An interesting study was conducted to see whether peoples' attractiveness help in the application process. They had 180 participants act as a recruitment officers and review applications. They looked at good applications with and without pictures as well as mediocre applications with and without pictures. With a good application, it was found that having a picture attached did not benefit them. However, for mediocre applicants, the attractive people that included pictures were actually found to have a better chance of getting an interview. The study can be found here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2389.00135/abstract
I think it is interesting to have random people role play in research but I feel like the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. Being a recruitment officer takes a certain mind set and trusting the results from a random sample does not seem like a great idea. Overall, it is a very interesting study.
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