A project by Assistant Professor of Economics Tanya Rosenblat has recently received media attention, appearing in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, as well as in Fortune magazine. Her project, which explores physical attractiveness in the labor market, probably gained such wide exposure because of its startling conclusions.
“We found that more attractive people will get ten to fifteen percent higher wages, which is the same size as the difference between males and females and whites and blacks,” Rosenblat said.
While one could rightfully assume that beauty is productive in certain occupations, such as sales, it might come as a surprise that it even pays to have a pretty face in jobs less in contact with the public eye.
“Our results extend to all occupations,” Rosenblat said. “An attractive person who works in a cubicle will still get higher wages. We don’t know the reason for this.”
The study, called Why Beauty Matters, was conducted in Argentina, from September 2002 to May 2003. An experimental project was done in a lab; the study set up a mock workplace composed of employers and employees. As their task, the workers had to solve computer mazes.
“We found that beauty is not productive,” Rosenblat said. “In fact, when I looked at the data, it showed that beauty is not a factor in maze skills.”
When employers interviewed employees in a number of different settings, however, including in person and over the telephone, it turned out that beautiful people got higher wages even when the employer did not see his/her picture.
“We think that this is due to employer stereotypes,” Rosenblat said. “The employer will see a beautiful person and think this makes him/her a more able person. The reason for this is that more attractive people are more likely to be confident, and confidence often helps a person get higher wages.”
In order to help determine what people believe constitutes beauty, Rosenblat had an independent panel rank photographs of different people. The pictures only included faces, and the panel rated their attractiveness level on a one to five scale.
“We’re always thinking that we’re all beautiful in our own way, but psychologists say there is a lot of agreement on who is beautiful when looking at photographs,” Rosenblat said. “There are big agreements across generations and culture.”
The outcome of Rosenblat’s experiment does not come as a surprise to some students.
“I think [the beauty stereotype] is true,” said Emily Klasson ’06. “The more attractive a person is, the more he or she will be hired. I once heard that more attractive people are more easily trusted.”
Some, like Alison Koch ’06, see Rosenblat’s evidence that some people receive a higher salary than others based solely on their looks as a sign of a problem that needs to be addressed.
“Professor Rosenblat’s research presents hard evidence of the injustices present in society,” Koch said. “I feel that the disparity between wages is outrageous, and it unreasonably causes a hierarchy that draws attention away from the work at hand.”
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