The Beauty Bias: How To Level the Playing Field

The Secret To Taking On Biases around Beauty and Height

Years ago I went on a business trip with an attractive, young colleague. We ended up in completely different parts of the plane, and when we met on arrival, she told me how this super nice guy next to her gave her all kinds of travel tips about our destination city. He even hand drew a map to highlight his favorite restaurants and local hangouts. I forced a smile and said, “Great!”

But in my head I thought: no passenger sitting next to me—a middle-aged bald guy—was going to make eye contact, let alone enthusiastically offer comprehensive travel advice. Is it fair that she walks through life “getting” things because she’s attractive?

If you think that’s sexist, misogynistic, or just plain boorish, you’re right.

Credit: stockimg.ai (nope, she’s not real)

But sadly it’s also a proven fact. A meta study out of San Jose State¹ reported that “attractive individuals were found to fare better than unattractive individuals in terms of a wide variety of outcomes” including hiring decisions, promotions, and performance evaluations.

Similarly, a meta study out of University of Florida showed that taller people are more likely to find leadership roles and earn higher salaries.² What makes it even more frustrating for us average people is that attractiveness and height are attributes that are pretty difficult to change.

However, there’s another well-documented personal trait that leads to similarly positive outcomes such as increasing people’s willingness to collaborate³ and making expert witnesses more persuasive to juries in trial.⁴

It’s likability.

In my upcoming book Outsmart the Learning Curve, I narrowed down dozens of possible subjects who made dramatic transformations or overcame significant obstacles to just seven fascinating and instructive stories. For every subject I profiled, likability was an underlying success factor in their transformation. Some found mentors through their likability, others built a community of supporters because of their likability, still others got help through loose connections that seemed to happen just at the right time. But all of them found the same kind of magical help that beautiful or tall people might receive just because they were likable.

Of course, this finding may be biased by the fact that if I didn’t find a particular subject candidate likable, I might not have written about them. But that also proves my point—being likable simply leads to better outcomes.

Two interesting attributes about likability are that:

1. Anyone can change (improve) their likability.

2. Unlike beauty and height, likability doesn’t diminish with age. In fact, your likability can improve with age!

How can you improve your likability to get these benefits? It starts with making eye-contact and smiling and continues with asking questions and being a good listener. The book covers the details of how to improve your likability, and what I confirmed as I applied the techniques myself is that being likable does indeed grease the skids of life.

1. Hosoda, Megumi, Eugene F. Stone‐Romero, and Gwen Coats. 2003. “THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS ON JOB‐RELATED OUTCOMES: A META‐ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES.” Personnel Psychology 56 (2): 431–462. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2003.tb00157.x.

2. Judge, Timothy A., and Daniel M. Cable. 2004. “The Effect of Physical Height on Workplace Success and Income: Preliminary Test of a Theoretical Model.” Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (3): 428–441. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.3.428.

3. Pulles, Niels J., and Paul T. Hartman. 2017. “Likeability and Its Effect on Outcomes of Interpersonal Interaction.” Industrial Marketing Management 66 (October): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.008.

4. Younan, Mariam, and Kristy A. Martire. 2021. “Likeability and Expert Persuasion: Dislikeability Reduces the Perceived Persuasiveness of Expert Evidence.” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (December). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.785677.