August 18, 2010 • 27 mins
In this episode, Molly and Cristen talk about the "beauty premium" and how physical attractiveness can be advantageous (and lucrative) in the workplace.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly, So Molly. We've talked
(00:22):
a lot about beauty in this podcast, the social constructs
surrounding beauty, especially female beauty, the beauty myth, etcetera. Things
that we do to ourselves to make ourselves more aesthetically
pleasing to the people around us. Uh So today we're
gonna put some some money behind it. Okay, say is
(00:46):
is beauty? Is beauty actually paying us back in our wall?
It's not just paying us back in terms of having
more friends, having more lovers, but getting a job, keeping
a job and get paid. Yeah. I mean they say
that you've got to spend light to make money. So
is it possible that the money you spend on cosmetics,
(01:07):
on nice clothes are you making an investment in yourself? Yeah?
Essentially do pretty people make more? And the reason why
we're asking this questions because Newsweek magazine just came out
with well, I guess it's been a few weeks now
that the podcast, um when the podcast publishes. But Newsweek
came out with this huge package online about the idea
(01:31):
of beauty in the workplace, and the lead article was
written by one of their writers, Jessica Bennett, who did
a great job compiling a lot of studies and also
highlighting this survey that Newsweek conducted, an independent survey that
they conducted where they talked to leave. It was two
(01:52):
d hiring managers at all different types of businesses to
get their feedback on whether or not beauty really makes
a difference in whether or not people are hired, fired, retained, promoted, etcetera.
And the message came back loud and clear that yes,
indeed beauty matters. Yeah. One thing that really struck me
(02:14):
and managers believe an unattractive but qualified job Canada will
have a harder time getting hired than someone who's more attractive.
Sixty eight percent believe that once hired, looks will continue
to affect the way managers rate job performance. And you know,
for I think we'd all like to believe that we
just have to get a job based on our experience
and our education and our qualifications, and we can work
(02:37):
hard and we can get ahead, and it's you know,
it's staggering to think that it's all going to come
down to what you look like. And yeah, I would
say Molly as a from my experience as a younger
woman in the workplace. Absolutely, I want to be taken
seriously for whatever ideas that I bring to the table,
whatever work that I produce, whatever kind of creativity and
(03:00):
energy and all of that. You're not just like Molly's
stop it. But no, I want to be judged from
my intellect rather than you know, however someone judges my
face and my body and my overall appearance. Um. And
the reason why Newsweek started asking this question in the
first place can be traced back to around on. This
(03:22):
team of economist Hammer, Mesh, and Biddle came up with
this idea of the so called beauty premium because they
looked at um, the attractiveness of different employees. Okay, they
rated different employees attractiveness and then compared that to their salaries,
(03:43):
and hammermission Biddle came up with this quote unquote beauty
premium of five percent income bump for the more attractive
ones among us, and then a nine percent plainness penalty,
as they called it, for you know, the plane James
uh who you know, might not might not wint a
(04:05):
beauty beauty padget and uh again, as as always when
we're talking about compensation, there is a gender gap where
um gender wage gap, where the handsome men can make
more than the most attractive women. Yeah, I mean well,
according to according to these people, we handsome men will
make five percent more, good looking women will earn four
(04:26):
percent more. But take that into account though, because there's
still the gender gaps, So women are earning four percent
less than a smaller salary than what men are already making.
And to put some actual dollars behind that, uh, hair
A Mesh came up with the figure of two and
fifty thousand dollars. A good looking man will make that
(04:48):
much more, nearly quarter million dollars more than his less
attractive counterpart. That's staggering. That's a lot of though, a
lot of the I mean like because then, you know,
Jessica Bennett rais the question should you just get a
nose job invest in the nose job to like, I mean,
how far do you need to take this to actually
get some money out of out of this you know equation? Well,
(05:11):
because a lot of these hiring managers that Newsweek surveyed
said that, yes, people who are looking for jobs need
to invest some money in their appearance. Now that does
didn't necessarily mean that everyone needed to go out and
get some botox and some nose job before they went
in for an interview, but they said that it did
make a difference. And check this stat out. Sixty one
(05:31):
percent of these managers so that it would be an
advantage for a woman to wear work where clothing to
work showing off her figure. Now here's are we getting
to the double edged sword for women, Because we've talked
about this before. You can reach a point where the
clothing you wear and the appearance you put out there
(05:52):
in the workplace can work against you absolutely because you'll
just be seen as the big busted floozy. You know,
all the brain power, it's nothing up there. It's all
just in the boobs. Well, and it's not just I
don't think it only has to do with bus sees
and you can just be you know, tight fitting whatever.
