Attractiveness: A Literature Review

The society in which we live in is one that is seemingly obsessed with the categorization of individuals in terms of their attractiveness, this is viewed in simple labels of “ugly” or “pretty” that are place on to almost all things and even individuals. Lookism, or as defined by the oxford dictionary, the construct of standards for beauty and attractiveness followed by the judgements made that are based on appearances is a construct that has shown prominence in the society in which we live today. Attractiveness biases have been demonstrated in such different areas as teacher judgments of students (Clifford & Walster, 1973), voter preferences for political candidates (Efran & Patterson,1974) and jury judgments in simulated trials (Efran, 1974).

Emphasizing how physical appearance has great value and can play a large and significant role in determining workplace success for an individual. She claims that erotic capital is the fourth often overlooked human asset which comes after human capital, economic capital and social capital. Her research proving that this factor can increase ones earnings by approximately 10 to 20 percent, further stating that attractive women can up to 12 percent more than unattractive women. Noting how appearance can take an almost equal stance to educational qualifications in the workplace. Her studies however concluded that it is not only physical appearance in itself that can lead to such workplace advantages but the combination of beauty and other qualities like intelligence, social skills, social charm and the like (Hakim, 2011). Hakims work has been argued against by both individuals who point out the fact that she seems to highly advocate that style carries more weight than actual substance (Day,

This study mainly looked at the attractiveness bias in terms or performance appraisals. In said study bank supervisors were given a memo describing a problem with an employee who was either portrayed as being attractive, unattractive or average, the supervisors were further given the task of disciplining the employee. The findings were that attractive employees were seen as failing because they were perceived as being lazy whilst on the other hand the unattractive employees were just believed to have been experiencing some bad luck (Shahani & Plumitallo, 1993). The above being further explained by previous studies which theorized that attractive people receive more freedom from external influences in comparison to the unattractive and thus they are held more accountable for their poor performance (Miller, 1970; Rich,