06.02.2025

THE "BEAUTY PREMIUM" PROVES TO BE A MYTH - IT DOESN'T WORK FOR CAREER SUCCESS

Hmm, the world seems to be changing. Until a few years ago, it was believed that beauties and handsome men "sell" better. They have an attractive appearance, people trust them more easily, and they are more willing to do what is asked of them, such as spending their money. There was even a study that the shares of companies whose bosses are better looking are more successfully traded on stock exchanges. Other studies have shown that prettier employees find jobs more easily and then receive higher pay and better ratings from their bosses. This was called the "beauty premium".

The theory that beautiful people have a number of advantages in business has gained a lot of popularity. Mass companies began to make no secret of the fact that they select their employees according to their appearance, without worrying about their discriminatory policy.

But gradually the myth was dispelled. Research has shown that beauty can have a negative effect on customers. In recent years, many companies have already avoided putting emphasis on external attractiveness. Even world designers choose mannequins and mannequins for their reviews that do not look perfect. In their TV commercials, many companies are refocusing on "normal people" and the authentic look, replacing the perfect beauties and hunks.

"Our research shows that in some cases, external beauty can not only not help a brand, but even harm it," said Chun Zang, associate professor of marketing at the University of Dayton. He details the results of a series of studies that show beauty creates distance.

In the first study, the team aimed to establish how consumers respond to services offered by attractive people. The respondents are students. They have to read a restaurant menu and look at a picture of the waiter who will bring their meals. The researchers showed them photoshopped photos of men or women. Faces are edited to be either unattractive or very attractive according to generally accepted standards of beauty. In addition, the team previously measured the attractiveness of each of the participants in the experiment.

The researchers then had the students rate the waiter's vision and the level of intimacy they felt with him. At the third stage, they have to evaluate the quality of the service - whether the waiter does his job well.

Analysis of the data showed that the level of closeness participants felt with the waiter influenced their opinion of service quality, Chung Zang said. If they perceive the distance between themselves and this person to be greater, they tend to rate his work as worse. And vice versa.

This result is understandable, everyone has experienced it from their own experience - they are more favorable to a person who is sympathetic to them.

But here comes the interesting discovery - beauty can work in a negative direction. It turns out that people who find the waiter attractive but don't themselves fall into the same category—ie. they are not attractive, they feel a greater distance between themselves and the hottie. Accordingly, they rate his work as worse.

As the results disprove the "beauty premium", the team continues with the research.

We wanted to understand whether distance depends more on how people perceive themselves or on objective external factors. We conducted a study involving passengers waiting at an airport, Chun Zang says.

The team asks people to read what services they will receive from the flight attendant on the upcoming flight. He shows them pictures of attractive and not-so-good-looking flight attendants. It then asks respondents to rate the appearance of the flight attendants and their own appearance. Finally, he asks them if they think there is a connection between beauty and the quality of the service offered.

"Participants who rated their own appearance relatively low felt a great distance from attractive flight attendants and rated the quality of the service offered by them lower - claims the associate professor. - Those who said they did not find a connection between beauty and professional performance, rated attractive employees' qualities as weaker."

In the third study, the team surveyed customers in a shopping center who had just left a store. The results confirm data from previous studies.

In each of these studies, we found a clear correlation between good-looking employees and low service satisfaction of not-so-good-looking customers. In conclusion, we can say that the effect of beauty in business is overrated, summarizes Chun Zang.