Executives’ Careers and Corporate Success—How Far Do Looks Go?


How far can a person’s looks go? Whether it is famous movie stars or musicians, public attention is often captivated by the good looks of celebrities. In our day-to-day lives, a person’s features, faces, and voices may capture our attention in a way that is seemingly automatic. We may find ourselves left with lasting impressions of someone’s personality (such as their trustworthiness, warmth, or humility), interests (such as athletics), and mood (such as cheerful or sad)—among other qualities—from brief glances or interactions. The lead in a Broadway theatre production, the star quarterback of your favorite football team, or the CEO of a prominent company may not only be able to play the part, but may also look the part as well.

Is all of this coincidental or do physical and vocal features have more information than meets the eye? As it turns out, there may very well be more than meets the eye. If you have found yourself wondering the same and similar questions, so do many other people. From psychology to political science to economics and business, researchers from a variety of disciplines have sought to understand how one’s physical and vocal attributes (external attributes that describe various qualities of one’s external appearance or external presentation), such as physical attractiveness or vocal masculinity, relate to real-world outcomes. Researchers have found, for instance, that political candidates who appear more trustworthy in photographs are more likely to win elections. Also, economists and psychologists have reported that perceptions of CEOs’ competence, dominance, and facial maturity are related to higher firm profits.

My colleagues and I at DePaul University and Florida State University who study leadership and management were intrigued by this line of research. We systematically examined all of the research that has been conducted on how business executives’ physical and vocal attributes relate to their careers and their organizations’ outcomes. And indeed, we found that such attributes appear to be related to executives’ careers and organizations’ outcomes.

We found the most evidence for relationships between perceptions of executives’ competence, attractiveness, and executives’ actual compensation. In other research, impressions of executives based on their appearance were related to raters’ attributions of leadership ability and success as well as actual measures of their companies’ success, even though those doing the ratings actually knew nothing about the executives. In particular, this means that executives who appear more competent and attractive were assumed to be higher on leadership ability and measures of career and firm success (such as salary and firm profits) and in some instances actually happened to be higher on measures of firm success (such as firm profits). Studies have also reported significant correlations between the appearance of executives’ facial masculinity and a company’s actual risk-taking. Similarly, executives’ vocal masculinity has been linked with companies’ actual risk-taking. It is unclear from this research whether executives’ facial and vocal masculinity matters to risky actions a company pursues or whether companies with higher risk profiles choose executives who appear and come across more masculine. Other research has considered how perceptions of executives’ trustworthiness affect executive selection. For instance, one study reported that companies appoint CEOs who appear more trustworthy in the wake of corporate misconduct. Despite findings connecting physical and vocal characteristics to career outcomes, it remains unclear what processes are really at play.

We can highlight several major conclusions and open questions from our research:

  • The research we reviewed revealed different kinds of possible executives’ career and organizational outcomes: individual outcomes such as career success, organizational outcomes such as firm performance, and situational considerations—particularly cultural differences as well as gender and other demographic differences—that might affect how physical and vocal attributes influence executives’ careers and organizations’ outcomes. Perceptions of masculinity among CEOs, for example, may be valued differently in cultures where status and power differences are more important and accepted than in the USA.
  • To what extent are a person’s physical and vocal attributes actually good indicators of personality traits such as trustworthiness, competence, and warmth, and to what extent are there mistaken beliefs about such relationships? Biases, stereotypes, and self-fulfilling prophecies (where false expectations reinforce and lead to their confirmation) likely play a large role in the judgments people make about others’ talents and abilities. Cultural norms in society, family backgrounds, the showcasing of masculine stereotypes in sports, and more, can lead individuals to unconsciously develop misguided expectations of others and, more specifically, of leaders. People are also susceptible to making faulty attributions based on unconscious processes that simplify and quicken judgment and decision making. Attractiveness, for example, may produce “halo effects” that lead to more favorable views toward an individual. Alternatively, facial expressions like smiles can allow individuals to make inferences (for example, a friendly person). In the latter scenario, facial cues that signal willingness to interact versus aggressiveness may be informative for social interaction or protection. However, there is not compelling evidence that physical and vocal attributes themselves are important apart from individuals’ biases and perceptions that they may be important.
  • If people make judgments affecting others’ lives based on their physical and vocal attributes, the role of biases must be addressed. For example, some research has suggested that women could receive both workplace benefits and penalties based on their physical attributes, depending on the context. More broadly, managers and employees both bring valuable qualities to the workplace and it is important to examine physical and vocal attributes in context given that individuals are a complicated mix of different strengths, weaknesses, and other attributes.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Many issues remain unexplored. For example, are there biases held around leadership prototypes that contribute to the underrepresentation of women and minorities in leadership positions? How heavily do physical and vocal attributes weigh in influencing executives’ career and organizations’ outcomes, compared to other experience, abilities, education, and personality traits?


