Reducing Physical-attractiveness bias in hiring decisions : An experimental investigation

Attractive individuals are evaluated and treated more positively than unattractive individuals (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991; Feingold, 1992; Langlois et al., 2000). In the present research, we try to find ways to reduce attractiveness bias in hiring decisions. Experiment 1 examined the influence of warning participants about bias. Warnings were ineffective, however: Even warned participants evaluated attractive applicants more favorably than they evaluated unattractive applicants. Experiment 2 examined the effects of consistency motivation. Participants either read or rated themselves on items that represented being motivated to respond without prejudice before evaluating job applicants. Participants who only read motivation items still exhibited attractiveness bias. Participants who rated themselves on the same motivation items, however, showed a marked reduction in bias. REDUCING PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS BIAS 3 Extensive research shows that physically attractive individuals are evaluated and treated more positively than physically unattractive individuals. Such attractiveness biases seems to impact judgments of social competence, intellectual ability and adjustment, as well as various social behaviors such as amount of attention and interaction (Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992; Langlois et al., 2000). In the present studies, we investigate if attractiveness bias can be reduced when people make hiring decisions. The aim is to find a way to minimize the difference in evaluation between attractive and unattractive applicants when appearance is an irrelevant qualification. Obviously, this issue has important practical implications from an individual, organizational and societal perspective. Rational meritocratic personnel selection for jobs in which attractiveness is not an asset, should simply be immune to attractiveness bias. Attractiveness bias is thought to be an unfortunate by-product of ordinary social cognition. According to social cognitive theory, perceivers initially categorize a target as belonging to a certain group based on external characteristics, such as sex or appearance. Once categorization has occurred, a stereotype about the group is activated and any traits that are stereotypically associated with the group are ascribed to the target (e.g. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). I.e. when a person is categorized as being physically attractive, he or she might also be perceived as sociable and intelligent. Social categorization and stereotype activation probably come into play in one or more stages of a personnel-selection process, such as the evaluation of CVs or the interview, influencing trait judgments about job applicants (Powell & Goffin, 2009). This prediction is supported by empirical evidence. Hosoda, Stone-Romero, and Coats (2003) conducted a meta-analytic study in which they examined the influence of physical attractiveness on a number of job-related outcomes, such as hiring decisions, predicted job success and perceived employment potential. Attractive individuals fared better than unattractive individuals on a number of such outcomes, the weighted mean effect size being d = 0.37. Moderator analyses revealed that physical-attractiveness bias does not depend on the amount of job-relevant information that is available for an applicant, that professional assessors are as susceptible to bias as college students, and that attractiveness is equally important for female and male applicants. REDUCING PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS BIAS 4 The easiest way to reduce attractiveness bias would of course, be to remove any visual information about job applicants during the selection process. In reality, however, this seems hard to accomplish, given that some form of face-to-face interaction with an applicant is hard to avoid (e.g. in the job interview). Instead, it seems that other methods to reduce bias have to be found. From a theoretical perspective, there are at least 4 ways to change evaluative judgments about a target which could be drawn on in an intervention that aims to minimize bias (e.g. Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). (A) Attitude change can occur as a result of evaluative conditioning: Repeatedly pairing a particular target with positive information produces more positive attitudes towards the target (e.g. De Houwer, Baeyens, & Field, 2005). (B) Attitude change can result from mere exposure: The more times a particular target is encountered, the higher the likelihood that the target is evaluated positively (e.g. Zajonc, 2001). (C) Attitude change can occur when people are exposed to information that has positive or negative implications about a target; e.g. when a job applicant is evaluated more positively because it is apparent that he or she possesses several desirable qualifications (e.g. Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997). This type of change may be conditional on people having the motivation and capability to process any information about a target carefully, especially if the information is complex (Chaiken, 1980; Petty, Cacioppo, Strathman, & Priester, 2005). (D) Attitude change may also occur as a result of consistency motivation: When people perform counter-attitudinal behaviors, they tend to change their attitudes in the corresponding direction (e.g. Cooper & Fazio, 1984; Festinger, 1957). A person that describes himself as nonprejudiced, for example, should be less likely to favor job applicants based on physical appearance because doing so would be inconsistent with being non-prejudiced. In the present experiments, we focus on the mechanisms described in (C) and (D). It seems that interventions that would rely on evaluative conditioning (A) or mere exposure (B) are less practical. For example, they are likely to be time consuming and might even be perceived as strange or unnatural. REDUCING PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS BIAS 5 There is a surprising scarcity of experimental studies that have examined how the biasing effects of prejudice can be reduced in hiring decisions. Our search only revealed 4 such studies. These explored various strategies to increase participants’ awareness of applicants’ job-relevant qualifications; i.e. they focused on route (C) above. Cann, Siegfried, and Pearce (1981) studied whether the biasing effect of facial attractiveness could be reduced by prompting participants to rate attractive and unattractive applicants on job-relevant qualifications before making an actual hiring decision (for a job as a department manager). Paying attention to formal qualifications, by rating applicants on them, should presumably reduce bias. However, the results showed that this manipulation was ineffective: Independently of whether job-relevant qualifications were evaluated before or after making the hiring decision, participants were more likely to favor attractive over unattractive applicants. Two studies did manage to show a decrease in prejudice in hiring decisions; however, these studies did not concern the biasing effects of facial attractiveness. Hodgins and Kalin (1985) examined sex-bias when rating the suitability of female and male applicants for stereotypically female or male jobs (sex bias was defined as the tendency to recommend female applicants for stereotypically female jobs and to recommend male applicants for stereotypically male jobs). Their results indicated that the provision job-relevant personality information about a candidate could reduce bias. E.g. when female candidates were described as having stereotypical male traits they were as likely as male candidates to be recommended for stereotypically male jobs. Becoming aware of any traits that might be relevant for a position, thus, had the effect of reducing bias. In another study, Kutcher and Bragger (2004) examined if prejudice towards overweight applicants could be reduced by using structured interviews. Participants were presented with video recordings of an average weight or overweight applicant that participated in either a structured or an unstructured interview. Both types of interviews were matched regarding what job-relevant information they revealed about the applicants, but in the structured interview, the applicants’ qualifications were made more salient. The use of a structured interview 1 Sheppard, Goffin, Lewis, and Olson (2011) examined if attractiveness bias could be reduced by employing a relative rating method (in which candidates were compared to each other) rather than an absolute rating method (in which each candidate is evaluated per se). However, this study did seem to have matched attractive and unattractive targets on personality and mental ability. REDUCING PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS BIAS 6 reduced bias towards overweight applicants, so that they were as likely to be hired as normal-weight applicants for a position of an insurance sales agent. Taken together, then, only two studies have found ways to reduce prejudice in hiring decisions; none of the cited studies could show a reduction of prejudice towards physically unattractive applicants. Clearly, however, this is an important issue. In their meta-analysis of physical-attractiveness bias, Langlois et al. (2000) concluded that “. the benefits of attractiveness are large enough to be visible to the naked eye. and are of considerable practical significance” (pp. 404). Evidently, such considerations underscore the importance of finding causal mechanisms for reducing attractiveness bias in personnel selection processes. In the present experiments, we examine if attractiveness bias can be reduced when evaluating applicants based on their CVs. In doing so, we based our manipulations on the mechanisms that are described in (C) and (D); we explain the theoretical rationale for each manipulation in the introduction to the respective experiment. In Experiment 1, we studied the effects of warning participants about prejudice. In experiment 2, we studied the effects of consistency motivation.