You know. Maybe makeup has been shown in different studies
(06:14):
to have um to to not only it will boost
a woman's likability in an office, but then detract from
her perceived competence. And now we come to the stat
that sums all of it up very nicely, where all
these same managers who are saying, oh, yeah, no, it's
it's great if a woman wears figure flattering clothing because
(06:36):
of these hiring managers also believe it's possible for a
woman to be penalized for being too good looking. And
this is when the reason why we're talking about women
is because, as well learn more in the podcast, there's
definitely a gender gap when it comes to this idea
of the beauty premium because while handsome men, it's just
sky's the limit. They just keep climbing. They're making this
(06:58):
two fifty dollars extra and it's fantastic, but women seem
to hit a beauty ceiling, if you will, that becomes
quickly a beauty backlash. Now, if you're feeling frustrated that
it's all going to come down to what you look like,
I do want to throw into what was to me
the silver lining of this Newsweek survey, and that was
(07:20):
um and it's a double edged sword, I guess, because
all those people who were participating in the survey were
asked to rate nine character attributes from one to ten,
ten being the most important um and the attributes were
things like sense of humor, where the candidate went to school, experience,
and so basically, looks came in third out of these
nine characteristics. So they're saying that education is less important
(07:44):
than looks when it comes to getting the job. So,
you know, so much for all that money your parents
spent getting you in education, but the thing that came
in first was experience, and the thing that came in
second was confidence. And this is something I think we
can come back to at certain points in this podcast. Now,
then you've got to get into our pretty people just
(08:04):
more confident. Yeah, do they naturally pay more attention to
their howard appearance? Or is confidence something that can be
cultivated and used to our advantage in the workplace for everyone,
no matter what they look like. And that to me
is what the silver lining is, because you know, we
talk a lot about body acceptance and stuff like that
in this podcast. Kristen and I would argue that if
(08:24):
you can find that way to find the confidence no
matter what you look like, then then that has been
ranked more important than the looks. That's why you can
overcome to me in some small extent, the beauty premium, absolutely,
and you know, and it's not to say that that
being attractive is a bad thing at all, but it's
still this issue of I think that we have a
(08:47):
problem socially with you know, just using your using your
looks to get ahead. Especially you know a lot of
our conversations are focused around feminist ideals, and that idea
of just like using your body and using your looks
to to move forward really isn't isn't that well respected.
It's really this idea of competence and confidence. And there
(09:09):
was a study that we found about ceo appearance that
kind of highlights this distinction between appearing competent and just
appearing plain likable. So what these researchers did was had
participants study the facial traits of CEOs, and I believe
in this study all of these CEOs surprise or male,
(09:32):
and they rated them in terms of competence and likability
just their basic appearance and knew nothing about nothing about
these these men. And they included CEOs from not only
large firms, but also very small companies as well. And
the researchers found that the people who are perceived to
(09:52):
be the most competent not only headed the largest companies
but also made the most money. And they weren't necessarily though,
the most likable faces. But it was really that idea
of competence, Yeah, and the fact that competence can be
captured in a photograph of a male. Because they talked
about how you know that when they put like a
(10:14):
CEO picture next to the non CEO picture, they would
make sure that they both had sort of the same
you know, style of shoot. The head was always turned
the same way. They'd always put you know, a facial
hair picture against another facial hair picture, so that as
many of the you know, variables as possible could be
the same. But still even when when presented with these
(10:35):
two very similar photos, the people could pick out the
CEOs as the more competent ones just from a snapshot photograph.
And uh, one interesting thing to me was how they
talked about how some of these CEOs had what they
called baby face idnus, you know, the sort of a
for lack of better, were kind of a Doughey round face.
(10:55):
And how you know, these these CEOs were just not
seen as competent at all, very likable, very likable you'd
want to be their friends and you wouldn't want to
give them a ton of money and have them try
and run the world. But when they actually looked at
sort of the terrabric characteristics of those people, they were
the ones who were most qualified for success. And then
there comes this idea, then, is what we present actually
(11:19):
who we are? Because I'm sure we you know, we
could have brought this up earlier. Yeah, the the good
looking people may be making more, but are they doing
as much work? Are they necessarily as competent? Yeah, and
they contributing as much. And a piggyback on this idea
of the idea of how, especially male um physical features
might communicate competence, because in all these CEO studies, it
(11:42):
is kind of frustrating all of the all the photos
are of male CEOs. But Malcolm Gladwell points out in
one of his book that the average CEO is approximately
three inches taller than the average man. And he further
points out that while thirty percent of CEOs of these
fortune companies are at least six ft two, of the
average population, only three point nine percent of men stand
(12:06):
this tall um. So there seems to uh, there seems
to be some kind of I don't know, some kind
of link between, uh, between not only men's physical appearance,
you know, facial appearance, but also height. And then finally,
just to to drive home this idea of height, because
here's the thing. We can't control what we look like really.
(12:29):
I mean, like we can put on makeup and we
can get botox and all of this, but in terms
of height in particular, we are you know, we have
to deal with the hand that we are genetically helt
deal dealt um. And so finally, there was this one
study where these economists found that men's wages as adults
could be linked to their height at age sixteen, when
(12:51):
they usually hit their adult height, and they found that
increasing a man's height at age sixteen by one inch
increase their wages by two point six percent on average. Wow. Crazy, Well,
you know this this the study that we just talked
about with the trust where they CEOs. It was called
a corporate Beauty Contest, and it was done by researchers
(13:13):
at Duke and the National Bureau for Economic Research. And
they do point out that to become a CEO, it's
more than just looking at a photograph. Obviously you've built
up this really long career, but I think that it
helps you connect to the fact that the news week
hiring managers are letting someone who's probably taller and more
you know, classically good looking in the door. It just
(13:35):
gives them more opportunities to succeed. But you know, we
mentioned this concept of do these people actually put in
the work to get to where they are? You would
think that as a CEO, you would and I think
that we do get sort of an evidence on how
much you can contribute to your own success from a
study we found called Beauty, Gender, and Stereotypes evidence from
(13:56):
laboratory experiments done by researchers from you see San Diego
and Georgia State here in Atlanta, and this study talked
a lot about generosity games where people you know, there's
some some studies that can do where uh, you know,
one if one person decided, like let's say there's a
pot in the middle of two people, and if both
(14:18):
people decide to take it, then no one gets it.