For Further Reading

Devine, R. A., Holmes Jr, R. M., & Wang, G. (2020). Do executives’ aesthetic attributes matter to career and organizational outcomes? A critical review and theoretical integration. The Leadership Quarterly, 101478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101478


 

Richard Devine is an assistant professor of management at DePaul University. His research interests primarily involve the exploration of societal problems and social issues in management, considering both micro and macro level factors that create disparate outcomes for individuals and organizations in society.

 

For Some People, Attractive Wives and High Status Husbands Enhance Marital Quality

Washington, DC - Your decision-making style—whether you make a "good enough" choice or seek to make the “best" possible choice among all possible options—influences your satisfaction with your partner, according to a 3-year study of newlyweds. Researchers from Florida State University found that maximizing men—those who seek to make the “best” choice—who had attractive wives were more satisfied at the start of their marriages than maximizing men who had less attractive wives, and maximizing women who had high status husbands experienced less steep declines in satisfaction over time than maximizing women who had low status husbands.

The research appears in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“Maximizing people are constantly trying to obtain the very best outcomes in life,” says lead author Juliana French (Florida State University). “For example, which is the best ice cream flavor? Which is the best song on the radio right now?”

“In the context of romantic relationships, maximizers are those who seek the best possible partner and who, over the course of their relationships, continue to compare their partners to other potential partners,” says French. This could lead to overall lower satisfaction in maximizers’ long-term relationships if their partners do not compare favorably to those alternatives on qualities that are important to them.

To test how maximizers might find happiness in their long-term relationships, the researchers studied 113 heterosexual newlywed couples in north Texas and 120 newlywed couples in north Florida. In both studies, people completed questionnaires assessing their marital satisfaction, tendencies to maximize when making decisions, and social status; additionally, the researchers obtained photographs of each spouse that they objectively coded for physical attractiveness.

They found that maximizers were more satisfied with their marriages if their partners possessed traits that were desirable to them—maximizing men were more satisfied if they had attractive wives, and maximizing women were more satisfied if they had high-status husbands. In contrast, satisficing men and women were similarly satisfied regardless of their partners’ traits.

Making decisions about romance—for example, who to date and who to marry—are central to our lives and well-being.

What other aspects of relationship functioning are impacted by maximizing tendencies?

“We might find that maximizers take relationships slower than satisficers,” speculates French. “For example, maximizers might take longer to decide to be exclusive with someone, to move in together, to get married, to have children together, and so on.”


Study Juliana E. French, Andrea L. Meltzer. Maximizing Tendencies in Marriage: Accentuating the Implications of Readily Observable Partner Characteristics for Intimates’ Satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, OnlineFirst Mar 5, 2019.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), published monthly, is an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter, @SPSPnews and find us on facebook.com/SPSP.org.

Unpredictable Love

Are you single? Do you use dating apps when looking for a new partner? When using dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, many think they know they find a particular "type" attractive as far as who they are seeking in the dating pool. Our research examined whether this was so. We investigated whether preferences for a particular type of partner are stable or whether they are determined by the situation.

Previous research investigating partner choice has often tried to explain what exactly determines a person's partner preferences, but those studies rarely took more temporary psychological states into account. We propose, however, that people's temporary feelings of uncertainty (such as due to the COVID-19 pandemic or a financial crisis) may affect their partner preferences.

