factors could be investigated, such as: number of years it takes before someone gets promoted or success of one team compared to other teams. Likewise, other moderators could be investigated in order to expand the knowledge in this field of research, like additional résumé data (e.g. other activities and experiences besides study) and the social network of the subjects studied.
35
6. Conclusion
The aim of this study was to expand the literature on the relationship between attractiveness and income in the labor market. The study has investigated the effect of physical attractiveness on success in the labor market, measured as the reputation of the firm. Résumé data of 120 employees were collected with the use of LinkedIn and thereafter, the photos were rated through a survey. Then the data was analyzed. It was expected that attractive employees would work for firms with a high reputation. Unfortunately this effect was not significant. Furthermore, the moderator occupation has been studied. Attractive employees with a lot of customer contact were expected to have more success than attractive employees with less customer contact. But after analyzing this, this hypothesis was rejected as well. However, the moderating role of gender was also investigated and this effect was significant. Attractive men are more successful than less attractive men, but attractive women are less successful than less attractive women. This is an interesting finding from which researchers, managers and employees all could benefit.
36
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