Attractiveness Bias

I definitely agree that attractiveness bias is considered one of the most important features a person can have. Unfortunately it is inevitable and not everyone is considered physically attractive by everyone.

I am actually surprised too that physical attractiveness is not on that list. Perhaps it's a more difficult thing to prove.

Another study I read shows that non-verbal communication in the interview is also an influential factor. Maybe one could see if there's a relationship between physical attractiveness and non-verbal communication.

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Why do you think that people can have a bias when hiring based on attractiveness? It seems like such a subjective thing! Nice point about the dominance of a sex in a certain field, I didn't know that!

Interesting concept that attractiveness is not found on that list. I wonder if being attractive while applying for a job that was not gender biased would have an effect if attractive people were shown to actually have lower job performance in comparison to their "less attractive" counterparts. Also, I wonder if being attractive may lead to better job performance (ie sales, teaching, etc.). If the latter was the case, do you think employers should be allowed to hire people based on attractiveness bias?

I have always found this to be an interesting and weird subject. I experienced some attractiveness bias in the workplace before. When I was in high school, I worked at the movie theater in my home town. All of the assistant managers are young people who are in college or never went, so the oldest one was about 23 years old. One of the female assistant managers was always very unfair in her work ethics. It is obvious she is self conscious and has a low self esteem because of the way she treats other female employees compared to the males. She would do dumb immature things such as tell on me to the general manager for some insignificant mistake I made. She would take away my cell phone from me when it was out, but when a male had his out she didn't care at all. I often heard her gossip about a lot of the girls too. I always found her behavior bizarre and never understood why she thought it was okay to treat people the way she did and how she got away with it.

I've never pay attention to this since you pointed this out. Being attractive gives you a plus when it comes to getting a job but it's not the main thing. The main thing is your knowledge and personality.

I think it is very interesting that you mention how companies never consider the attractiveness of an individual when naming off a list of biases that should be avoided during the hiring process. This debate overall seems very tough due to the fact that no one can really prove whether or not someone is displaying this type of bias since the thoughts may be subtle and maybe in a sense subconscious. Then again, this issue comes about for most forms of bias since it is not necessarily a measurable factor.

It is strange that jobs are required to not show bias against certain things, but attractiveness has still yet to make the cut. It might be because there are multiple qualities that go into attractiveness and people can view an attractive person in different ways. Also, hiring processes might be shying away from hiring an attractive person so that they won't get called out for such thing.

I think the reason that attractiveness is not on that list is because it would probably be hard to prove this bias because attractiveness is based on what one person thinks about another. When it comes down to it though being attractive should not be the deciding factor on who gets the job. In reality it might give someone a better chance than someone else who isn't attractive but I think that someone's personality and their knowledge on that field.

I feel as though attractiveness is only key in the hiring for certain jobs. Jobs that have a high amount of public interaction, usually seem to seek more attractive employees. On the other hand, jobs that tend to be more private seem to focus more on the actual required skill.

This is a interesting topic to talk about. I never really thought of this that much, but after reading this i realize this does happen all the time and everywhere. Everyone is always so worried about how they look and worry about how attractive they are. I think that today attractiveness is the most important feature that people look at and i think that is pretty bad. You can't judge a book by its cover, they are a lot of other traits a person can have that make them good for the job or evening for dating.

Thanks for bringing up the facts about the attractiveness bias going on in the job market, they show much unfairnes and should be put a stop to. I'm particularly interested in your example about the working field that is dominant by one gender. I guess one explanation for the fact that an attractive woman is less likely to get a job in the engineering field is the common bias that attractive women are not smart enough to do these kinds of jobs, care too much about their appearance and tend to distracter others.