Revisiting the beauty is beastly effect: examining when and why sex and attractiveness impact hiring judgments

Abstract

We contribute to the body of literature on the what is beautiful is good heuristic (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285–290), the beauty is beastly effect (Heilman & Saruwatari, 1979, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 360–372) and lack of fit theory (Heilman, 1983, Research in Organizational Behavior, 5, 269–298) by reconciling previous discrepancies in the literature and by examining the circumstances in which attractiveness may and may not be detrimental for female job applicants. First, we perform a review of studies which have previously tested the beauty is beastly effect, and we provide and test explanations for previous discrepancies in the literature. Next, we conduct two new studies on the beauty is beastly effect using corporate types of jobs, and empirically test Heilman's lack of fit theory (1983) as an explanation for the effect. We find support for the effect in a general population sample, and partial support for the effect in a sample of human resource professionals. We also provide support for a mediated moderation model showing that applicant sex is related to job suitability for a male-typed job through the indirect effect of perceived agency, which is moderated by applicant attractiveness.

Keywords::

• attractiveness
• biases
• gender
• lack-of-fit
• selection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Data for Study 1 collected by Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, NSF Grant [grant number 0818839], Jeremy Freese and James Druckman, Principal Investigators.