Pretty people, you’ve had it too good for too long. Beautiful, handsome Adonises, it’s time you got knocked down a peg. It’s time for the schlubs to have their moment in the sun.
That’s the big takeaway from a study by the American Psychological Association and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which shows that good-looking people may be discriminated against during the hiring process.
Okay, to be fair, researchers found this to be true only when the job in question was less desirable. But we “meh”-looking people take our wins where we can get them.
In the study, hiring managers were handed the profiles and photos of two potential job candidates—one good-looking, the other not so much. Study participants were then asked to “hire” the job candidates for either a desirable position, like a managerial role, or a less desirable position, like a job in a warehouse, based on each hiring manager’s perception of the candidate’s profile.
The hypothesis going into the study was that managers would want to hire attractive people no matter the job. But what researchers found was that the managers slotted pretty people for the good jobs, and not-so-pretty people for the less desirable jobs.
“We found that participants perceived attractive individuals to feel more entitled to good outcomes than unattractive individuals, and that attractive individuals were predicted to be less satisfied with an undesirable job than an unattractive person. In the selection decision for an undesirable job, decision makers were more likely to choose the unattractive individual over the attractive individual. We found this effect to occur even with hiring managers.”
Take that, gorgeous assholes!
The implications for a study such as this are that organizations’ recruiting efforts need to be reviewed in order to prevent bias in the hiring process, lest some potential job candidate get a job based on their looks, or lack thereof.
Or, you know, you could just leave a few jobs for the ugly people. Just saying.
A few other things we learned about our bodies today:
- And now, a completely ridiculous method for washing apples. But do it if you don’t like consuming pesticides.
- Speaking of pesticides, Californians are pissing out a lot of the weed-killer Roundup.
- Gene-editing scientists have created a low-fat pig. Mmmm, pork.
- Blood-thinning drugs don’t just help prevent heart attacks. They also help prevent dementia.
- Score one for the dreamers: Daydreaming at work means you’re smart and creative.
- In today’s “no, duh” news, anxiety is the cause of a great deal of cannabis abuse. You don’t say!
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