Whereas they both decided to give it, then they get
to split it. And it's really about sizing up cooperation
and who you think will cooperate with you so that
you can both walk away with the biggest pot. Possible,
and these researchers sort of set up that kind of
game where they gave people tokens and they would pay
(14:38):
them back based on how they invested their tokens. You
could invest tokens in public utilities or in private utilities,
and you would get paid more individually. If you put
money into the private ones, you would get paid more.
As a group. The group would get more money if
you put them into the public ones. And you don't
know how the other people in your group are betting,
(15:00):
but uh, you know, obviously it's sort of in your
best interested you kind of a mix of the private
ones and the public ones. So what they did was
they got people in and you know, they had been
pre judged as attractive or not attractive, and they had
groups of four people playing these games for certain rounds,
and the people would get paid some money based on
how they bet. But then they told the people just
(15:22):
how much everyone was putting into the pot, and that
changed things a little bit. Yeah, because one one thing
that we've found across a lot of these attractiveness in
the workplace studies is that more attractive people, no matter
their gender, are perceived from the get go to being
more cooperative, which really surprised me because you think about
(15:44):
high school, I mean, like the mean girls are the
pretty girls. I mean, I don't know where this I
was surprised to learn that, But that apparently is how
if you're playing these cooperation games, how you apparently pick people.
The people who are playing those games always would pick
pretty people to play. So when it was when it
was only a group effort to maximize the group good,
(16:05):
the pretty people came out on top in terms of
other people's expectations and other people's assessments of their performance
because of this strange uh cooperation attractiveness link. Yeah, so
the people who are playing with the attractive people would say, oh,
these people have got to be donating the public good.
(16:25):
I will too. Yeah. Yeah. But when they broke it
down to the individual level, then things got a little
harry for the attractive ones. Yeah, they showed, they basically
showed after every round how much everyone had put into
their different categories, and the non attractive people per se
found out that the attractive people had not been investing
(16:46):
as much in the public good as you know, they
had thought, and their stereotype was crushed. And then they
played the game much differently. Yeah, they judged the attractive
women in particular much more harshly than the attractive men
because they really attracted, not expected, not only attracted women
to be cooperative because of their their inherent beauty, but
(17:08):
also I would I think that we could easily say
that women compared to men would just be expected, as
part of our genetic makeup to just exude more cooperation,
um than motherly instinct. Yeah, so they were perceived to
be far more selfish, whereas the attractive men um, even
though they might not have been as generous as a
(17:30):
as previously thought, they were still perceived to be exhibiting
leadership skills. Yeah. And I think that this gets to
where we were talking about the beginning of the podcast,
about when you start to be penalized for your looks.
And it didn't take that much for the non attractive
people to turn on the attractive women in this study
and say, look, you're not helping me. I'm not helping you,
(17:53):
and everyone's dividends from this game went down, whereas the men,
as Kristen said, just had to put in a little
bit and everyone was like, gosh, that guy is generous,
that guy is amazing. Let's all just help him out,
and that guy made more money. And here's the thing though, too,
when you start to look at because we've read through
a lot of these different studies, there are all sorts
of studies on the different ways that an attractive woman
(18:16):
is perceived and attractive man is perceived, and over and
over again, it seems like attractive women just seemed to
elicit more of a reaction from both men and women
who are looking at them, um than uh than men.
And there is a study we found from Florida State
University that kind of confirms this idea that they had
(18:36):
both male and female observers look at physically attractive female
quote unquote targets as as a study authors call them,
and then looking at attractive male targets. And when it
comes to looking at the attractive women, both male and
female observers um really paid a lot of attention to them. Now,
(18:59):
when it came to the males, um, females, you know
kind of kind of looked at the attractive males, but
they but they weren't nearly as distracting because they were
giving them, like other tasks, cognitive tests to do to
kind of rate how distracting. You know, if if a
hot woman walks in the room, um, how distracting she
is compared to how attractive you know, a hot, hot
nude is if he if he walks across and time
(19:22):
and again the women, while of course we'll look up
and see man, it's a lot easier to put our
head back down and keep going about it. Whereas with
a woman, for both men, for both men and women, um,
you know, it just sends something in our brains just
shooting off. So taking all of these study findings into
account and really, you know, acknowledging this, uh, this kind
(19:42):
of mental cognitive impact that attractive women seem to have,
even more so than men. It makes a lot of
sense when Newsweek writer Tony to Coppell points out that
the bulk of research not only on the benefits but
also the drawbacks of attractiveness in the world place really
focuses on women. I mean, I'm sure that you know
(20:05):
the same kinds of things happen to men, and I'm
not trying to the point of this podcast is not
to victimize beautiful women by any stretch of the imagination,
but I think it is It is interesting to think
about this aspect of beauty in the workplace. And I
have a feeling that everyone listening right now can think
about some attractive person, super attractive person they have worked
(20:28):
with at some point who may have gotten treated a
little bit differently than other coworkers, whether that's positive or negative.
