Page 323 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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Cognitive Sources of Attractiveness Bias
The bias against unattractive persons reflects in part the ignorance of the
perceiver insofar as it originates from faulty information processing. In
other words, perceivers misjudge and mistreat unattractive employees
because of the information they notice, encode, organize, and retrieve on
the unattractive person. In judging another person, the data that are avail­
able almost always exceed the information processing capabilities of the
perceiver. Consequently, perceivers simplify by determining how the indi­
vidual stimulus person compares to categories of others. Once categorized,
the stimulus person is assigned attributes prototypical of the category. The
subsequent search for and processing of information on the stimulus per­
son is initially guided by an attempt to confirm this category. If information
is encountered that contradicts the initial categorization, the perceiver at­
tempts to account for this discrepancy and recategorize. If disconfirmation
continues, then the perceiver may eventually rely more on individual in­
formation regarding the unique attributes of the target person and less on
categories.
Appearance is especially important in determining which cognitive cat­
egories are activated. Not only is appearance salient, novel, and the first
information obtained (McArthur, 1982), but also research shows that ap­
pearance is among the first items mentioned when describing others (Fiske
& Cox, 1979). Attractiveness of appearance is a basis for categorization
that seems to play an especially important role in encoding and organizing
memories of others' behavior (Miller, 1988). The face is probably the most
important of the visual cues of attractiveness (Jackson, 1992, p. 3).
Once a category is activated or instantiated, the label associated with this
category can lead to the inference of a variety of attributes associated with
the prototypical member of the category. Implicit theories guide these in­
ferences. One view is that broad generalizations of positive traits are made
from physically attractive appearances (the beauty-is-good hypothesis).
According to Hatfield and Sprecher (1986), "People believe good-looking
people possess almost all the virtues known to humankind" (p. xix). Sim­
ilarly, attractiveness has been presented as a diffuse status characteristic
that along with sex, race, and age implies the possession of many different
positive attributes (Kalick, 1988; Morrow, 1990; Webster & Driskell, 1983).
Partial support for these views was recently found in a meta-analysis of
the social psychological research (Eagly et al., 1991). This study found that
attractive persons are more likely to be seen as socially competent, power­
ful, adjusted, and intellectually competent than unattractive persons, but
no more socially sensitive or honest. A slight tendency was found for at­
tractive persons to be seen as more vain than unattractive persons.