To test our proposition, my co-author Kobe Millet and I conducted four studies to test the extent in which uncertain events (such as COVID-19) influence the types of partners that men and women feel attracted to. We discovered that partner preferences may not be as stable as one might like to think. In times of uncertainty, people seem to seek out partners that fit with stereotypes (women who are tender-looking and caring versus men who are tough-looking and strong), whereas this need becomes less in times of certainty.

Which Facial Features of the Opposite Sex Are More Attractive Under Uncertainty?

In the first study, respondents were asked to imagine a situation in which they felt uncertain (for example, a drop in housing prices due to an economic crisis, or being faced with too many choice options) or certain (such as trust in good education, or assurance of basic services). This task brought feelings of uncertainty to the forefront of people's minds.

They then saw photos of potential dating partners. A professional graphic designer modified the pictures to create for each face a version with tender facial features and a version with tough facial features. For the tender feature faces, the outer facial contour was made less angular, and the tip of the nose, cheeks, and lips were rounded. For the tough feature faces, the nose and chin were made sharper and the jawbone more angular. The respondent then indicated which face they found most attractive and whether they would like to go on a date with that person.

Two photos of the same woman

An example of a female face with tender versus tough facial features

The results showed that under uncertainty, women felt more attracted to men with tougher facial features, whereas men felt more attracted to women with more tender facial features. However, this gender difference disappeared when people felt—men and women found both partners equally attractive regardless of facial structure.

To gain confidence in these findings, we used in the next study a morphing technique to create images of the same face that gradually changed from extremely tender to extremely tough. This time we asked participants to either think about COVID-19 and how it made them feel uncertain or about a regular day in their lives. Even with the novel method, our results were the same, such that when thinking about COVID-19 uncertainty, male respondents felt more attracted to the female with more tender features, whereas female respondents to the male with tougher features. And, again, this preference disappeared when people thought of a regular day.

Female and male face gradually changing from very tender to very tough facial features, by using a morphing technique

Why Are There Gender Differences in Partner Preference Under Uncertainty?

Two subsequent studies also revealed that in uncertain times, men and women reported being more attracted to a partner with tender or tough features because they related these facial features to stereotypical gender roles. While women with tender features were thought to be a caring type, men with hard features were believed to be stronger. Apparently, stereotypes play a greater role in mate selection during uncertain times.

External and unpredictable events, such as a climate disaster or the corona pandemic, create a lot of uncertainty. We often feel the urge to seek certainty during times such as these. We do this partly by looking for order and structure. Using stereotypes makes us feel like we have more certainty about the world, by quickly categorizing people into groups. Conversely, people may fall back less on stereotypical gender roles in times and places where they feel more secure and certain.

These insights are not only important to better understand people's partner preferences, but are also practically applicable. For example, perhaps candidates on dating sites can adjust how to present themselves in uncertain times, by accentuating tender or tougher features. In addition, a female model with tender, softer features (or a male model with tough, harder features) might be better used in product commercials in times of crisis.

Thus, when you believe that you feel attracted to the same types of guys or gals when you are looking for a date, you may be wrong. In uncertain times you may end up with a much more stereotypical date than when times are more predictable.


For Further Reading

Van Horen, F., & Millet, K. (2022). Unpredictable love? How uncertainty influences partner preferences. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2854


Femke van Horen is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research interests include environmental uncertainty, sustainability, and the effectiveness of product imitation strategies.

Kobe Millet is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests include consumer psychology, environmentally (un)friendly decision-making, and prosocial behavior.

Men Don’t Care Why You Want to Look Young, But Who Does?

Women seem to have an urge to stay young and beautiful. But why do they do it?

First, of course, they do it for themselves. There has been a drive to promote self-care and what better way to do it than taking steps to maintain looking young, like doing more exercise, using SPF daily, or by taking it a step further—maybe using Botox?

Studies reveal that older people tend to feel younger than their age, and this incompatibility between how they feel and how they look can lead to mental health problems in later life.

In particular, middle-aged and older women report feeling invisible in their social circles, which makes them feel isolated, not to mention anxious and depressed. Interviews from older women often reveal that if money is no object, they would undergo procedures to look younger.

But women also want to look young and beautiful for other more practical reasons, say, to get a better job. In some job areas, being and looking young have a lot of favorable consequences. This is most noticeable in the entertainment industry—as actresses get older, they tend to be 'shifted' to different acting roles outside of being the protagonist, but this does not seem to be an issue for male actors.