But like Molly said early on in the podcast, it's
not just about beauty, thank god. Um. The Newsweek survey
also pointed out that there are two factors that the
(20:51):
hiring managers rate it as more important than physical attractiveness,
right as we said, their experience and confidence. And I
think that when you think back to the game of
the gambling games where the people once they found out
what the people what the attractive people actually did, I
think that it does show that information still has sway
once you know what a person is actually doing on
(21:13):
a team project or you know, in our workplace, would
be like what articles are you writing? How good are
your articles? You know, what are you talking about on
your podcast? Once that is known, that can counteract the
beauty stereotypes that your boss might have about you. So
it's more about you know, even though it sounds from
the from the surface like you know, putting your head
(21:35):
down and just working doesn't do you any good. I
do think that, you know, obviously, there is something to
be said for having the information to support yourself, and
also is having the confidence both in the work that
you've done and and your appearance no matter what it is.
I mean, if you decided to give up because you're
not attractive, and sorry this sounds so weird to say,
(21:55):
but I mean people can tell if you've given up,
and so they're saying that having that confidence in yourself,
no matter what you look like, can be important. And
just to throw one final study in the mix, uh,
there was one from the Journal of Applied Psychology that
found that again, attractiveness certainly makes a difference in the workplace,
(22:16):
and there does seem to be a lot of evidence
for some kind of quote unquote beauty premium uh that exists,
but experience and intelligence really will make a lot of
a lot of difference. Like there's been one study that's
been getting a lot of play in popular media this
past week, Molly, and that was talking about how attractive
(22:36):
women were discriminated against when applying for jobs that are
considered to be masculine. You know, so say, I think
the examples say throughout were like a construction foreman or
certain types of engineers or even truck driving. Um if
a woman, uh you know looks I guess too by
attractive in this sense, they're equating that with appearing you know,
(22:57):
our our social idea of being feminine. Um, you know,
for for attractive women applying for those jobs, even if
they might have the experience, just they're simply by looking
more like a hot lady, if you will, they aren't
as likely to get the job. So there are all
these different factors into it. But it is going into this.
(23:18):
But it is interesting that no matter what, beauty is
kind of this common threat throughout all of it, and
like it or not, it's there and it's definitely in play.
And like I said, I mean, take two seconds and
think about your employment history. And I met every one
of us can come up with some some smoking coworker
(23:43):
who seemed to um affect. So yeah, just be aware that,
you know, even if it's not a contest that you
want to win or think you can win, there is
a beauty contest going on at work. And we want
to know. Have any of you experienced the beauty contest
at work? Let us know, send us your story or
post them on our Facebook. It's just stuff mom ever
(24:03):
told you on Facebook? And uh, let's let's start this
conversation people. And if you work with John Ham, of
course you've got to deal with the beautiful person I work.
And the thing is, Molly, I'm sure we have so
many attractive listeners out there. They just have to be
so many stories to share, so we want to hear
all of them. In the meantime, we'll share a couple
of stories with you right now. I've got an email
(24:29):
from Renee about the Long Distance Relationship podcast. And she
dated a guy a long distance for almost two years, um,
but ten years later they're still very much in love.
So she's got some advice. She writes, do the fun stuff,
but also the normal stuff. And I was single. I
remember my friends and I would always say, I just
want someone to sit on the couch with. Be honest,
(24:51):
but don't bore each other with the details over the phone.
Save some stories from when you were together. Don't know
that it's be all physical when you see each other
only once in a while. The physical stuff will be exciting,
but talk and interact to you. Be realistic and honest
about what you want out of the relationship and what
you were willing to do to get what you want.
Introduce each other to your friends and family, but don't
plan all day activities with others unless you're significant other
(25:13):
has expressed a desire to use their precious time with
you for a group activity. And lastly, find ways to
be spontaneous within the confines of your situation. We would
plan to meet on a particular day and both leave
home around the same time, calling each other every so often.
We would meet in some small town with the reservation,
find a hotel, and then find something to do. It
was planned, but there was still an element of spontaneity.
Thank you very much for Nate. All right, I have
(25:34):
another long distance relationship email here, and this one's from
Jamie and she has been separated from her boyfriend for
the past four years, for by six hundred miles. They're
both at both at school, and he's graduated now and
he's come back and they were reunited, and she says,
I argue that everyone should go through a period of
(25:55):
long distance, even if it's just a month. Couples who
see each other every day and always have simply can't
appreciate their time together, it gets taken for granted. Of
course I got frustrated from time to time when he
was so far away, as did he, but we always
made our relationship at priority and I wouldn't change any
of it. The absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder.
(26:16):
And from my ending two months ago he proposed, of
course I said yes. And the wedding is next year.
Oh that's sweet. Sweet notes to end this on. So
thanks for your stories. Keep sending them in again our
emails Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. Also
um flood our wall on Facebook. We it's a great
place to to post your ideas and thoughts and feelings
(26:39):
and everything up there too, and cool articles you guys
send in really cool. Yeah, so many great links and
and that way you can share them with with with
other people as well and follow us on Twitter. And
then finally, you can check out our blog during the week.
