We’ve heard it all before, “first impressions matter”, but did you know it takes as little as seven seconds of meeting someone to form a solid impression of them and a tenth of a second to start determining traits like trustworthiness and kindness? Physical attractiveness plays a huge role within society and with it comes the halo effect and stereotyping.
Businesses have utilised the positive perceptions that come with attractiveness for years. Glossy magazine pages are littered with attractive celebrities promoting skincare products, makeup and designer clothes. Why? Because we trust them and if we see a person first in a good light, it becomes difficult to darken that light.
So it leads to the question; in the year 2020, is it the survival of the fittest or the survival of the prettiest?
What is the halo effect?
To put it simply, the halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person in one area to positively influence one’s opinion or feelings in other areas. The term was first coined by American psychologist, Edward L. Thorndike, in 1920 and its effects are constantly around us.
Picture this. It’s a numbingly cold winter’s day. Impatiently waiting for the train, you swipe aimlessly through your Instagram feed. From the corner of your eye, you see a face illuminated by the pale light only winter’s sun could give. You notice his dimples, his smile. You find warmth in his kind eyes and in that moment you knew it was lust – I mean, love at first sight.
Fast forward three months later and that handsome stranger you met at the train station is now blocked on all forms of social media. You ask yourself, how did you get that so wrong? He seemed so nice in the beginning. Turns out he was actually quite manipulative, shallow and overall not a very nice person.
Sound familiar? That’s because we tend to assign more positive personality traits to people we find physically attractive.
How to (nearly) get away with murder
Take for example one of the most notorious serial killers to date, Jeffrey Dahmer.
Dahmer was a convicted serial killer and sex offender. He took the lives of 17 men between the years 1978 and 1991, typically targeting black and Hispanic men at malls, gay bars and bus stops. He’d dismember his victims, relive his sexual fantasies with the corpse and occasionally eat parts of his victim’s body. He once went as far as pouring muriatic acid into a hole in his victim’s head in an attempt to create a zombie. How charming.
Dahmer was a handsome, intelligent man who could have been successful if his life wasn’t consumed by darkness. He dodged arrest on at least four occasions during his series of 17 slayings. Police officers admitted to finding nothing unusual about Dahmer when following up on a report about him robbing and drugging a man in 1988. “He seemed normal”.
As I scoured message boards 28 years after his conviction, online discussions entitled ‘why do I feel sorry for Jeffrey Dahmer?’ are still alive and kicking today.
Ted Bundy, Amanda Knox, OJ Simpson and R Kelly have all faced serious criminal accusations. But may it be for their good looks, sad backstories, being national heroes or even musical genius, many people found and still find it hard to believe that they were capable of committing such heinous crimes.
Interestingly, attractiveness can have a massive influence on prison sentences too. Rod Hollier states in the Physical Attractiveness Bias in the Legal System that ‘the more unattractive the criminal, the higher the sentence. Or conversely, the more attractive the criminal, the lower the sentence’. The results of three studies show a minimum increase of 119.25% and a maximum increase of 304.88%!
Beauty is wealth
But the halo effect goes beyond the jury system. The way you look can impact your work life too. In Beauty is Wealth, Joseph Halford reveals that good looking CEO’s can bring better stock returns for their companies. Good news for those businesses but not so much for the average Joanna seeking employment.
Worryingly, a comprehensive academic review summarised that ‘physically attractive individuals are more likely to be interviewed for jobs and hired, they are more likely to advance rapidly in their careers through frequent promotions and they earn higher wages than unattractive individuals”. This harsh reality means that performance appraisals can be distorted and some people have an unfair advantage irrespective of their actual potential. Sadly, appearance-based discrimination within the workplace may be based on superficial factors such as; body weight, dress sense and tattoos.
However, beauty can also become a double-edged sword for women in business. In 2017, successful CEO, Eileen Carey, revealed to the BBC that she dyed her blonde hair brown after she was given ‘advice by a woman in venture capital’. She goes onto explain how she ‘was told that it would be to my benefit to dye my hair brown because there was a stronger pattern recognition of brunette women CEO’s’.
This raises the intriguing question of whether femininity and attractiveness reflect a woman’s perceived authority? In a study in 2012, researchers at the University of Miami and Duke University found that females with lower-pitched voices were seen as more competent and trustworthy.
Elizabeth Holmes the founder and culprit of the $9 billion Theranos Scandal took full advantage of this stereotype. She reportedly used a fake deep baritone voice to sound more authoritative. This helped to attract multi-millionaires, pharmacies and hospitals to invest into her essentially imaginary healthcare business.
Spot and stop the bias
Whilst I don’t think people are consciously disfavouring unattractive people, we should all be aware that this unconscious bias exists so we are not blinded by halos or deterred by fake horns.
So in future ask yourself:
- What are my impressions of this person?
- Is this impression based on their appearance?
- What do I accurately know about their character?
- What behaviour has this individual exhibited to support my conclusion about them?
- Is it possible that I may have missed something?
And remember, don’t judge a book by its cover.
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Written by Amelia Benjamin
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
