Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

Virtue tells us that people shouldn't be judged by their appearances. But UC Denver assistant professor of management, Stefanie Johnson, has published research that shows a bias against physical beauty—greater difficulty earning a promotion to certain positions.

In the article, Johnson argued that physical attractiveness can be a barrier to promotion for beautiful women. If appearance doesn't matter for the job, the study said, beautiful women aren't usually seen as good candidates.

The research appeared in the May/June issue of the Journal of Social Psychology.

The study was co-authored by Ellie Gibbons, a research assistant at Anschutz, Robert Dipboye, a professor at the University of Central Florida, and Kenneth Podratz, who was Johnson's research assistant at her previous position at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

"They're all jobs that were masculine, where attractiveness was not important," Johnson said. She mentioned tow-truck driver and director of finance as positions where beautiful women wouldn't be selected as often.

Johnson also noted that the prestige attached to the job was not a factor—only if it was typically "masculine."

However, in other job applications, beautiful people, both men and women, had a greater chance of success than others.

Jonne Kraning, director of UCD's Career Center, said this is a common occurrence.

Kraning said she'd met with a student whose physical beauty was becoming an obstacle to reaching her career goals. Because of privacy rules, she couldn't name the student or the career, but she described the woman's predicament.

"Because she was gorgeous and just full of a beautiful personality, it sounded like she had lived a lifetime of being stereotyped into work roles because of her beauty," Kraning said. "The area she was stereotyped in was not what she wanted to do."

Kraning said women who face this issue should focus on letting their abilities become apparent.

"A surface glance is so shallow—then they get behind it," Kraning said. "Beauty becomes secondary when the talents begin to show. Bottom line, that's more powerful."

Johnson named a few possible reasons that the students in the study passed over attractive women: "incompetent, too feminine, not being motivated.

"Understanding why we find this difference so that we could figure out how to change it would be a good next step" for research, Johnson said.

Kraning said she advises Career Center visitors to be confident.

"I tell them not to be swayed, to begin to fully grasp what their true interests and abilities are, and believe in that," she said.