It's stuff Mom never told you and you can find
it at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(27:00):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly, So Molly. We've talked
(00:22):
a lot about beauty in this podcast, the social constructs
surrounding beauty, especially female beauty, the beauty myth, etcetera. Things
that we do to ourselves to make ourselves more aesthetically
pleasing to the people around us. Uh So today we're
gonna put some some money behind it. Okay, say is
(00:46):
is beauty? Is beauty actually paying us back in our wall?
It's not just paying us back in terms of having
more friends, having more lovers, but getting a job, keeping
a job and get paid. Yeah. I mean they say
that you've got to spend light to make money. So
is it possible that the money you spend on cosmetics,
(01:07):
on nice clothes are you making an investment in yourself? Yeah?
Essentially do pretty people make more? And the reason why
we're asking this questions because Newsweek magazine just came out
with well, I guess it's been a few weeks now
that the podcast, um when the podcast publishes. But Newsweek
came out with this huge package online about the idea
(01:31):
of beauty in the workplace, and the lead article was
written by one of their writers, Jessica Bennett, who did
a great job compiling a lot of studies and also
highlighting this survey that Newsweek conducted, an independent survey that
they conducted where they talked to leave. It was two
(01:52):
d hiring managers at all different types of businesses to
get their feedback on whether or not beauty really makes
a difference in whether or not people are hired, fired, retained, promoted, etcetera.
And the message came back loud and clear that yes,
indeed beauty matters. Yeah. One thing that really struck me
(02:14):
and managers believe an unattractive but qualified job Canada will
have a harder time getting hired than someone who's more attractive.
Sixty eight percent believe that once hired, looks will continue
to affect the way managers rate job performance. And you know,
for I think we'd all like to believe that we
just have to get a job based on our experience
and our education and our qualifications, and we can work
(02:37):
hard and we can get ahead, and it's you know,
it's staggering to think that it's all going to come
down to what you look like. And yeah, I would
say Molly as a from my experience as a younger
woman in the workplace. Absolutely, I want to be taken
seriously for whatever ideas that I bring to the table,
whatever work that I produce, whatever kind of creativity and
(03:00):
energy and all of that. You're not just like Molly's
stop it. But no, I want to be judged from
my intellect rather than you know, however someone judges my
face and my body and my overall appearance. Um. And
the reason why Newsweek started asking this question in the
first place can be traced back to around on. This
(03:22):
team of economist Hammer, Mesh, and Biddle came up with
this idea of the so called beauty premium because they
looked at um, the attractiveness of different employees. Okay, they
rated different employees attractiveness and then compared that to their salaries,
(03:43):
and hammermission Biddle came up with this quote unquote beauty
premium of five percent income bump for the more attractive
ones among us, and then a nine percent plainness penalty,
as they called it, for you know, the plane James
uh who you know, might not might not wint a
(04:05):
beauty beauty padget and uh again, as as always when
we're talking about compensation, there is a gender gap where
um gender wage gap, where the handsome men can make
more than the most attractive women. Yeah, I mean well,
according to according to these people, we handsome men will
make five percent more, good looking women will earn four
(04:26):
percent more. But take that into account though, because there's
still the gender gaps, So women are earning four percent
less than a smaller salary than what men are already making.
And to put some actual dollars behind that, uh, hair
A Mesh came up with the figure of two and
fifty thousand dollars. A good looking man will make that
(04:48):
much more, nearly quarter million dollars more than his less
attractive counterpart. That's staggering. That's a lot of though, a
lot of the I mean like because then, you know,
Jessica Bennett rais the question should you just get a
nose job invest in the nose job to like, I mean,
how far do you need to take this to actually
get some money out of out of this you know equation? Well,
(05:11):
because a lot of these hiring managers that Newsweek surveyed
said that, yes, people who are looking for jobs need
to invest some money in their appearance. Now that does
didn't necessarily mean that everyone needed to go out and
get some botox and some nose job before they went
in for an interview, but they said that it did
make a difference. And check this stat out. Sixty one
(05:31):
percent of these managers so that it would be an
advantage for a woman to wear work where clothing to
work showing off her figure. Now here's are we getting
to the double edged sword for women, Because we've talked
about this before. You can reach a point where the
clothing you wear and the appearance you put out there
(05:52):
in the workplace can work against you absolutely because you'll
just be seen as the big busted floozy. You know,
all the brain power, it's nothing up there. It's all
just in the boobs. Well, and it's not just I
don't think it only has to do with bus sees
and you can just be you know, tight fitting whatever.