And probably the most controversial reason offered for why women want to look young and beautiful is simply that our patriarchal society has made women think that they should. In a sense, there is an evolutionary function for this, where yes, women should want to look beautiful and young for men because being more attractive will help them get chosen as a mate. After all, in terms of evolution, men would want to reproduce and the 'most favorable' age for a woman to reproduce is in her younger years. You know, it's all about survival.

Be that as it may, our study suggests that men, in general, do not give a toss why women try to look young.

In Fact, It's the Other Women Who Care a Lot More

We asked 306 people between 18 and 75 years old to read a description of hypothetical middle-aged women who either use a less invasive method to look younger (a hand-held, home device that they can use themselves) or a more invasive method, in this case, Botox, to stay young, and the reasons why they do it. They then judged them on eight traits, like how admirable or foolish they thought the woman was. We then calculated their responses and the higher score they gave, the better they think of that target woman.

Overall, people think that using the home device is better than using Botox. Even though using Botox is more common now than in previous years, observers still do not like the idea of using it.

Interestingly, male respondents, in general, gave the targets lower scores than female respondents, which links to the idea that perhaps males unconsciously think that 'looking young' may not equate to being 'reproductive,' a trait that has been argued that males look for in a mate, but they also gave the same ratings regardless of the reason behind it. Female respondents, on the other hand, gave higher scores overall, but this depended on WHY the target woman wanted to look young. If they wanted to do it to improve their self-esteem, female respondents gave them the highest scores—yes, you go, girl!

BUT, when targets did it to feel better at their job or look for romantic partners, female respondents, especially those who were competitive, gave them much lower scores—no, thank you!

Think about it, when you're looking for a partner yourself and are highly competitive, you wouldn't want more people to compete with. You already have a population of young women to contend with, and now middle-aged women also want a piece of that pie. Not great for you.

But what does this mean for women who may choose to maintain looking young?

Sadly, how society views women, especially older women, affects their mental health in a negative way. Now that anti-aging treatments are less invasive, produce more natural-looking results, and are more affordable compared to what they were decades ago, maintaining a youthful look could be achievable. Research shows that an increase in self-esteem is a significant result from anti-aging treatments, with women who do it reporting that they feel 'like themselves again.'

In the end, it's a personal choice whether individuals would do it, or whether other people's opinion matters. If you are a woman, what would you do? 


For Further Reading

Childs, M. J., & Jones, A. (2022). Perceptions of individuals who engage in age concealment. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000305

Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12(1), 1– 14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00023992
 

Michael Jeanne Childs is doing her PhD in Psychology at Swansea University in Wales, United Kingdom, focusing on perceptions of facial attractiveness, health, and age, and is currently working as a Research Assistant and Data Scientist in Population Data Science there.

Why We Are Prejudiced Against Unattractive People

People stigmatize unattractive people and particularly those with facial disfigurements. For example, unattractive defendants get harsher sentences for the same crimes compared to attractive defendants and even mothers are less affectionate to their children if they are unattractive.

The Beauty-Is-Good Stereotype

One explanation for prejudice against unattractive people is the Beauty-Is-Good stereotype—producing an often unconscious bias against less beautiful people. According to the stereotype, if a person is seen as unattractive, they are also believed to be lower on traits such as intelligence, competence, or emotional warmth.

My colleagues and I at the University of Melbourne found that physical attractiveness has a particularly strong influence on moral character judgments. When encountering another person for the first time, people are strongly motivated to assess their moral traits. For example, it is important to initially find out whether another person is trustworthy—and hence not a threat—more so than whether they have good humor. We suspected that because people are especially sensitive to moral traits, ironically, those may be the ones that are most strongly biased by irrelevant cues such as a person's physical attractiveness.

We presented viewers with photographs of attractive and unattractive faces and asked them to judge their characters. The photographs were taken from a face database which provided average attractiveness ratings for a wide range of faces. We selected face pairs that differed in their perceived attractiveness but who had the same race and gender. As expected, we found that people perceive unattractive individuals more negatively than attractive individuals and that this effect was stronger for judgments of moral character traits such as trustworthiness, honesty, or selflessness, than for judgments of non-moral traits such as being funny or organized (which were equivalent on the degree to which the traits were perceived as warm). Thus, physical attractiveness influences our perceptions of others more fundamentally than previously understood.

