Skip to main content

Unattractive People More Likely to Be Bullied at Work

"We're more influenced by attractiveness than we are willing to admit."
High school. 

Both the high point and low point experience of growing up.

Why? 

Because every school has an in-crowd and an out-crowd, with the outs often the butt of jokes, teasing and downright mean treatment. 

Do we grow out of it?

Apparently not, according to new research by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, and Brent Scott of Michigan State University.

In the article "Beauty, Personality, and Affect as Antecedents of Counterproductive Work Behavior Receipt," recently published in the scientific journal, Human Performance, the researchers examine how physical attractiveness plays as much of a role as personality in how a person is treated in the workplace.

According to Judge, "Unattractive individuals are more likely the subject of rude, uncivil and even cruel treatment by their coworkers. And, not only do we, as a society, perceive attractive and unattractive coworkers differently, we act on those perceptions in ways that are hurtful."

"Given that physical attractiveness is not a bona fide occupational qualification for most jobs, our new findings are problematic for society," Judge says. "Worse, research reliably shows that we're more influenced by attractiveness than we are willing to admit."

It's a problem with no easy solution, especially given the increasingly visual nature of communication, according to Judge, who has written and been interviewed extensively about his gender, ambition and work stress research, among other studies.

"Awareness is surely one important step," Judge says. "If we recognize our biases and are more open and honest about their pervasiveness, we'll be in much better shape to combat the influence."

Story Source:  Brent A. Scott, Timothy A. Judge. Beauty, Personality, and Affect as Antecedents of Counterproductive Work Behavior Receipt. Human Performance, 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Seizing Opportunity: Gerber Legendary Blades

A set of Gerber-12 steak knives circa 1950.   Source:   houseinprogress Y ou might think this is the story of a struggling knife maker making it big through sheer dint of effort.  The story of Gerber Legendary Blades is one of serendipity and the Christmas of 1939.  The name Gerber in hometown Portland, Oregon, is often associated with the regional advertising agency started by Joseph Gerber in 1910.  The agency dealt in advertising, which in those days required the agency have their own printing presses in addition to the standard staff of writers, artists and account managers.  By 1939, Gerber Advertising was one of three large agencies in Portland, with a staff of around thirty employees. As a present to the agency's clients, Joseph Gerber, commissioned a knife maker to create 25 sets of steak knives which were delivered at Christmas that year.  The knives were such a hit that catalog retailer Abercrombie & Fitch made a big o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Earn a Living Shining Shoes. . . Really

Earning a Living as a Bootblack "Shoeshine boy on the street during the Depression, circa 1929." Can someone make a living shining shoes in today's economy?  At on time there shoe shine boys as they were called were found on street corners across the country, thousands of them.  Many were from poor families and worked to help support themselves and their families.  Today, I found three established shoe shine stands in downtown Seattle, plus two bootblacks, the traditional name of those who shine shoes, working on the streets of Seattle. Meet George Johnson, age 74 on October 20th, a self-employed operator of a shoe shine stand in downtown Seattle's Rainier Place.  George has been shining shoes for the last sixty years, starting in Arkansas and ending up some thirty years ago at the Washington Athletic club a few blocks from his current location. "Sixty years," I asked him the day we met.  "You ever think of retiring?" "Gonna work ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Seven Characteristics of the Creative Employee.

How to Find Good Employees : On my post of February 18th of this year, we talked about the role of managing stupidity in the success of any organization.  "Stupidity Management" refers to the real need of a business to know the difference between routine tasks that must be completed by rote and those tasks that require innovation and fresh thinking.   Every business has a need for discipline in tasks that must be performed the same way, each and every time. Every business has a need to creative thinking and fresh ideas on certain other tasks or problems, just not every task of problem.   The Hunt for the Creative Individual There are certain jobs in every organization where you, the owner, need original thinking.  Or perhaps you're running a business that lives off original thinkers.  An advertising agency is a business where the company's assets walk out the door every day at five (ish). Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School ...
5 comments
Read more