You know. Maybe makeup has been shown in different studies
(06:14):
to have um to to not only it will boost
a woman's likability in an office, but then detract from
her perceived competence. And now we come to the stat
that sums all of it up very nicely, where all
these same managers who are saying, oh, yeah, no, it's
it's great if a woman wears figure flattering clothing because
(06:36):
of these hiring managers also believe it's possible for a
woman to be penalized for being too good looking. And
this is when the reason why we're talking about women
is because, as well learn more in the podcast, there's
definitely a gender gap when it comes to this idea
of the beauty premium because while handsome men, it's just
sky's the limit. They just keep climbing. They're making this
(06:58):
two fifty dollars extra and it's fantastic, but women seem
to hit a beauty ceiling, if you will, that becomes
quickly a beauty backlash. Now, if you're feeling frustrated that
it's all going to come down to what you look like,
I do want to throw into what was to me
the silver lining of this Newsweek survey, and that was
(07:20):
um and it's a double edged sword, I guess, because
all those people who were participating in the survey were
asked to rate nine character attributes from one to ten,
ten being the most important um and the attributes were
things like sense of humor, where the candidate went to school, experience,
and so basically, looks came in third out of these
nine characteristics. So they're saying that education is less important
(07:44):
than looks when it comes to getting the job. So,
you know, so much for all that money your parents
spent getting you in education, but the thing that came
in first was experience, and the thing that came in
second was confidence. And this is something I think we
can come back to at certain points in this podcast. Now,
then you've got to get into our pretty people just
(08:04):
more confident. Yeah, do they naturally pay more attention to
their howard appearance? Or is confidence something that can be
cultivated and used to our advantage in the workplace for everyone,
no matter what they look like. And that to me
is what the silver lining is, because you know, we
talk a lot about body acceptance and stuff like that
in this podcast. Kristen and I would argue that if
(08:24):
you can find that way to find the confidence no
matter what you look like, then then that has been
ranked more important than the looks. That's why you can
overcome to me in some small extent, the beauty premium, absolutely,
and you know, and it's not to say that that
being attractive is a bad thing at all, but it's
still this issue of I think that we have a
(08:47):
problem socially with you know, just using your using your
looks to get ahead. Especially you know a lot of
our conversations are focused around feminist ideals, and that idea
of just like using your body and using your looks
to to move forward really isn't isn't that well respected.
It's really this idea of competence and confidence. And there
(09:09):
was a study that we found about ceo appearance that
kind of highlights this distinction between appearing competent and just
appearing plain likable. So what these researchers did was had
participants study the facial traits of CEOs, and I believe
in this study all of these CEOs surprise or male,
(09:32):
and they rated them in terms of competence and likability
just their basic appearance and knew nothing about nothing about
these these men. And they included CEOs from not only
large firms, but also very small companies as well. And
the researchers found that the people who are perceived to
(09:52):
be the most competent not only headed the largest companies
but also made the most money. And they weren't necessarily though,
the most likable faces. But it was really that idea
of competence, Yeah, and the fact that competence can be
captured in a photograph of a male. Because they talked
about how you know that when they put like a
(10:14):
CEO picture next to the non CEO picture, they would
make sure that they both had sort of the same
you know, style of shoot. The head was always turned
the same way. They'd always put you know, a facial
hair picture against another facial hair picture, so that as
many of the you know, variables as possible could be
the same. But still even when when presented with these
(10:35):
two very similar photos, the people could pick out the
CEOs as the more competent ones just from a snapshot photograph.
And uh, one interesting thing to me was how they
talked about how some of these CEOs had what they
called baby face idnus, you know, the sort of a
for lack of better, were kind of a Doughey round face.
(10:55):
And how you know, these these CEOs were just not
seen as competent at all, very likable, very likable you'd
want to be their friends and you wouldn't want to
give them a ton of money and have them try
and run the world. But when they actually looked at
sort of the terrabric characteristics of those people, they were
the ones who were most qualified for success. And then
there comes this idea, then, is what we present actually
(11:19):
who we are? Because I'm sure we you know, we
could have brought this up earlier. Yeah, the the good
looking people may be making more, but are they doing
as much work? Are they necessarily as competent? Yeah, and
they contributing as much. And a piggyback on this idea
of the idea of how, especially male um physical features
might communicate competence, because in all these CEO studies, it
(11:42):
is kind of frustrating all of the all the photos
are of male CEOs. But Malcolm Gladwell points out in
one of his book that the average CEO is approximately
three inches taller than the average man. And he further
points out that while thirty percent of CEOs of these
fortune companies are at least six ft two, of the
average population, only three point nine percent of men stand
(12:06):
this tall um. So there seems to uh, there seems
to be some kind of I don't know, some kind
of link between, uh, between not only men's physical appearance,
you know, facial appearance, but also height. And then finally,
just to to drive home this idea of height, because
here's the thing. We can't control what we look like really.
(12:29):
I mean, like we can put on makeup and we
can get botox and all of this, but in terms
of height in particular, we are you know, we have
to deal with the hand that we are genetically helt
deal dealt um. And so finally, there was this one
study where these economists found that men's wages as adults
could be linked to their height at age sixteen, when
(12:51):
they usually hit their adult height, and they found that
increasing a man's height at age sixteen by one inch
increase their wages by two point six percent on average. Wow. Crazy, Well,
you know this this the study that we just talked
about with the trust where they CEOs. It was called
a corporate Beauty Contest, and it was done by researchers
(13:13):
at Duke and the National Bureau for Economic Research. And
they do point out that to become a CEO, it's
more than just looking at a photograph. Obviously you've built
up this really long career, but I think that it
helps you connect to the fact that the news week
hiring managers are letting someone who's probably taller and more
you know, classically good looking in the door. It just
(13:35):
gives them more opportunities to succeed. But you know, we
mentioned this concept of do these people actually put in
the work to get to where they are? You would
think that as a CEO, you would and I think
that we do get sort of an evidence on how
much you can contribute to your own success from a
study we found called Beauty, Gender, and Stereotypes evidence from
(13:56):
laboratory experiments done by researchers from you see San Diego
and Georgia State here in Atlanta, and this study talked
a lot about generosity games where people you know, there's
some some studies that can do where uh, you know,
one if one person decided, like let's say there's a
pot in the middle of two people, and if both
(14:18):
people decide to take it, then no one gets it.