The Behavioral Immune System

Another explanation for why people are prejudiced against unattractive people is that unattractiveness and particularly facial disfigurement can activate the "behavioral immune system"—psychological mechanisms that serve as an early line of defense against pathogens. A key component of the behavioral immune system is the emotion of disgust, which motivates us to avoid diseased objects.

The behavioral immune system works like a smoke detector, minimizing errors that would lead to the greatest costs. Erroneously judging a diseased person to be healthy could potentially be fatal, while judging a healthy person to be diseased has fewer consequences to oneself. As a consequence, the behavioral immune system is over-sensitive and can get activated by cues that only resemble disease.

While unattractive and facially disfigured people typically do not have a disease, diseases can cause facial disfigurement (for example, leprosy causes skin lesions and deformed extremities), and therefore, disfigurement can be perceived to be a disease cue. Because of this, people with facial disfigurement are often treated as if they have an infectious disease.

We theorized that this would also shape how people judge unattractive people's character. Following up on our research, we predicted that physical attractiveness does not only selectively bias moral character judgments, but may particularly bias moral character judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity. Moral judgments are made on a number of dimensions. Notably, people morally condemn behavior that harms others such as punching another person (harm violations), as well as behavior that increases the risk of being exposed to pathogens such as spitting on a sidewalk (purity violations). Indeed, we found that people expect unattractive people to more likely to engage in purity norm violations (but not harm violations) compared to attractive people. This suggests that unattractive people are not only perceived as more immoral than attractive people but they are specifically expected to engage in moral norm violations that are 'disgusting.'

How Can We Reduce Bias Against Unattractive People?  

 Bias against unattractive people is deep-seated. However, it does not mean that we cannot overcome it. An important step to reduce it is to be aware that a person's physical attractiveness shapes our perceptions of them and that we are biased against people who are unattractive and particularly those with a facial disfigurement. This means we also need to dispel the adage that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Though well-intended, it has the same psychological function as believing "I don 't see color" in response to racial prejudice in that it denies the social reality of people who are unattractive. Unattractive people know that they are treated worse because of their appearance. Instead, we should acknowledge that physical attractiveness matters but that there are more important human qualities that define us as a person.


For Further Reading

Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology24(3), 285-290. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0033731

Klebl, C., Rhee, J. J., Greenaway, K. H., Luo, Y., & Bastian, B. (2022). Beauty goes down to the core: Attractiveness biases moral character attributions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior46(1), 83-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00388-w

Klebl, C., Rhee, J. J., Greenaway, K. H., Luo, Y., & Bastian, B. (2021). Physical attractiveness biases judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 01461672211064452. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01461672211064452

Schaller, M., & Park, J. H. (2011). The behavioral immune system (and why it matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science20(2), 99-103. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0963721411402596


Christoph Klebl is a postdoctoral research fellow in social psychology at the School of Psychology, University of Queensland. His research focuses on the function of aesthetic judgments and their role in morality.

 

Why Do Good-looking People Get the Job?

You’ve probably always suspected this, and it’s true: Good-looking people enjoy a lot of career perks. They get hired, earn more, get promoted more, and have more positive performance evaluations. Is this just due to bias? Partly. Research shows that when people are sent fake resumes that are completely identical except for the photos attached, applicants with attractive photos get more callbacks.

But this is only part of the story. Our research shows that physically attractive job applicants may actually be feeling and doing something different from other people in interviews—and there may be ways for the rest of us to level the playing field.

Building on previous research, we thought that good-looking applicants might do better in job interviews not just because interviewers swoon over them, but because they present themselves differently from others. Due to positive stereotypes toward attractiveness—the widely held, often unconscious beliefs that prettier people are also smarter, more competent, and more successful—attractive individuals often get more attention from others, have higher status in social groups, and receive preferential treatment. As a result, these stereotypes can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. With years of positive social experiences as children and teenagers, good-looking adults may develop more positive self-views and more effective interpersonal skills, all of which may contribute to their career success. It’s true that there can also be negative stereotypes or backlash against attractive people—for example, the notion that good-looking people are shallow. However, research suggests that positive views of attractiveness generally prevail, which leads to those career advantages.

