My former college roommate is an economics professor. The other night we were chatting about the economic value of physical beauty and how beautiful people can get better jobs and promotions thanks in part to the Halo Effect.
Have you seen this happen in person?
Have you ever seen someone get penalized for their looks because they made coworkers feel insecure of their appearance?
Tell us your story.
Comments
Being tall seems to help, but only if you act poised and confident as opposed to gangly or awkward.
I used to work in data science and the big joke was at conferences all the Scandinavian guys would walk in and the women would swoon.
Yes, pretty privilege exists in the workplace. Even if it’s as subtle as people being more affable, that just leads to more opportunity down the line or at least makes it more available, doesn’t necessarily mean the person will cease it or ultimately aren’t good at their job that people won’t notice though.
Attractiveness usually goes hand in hand with confidence too, which almost never hurts in the workplace.
Literally yesterday the CEO of my company was talking about how one of the guys would be way better off if he lost a hundred pounds. To be fair it’s in sales and looks/appearance do play a factor for sure
Oh yeah you see it in IT ALL the time… there was a female project manager everyone used to fawn over so she would pass off all her work to others and take credit even the IT manager used to suck up to her and charge her projects less
It 100 percent does happen with both genders. I’ve seen attractive women get passes for screwing off all day or talking back to supervisors with no punishment.
Also with “handsome” men. I’ve seen supervisors be more buddy buddy with them or have them move up the chain faster than “normal folk” just because they’re seen as more personable.
I was on an entry level sales team. One of the team members was a smoking hot blonde, and while she was competent, she wasn’t anything above any of the rest of us.
She got promoted not only to corporate sales, but NATIONAL sales. Zero valid reason besides she was hot. Now, she ended up failing miserably and being demoted – to corporate sales where she was still a massive leg up. All this was within 18 months.
With women in a mostly male dominated field yes, but not for good looking men, it’s quite the opposite. There seems to be an intentional avoidance at building friendships.