Whereas they both decided to give it, then they get
to split it. And it's really about sizing up cooperation
and who you think will cooperate with you so that
you can both walk away with the biggest pot. Possible,
and these researchers sort of set up that kind of
game where they gave people tokens and they would pay
(14:38):
them back based on how they invested their tokens. You
could invest tokens in public utilities or in private utilities,
and you would get paid more individually. If you put
money into the private ones, you would get paid more.
As a group. The group would get more money if
you put them into the public ones. And you don't
know how the other people in your group are betting,
(15:00):
but uh, you know, obviously it's sort of in your
best interested you kind of a mix of the private
ones and the public ones. So what they did was
they got people in and you know, they had been
pre judged as attractive or not attractive, and they had
groups of four people playing these games for certain rounds,
and the people would get paid some money based on
how they bet. But then they told the people just
(15:22):
how much everyone was putting into the pot, and that
changed things a little bit. Yeah, because one one thing
that we've found across a lot of these attractiveness in
the workplace studies is that more attractive people, no matter
their gender, are perceived from the get go to being
more cooperative, which really surprised me because you think about
(15:44):
high school, I mean, like the mean girls are the
pretty girls. I mean, I don't know where this I
was surprised to learn that, But that apparently is how
if you're playing these cooperation games, how you apparently pick people.
The people who are playing those games always would pick
pretty people to play. So when it was when it
was only a group effort to maximize the group good,
(16:05):
the pretty people came out on top in terms of
other people's expectations and other people's assessments of their performance
because of this strange uh cooperation attractiveness link. Yeah, so
the people who are playing with the attractive people would say, oh,
these people have got to be donating the public good.
(16:25):
I will too. Yeah. Yeah. But when they broke it
down to the individual level, then things got a little
harry for the attractive ones. Yeah, they showed, they basically
showed after every round how much everyone had put into
their different categories, and the non attractive people per se
found out that the attractive people had not been investing
(16:46):
as much in the public good as you know, they
had thought, and their stereotype was crushed. And then they
played the game much differently. Yeah, they judged the attractive
women in particular much more harshly than the attractive men
because they really attracted, not expected, not only attracted women
to be cooperative because of their their inherent beauty, but
(17:08):
also I would I think that we could easily say
that women compared to men would just be expected, as
part of our genetic makeup to just exude more cooperation,
um than motherly instinct. Yeah, so they were perceived to
be far more selfish, whereas the attractive men um, even
though they might not have been as generous as a
(17:30):
as previously thought, they were still perceived to be exhibiting
leadership skills. Yeah. And I think that this gets to
where we were talking about the beginning of the podcast,
about when you start to be penalized for your looks.
And it didn't take that much for the non attractive
people to turn on the attractive women in this study
and say, look, you're not helping me. I'm not helping you,
(17:53):
and everyone's dividends from this game went down, whereas the men,
as Kristen said, just had to put in a little
bit and everyone was like, gosh, that guy is generous,
that guy is amazing. Let's all just help him out,
and that guy made more money. And here's the thing though, too,
when you start to look at because we've read through
a lot of these different studies, there are all sorts
of studies on the different ways that an attractive woman
(18:16):
is perceived and attractive man is perceived, and over and
over again, it seems like attractive women just seemed to
elicit more of a reaction from both men and women
who are looking at them, um than uh than men.
And there is a study we found from Florida State
University that kind of confirms this idea that they had
(18:36):
both male and female observers look at physically attractive female
quote unquote targets as as a study authors call them,
and then looking at attractive male targets. And when it
comes to looking at the attractive women, both male and
female observers um really paid a lot of attention to them. Now,
(18:59):
when it came to the males, um, females, you know
kind of kind of looked at the attractive males, but
they but they weren't nearly as distracting because they were
giving them, like other tasks, cognitive tests to do to
kind of rate how distracting. You know, if if a
hot woman walks in the room, um, how distracting she
is compared to how attractive you know, a hot, hot
nude is if he if he walks across and time
(19:22):
and again the women, while of course we'll look up
and see man, it's a lot easier to put our
head back down and keep going about it. Whereas with
a woman, for both men, for both men and women, um,
you know, it just sends something in our brains just
shooting off. So taking all of these study findings into
account and really, you know, acknowledging this, uh, this kind
(19:42):
of mental cognitive impact that attractive women seem to have,
even more so than men. It makes a lot of
sense when Newsweek writer Tony to Coppell points out that
the bulk of research not only on the benefits but
also the drawbacks of attractiveness in the world place really
focuses on women. I mean, I'm sure that you know
(20:05):
the same kinds of things happen to men, and I'm
not trying to the point of this podcast is not
to victimize beautiful women by any stretch of the imagination,
but I think it is It is interesting to think
about this aspect of beauty in the workplace. And I
have a feeling that everyone listening right now can think
about some attractive person, super attractive person they have worked
(20:28):
with at some point who may have gotten treated a
little bit differently than other coworkers, whether that's positive or negative.