Supporting the notion of positive self-fulfilling prophecy, one study found that attractive individuals had better social skills than less attractive individuals—even when all communications were by phone, and those who rated the social skills could not see the person on the other end. A classic social psychology experiment reinforced the self-fulfilling prophecy explanation, demonstrating that when individuals were perceived as attractive by their partner in a one-time phone interaction, they came to behave in a more likeable and friendly way despite not knowing their partner had been told they were good-looking. Another study argued that greater confidence and oral communication skills could account for up to 60% of the “beauty premium” whereby more attractive people earn higher wages.

So our first question was: Do attractive people get ahead partly because they’ve cracked the code of successful social interactions? If so, that would raise a second question: Could less attractive people adopt the same techniques to get better outcomes in the hiring process?

Attractiveness And The Elevator Pitch

We invited undergraduate and graduate students who were gearing up to apply for jobs to record a three-minute video explaining why they were the right person for a fictitious position. In the elevator pitch, they introduced themselves and talked about their qualifications, in a format similar to the opening minutes of a typical job interview (answering questions like “tell me about yourself” or “tell me why you want this job”) or the pre-recorded “video” interviews many companies are increasingly using as an initial step in the hiring process. Before participants prepared and recorded their pitches, we asked them to rate their “sense of power”—a measure of how confident and powerful they felt. We then had two sets of observers rate the videos: one group assessed participants’ physical attractiveness and another group evaluated how confident, enthusiastic, captivating, and un-awkward the candidates were, which we called nonverbal presence. We also had real managers rate each participant’s hirability based on their pitch.

First, physical attractive participants felt more powerful and confident in their own ability to persuade others than did their less attractive counterparts. This got the ball rolling for better nonverbal presence, leading them to come across more confidently and enthusiastically. Not surprisingly, they received higher hirability ratings than less attractive candidates did. In other words, attractive applicants’ heightened feelings of self-assurance affected how they came across to others in ways that made them more likely to get the job.

What If We Increase Applicants’ Sense Of Power?

We next invited another group of undergraduate students to record elevator pitches for the same fictitious position. We randomly assigned half of them to strike a “power posing” position—think Superman or Wonder Woman—for a few minutes before they recorded their pitches. The other half of the participants were assigned to a neutral control condition, in which they could move normally while they prepared.

Here’s the good news: Power posing leveled the attractiveness gap in evaluations of nonverbal presence. That is, when less attractive participants practiced a power pose before recording their videos, they were perceived equally as confident, enthusiastic, and so on as their more attractive counterparts came across naturally. And participants with a stronger nonverbal presence were again rated as more hirable.

Of course, power posing is not a magic bullet for fixing biases about attractiveness or other biases that exist in the workplace, and our goal is not to put the burden of reducing bias on individual applicants. Organizations must be proactive. For decades, experts in our field have touted the benefits of structured interviews, which use consistent questions to minimize the potential for unintended bias, and there’s growing interest in the potential of artificial intelligence to counter human biases in the hiring process as well.

Nevertheless, our study does offer a potential tool for job-seekers hoping to gain an edge, especially those who lack a physical appearance advantage. Taking a few minutes to try out a power pose before your next interview could help you feel, and appear, more confident—and make it just a little easier to get that job.


For Further Reading

Tu, M. H., Gilbert, E. K., & Bono, J. E. (2021). Is beauty more than skin deep? Attractiveness, power, and nonverbal presence in evaluations of hirability. Personnel Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12469
 

Min-Hsuan Tu is an assistant professor of organization and human resource management at the University at Buffalo School of Management. She studies how to help people without advantages and resources navigate challenges at work.

Elisabeth Gilbert is an assistant professor of business administration in the Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics at Washington and Lee University. She studies ways to improve employees’ experiences in the workplace.

Joyce Bono is the W.A. McGriff III professor in the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. She studies leadership and how gender-based stereotypes affect women.