Are Good-Looking People More Employable?

Bradley Ruffle and Zeev Shtudiner

Management Science, 2015, vol. 61, issue 8, 1760-1776

Abstract: We investigate the role of physical attractiveness in the hiring process. We sent 5,312 curricula vitae (CVs) in pairs to 2,656 advertised job openings. In each pair, one CV was without a picture, whereas the second, otherwise almost identical CV contained a picture of either an attractive male or female or a plain-looking male or female. Employer callbacks to attractive men are significantly higher than to men with no picture and to plain-looking men, nearly doubling the latter group. Strikingly, attractive women do not enjoy the same beauty premium. In fact, women with no picture have a significantly higher rate of callback than attractive or plain-looking women. We explore a number of explanations for this discrimination against attractive women and provide evidence that female jealousy and envy are likely reasons. This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics .

Keywords: beauty; discrimination; job interview; jealousy; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (61)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1927 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: ARE GOOD-LOOKING PEOPLE MORE EMPLOYABLE? (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:61:y:2015:i:8:p:1760-1776

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().