But like Molly said early on in the podcast, it's
not just about beauty, thank god. Um. The Newsweek survey
also pointed out that there are two factors that the
(20:51):
hiring managers rate it as more important than physical attractiveness,
right as we said, their experience and confidence. And I
think that when you think back to the game of
the gambling games where the people once they found out
what the people what the attractive people actually did, I
think that it does show that information still has sway
once you know what a person is actually doing on
(21:13):
a team project or you know, in our workplace, would
be like what articles are you writing? How good are
your articles? You know, what are you talking about on
your podcast? Once that is known, that can counteract the
beauty stereotypes that your boss might have about you. So
it's more about you know, even though it sounds from
the from the surface like you know, putting your head
(21:35):
down and just working doesn't do you any good. I
do think that, you know, obviously, there is something to
be said for having the information to support yourself, and
also is having the confidence both in the work that
you've done and and your appearance no matter what it is.
I mean, if you decided to give up because you're
not attractive, and sorry this sounds so weird to say,
(21:55):
but I mean people can tell if you've given up,
and so they're saying that having that confidence in yourself,
no matter what you look like, can be important. And
just to throw one final study in the mix, uh,
there was one from the Journal of Applied Psychology that
found that again, attractiveness certainly makes a difference in the workplace,
(22:16):
and there does seem to be a lot of evidence
for some kind of quote unquote beauty premium uh that exists,
but experience and intelligence really will make a lot of
a lot of difference. Like there's been one study that's
been getting a lot of play in popular media this
past week, Molly, and that was talking about how attractive
(22:36):
women were discriminated against when applying for jobs that are
considered to be masculine. You know, so say, I think
the examples say throughout were like a construction foreman or
certain types of engineers or even truck driving. Um if
a woman, uh you know looks I guess too by
attractive in this sense, they're equating that with appearing you know,
(22:57):
our our social idea of being feminine. Um, you know,
for for attractive women applying for those jobs, even if
they might have the experience, just they're simply by looking
more like a hot lady, if you will, they aren't
as likely to get the job. So there are all
these different factors into it. But it is going into this.
(23:18):
But it is interesting that no matter what, beauty is
kind of this common threat throughout all of it, and
like it or not, it's there and it's definitely in play.
And like I said, I mean, take two seconds and
think about your employment history. And I met every one
of us can come up with some some smoking coworker
(23:43):
who seemed to um affect. So yeah, just be aware that,
you know, even if it's not a contest that you
want to win or think you can win, there is
a beauty contest going on at work. And we want
to know. Have any of you experienced the beauty contest
at work? Let us know, send us your story or
post them on our Facebook. It's just stuff mom ever
(24:03):
told you on Facebook? And uh, let's let's start this
conversation people. And if you work with John Ham, of
course you've got to deal with the beautiful person I work.
And the thing is, Molly, I'm sure we have so
many attractive listeners out there. They just have to be
so many stories to share, so we want to hear
all of them. In the meantime, we'll share a couple
of stories with you right now. I've got an email
(24:29):
from Renee about the Long Distance Relationship podcast. And she
dated a guy a long distance for almost two years, um,
but ten years later they're still very much in love.
So she's got some advice. She writes, do the fun stuff,
but also the normal stuff. And I was single. I
remember my friends and I would always say, I just
want someone to sit on the couch with. Be honest,
(24:51):
but don't bore each other with the details over the phone.
Save some stories from when you were together. Don't know
that it's be all physical when you see each other
only once in a while. The physical stuff will be exciting,
but talk and interact to you. Be realistic and honest
about what you want out of the relationship and what
you were willing to do to get what you want.
Introduce each other to your friends and family, but don't
plan all day activities with others unless you're significant other
(25:13):
has expressed a desire to use their precious time with
you for a group activity. And lastly, find ways to
be spontaneous within the confines of your situation. We would
plan to meet on a particular day and both leave
home around the same time, calling each other every so often.
We would meet in some small town with the reservation,
find a hotel, and then find something to do. It
was planned, but there was still an element of spontaneity.
Thank you very much for Nate. All right, I have
(25:34):
another long distance relationship email here, and this one's from
Jamie and she has been separated from her boyfriend for
the past four years, for by six hundred miles. They're
both at both at school, and he's graduated now and
he's come back and they were reunited, and she says,
I argue that everyone should go through a period of
(25:55):
long distance, even if it's just a month. Couples who
see each other every day and always have simply can't
appreciate their time together, it gets taken for granted. Of
course I got frustrated from time to time when he
was so far away, as did he, but we always
made our relationship at priority and I wouldn't change any
of it. The absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder.
(26:16):
And from my ending two months ago he proposed, of
course I said yes. And the wedding is next year.
Oh that's sweet. Sweet notes to end this on. So
thanks for your stories. Keep sending them in again our
emails Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. Also
um flood our wall on Facebook. We it's a great
place to to post your ideas and thoughts and feelings
(26:39):
and everything up there too, and cool articles you guys
send in really cool. Yeah, so many great links and
and that way you can share them with with with
other people as well and follow us on Twitter. And
then finally, you can check out our blog during the week.
It's stuff Mom never told you and you can find
it at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(27:00):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page.
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