Questions 72-79 are based on the following passage.
Ask most people to list what makes them like someone on first meeting and they’ll tell you personality, intelligence, sense of humor. But they’re probably deceiving themselves. The characteristic that impresses people the most, when meeting anyone from a job applicant to a blind date, is appearance. And unfair and unenlightened as it may seem, attractive people are frequently preferred over their less attractive peers.
Research begun in the early 1970s has shown that not only do good looks influence such things as choice of friends, lovers, and mates, but that they can also affect school grades, selection for jobs, and even the outcome of a trial. Psychologist Ellen Berscheid of the University of Minnesota and psychologist Elaine Walster, then at the University of Wisconsin, were among the first researchers to deal with the topic of attractiveness. Their seminal 1974 paper on the subject showed that the more attractive a person, the more desirable characteristics others will attribute to him or her. Attractive people are viewed as being happier, more sensitive, more interesting, warmer, more poised, more sociable, and as having better character than their less attractive counterparts. Psychologist Karen Dion of the University of Toronto has dubbed this stereotypical view as: "What is beautiful is good".
Our current work at old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, with colleagues and students, focuses on the role that appearance plays in judgments made about people. Our studies have been done in a variety of settings: basic research laboratories, beauty and cosmetics industry labs, plastic and reconstructive surgery practices, psychiatric hospitals, and psychotherapeutic consulting rooms.
One topic that has led to many avenues of research is how attractiveness influences sex-typing—the tendency of people to attribute certain stereotypical qualities to each sex. Besides being perceived as sensitive, kind, interesting, and generally happy, attractive people tend to fit easily into sexual stereotypes, according to a study done by Barry Gillen, a social psychologist in our department.
Gillen speculated that attractive people possess two types of "goodness", one related to and the other unrelated to their sex. To test this hypothesis he showed a group of students photographs of both men and women of high, moderate, and low attractiveness, as determined by the previous rankings of students according to a seven-point scale (contrary to popular belief, researchers usually don’t use the Bo Derek scale of 10). The judges were asked to rate the subjects according to the masculinity, femininity, and social desirability scales of the Bern Sex Role Inventory. Gillen’s study found that attractive women were perceived as being more feminine, and that attractive men were viewed as being more masculine than their less attractive counterparts. This suggests a second stereotype: "What is beautiful is sex-typed."
One implication of Gillen’s work that we wanted to test was whether good looks are a disadvantage for some people, especially women, in work situations that conflict with sexual stereotypes. By the late 1970s, there was already a sizable body of literature documenting the problems women face because of sex-role stereotypes. We speculated that attractive women might be at a real disadvantage when they aspire to occupations in which stereotypically masculine traits—such as being p, independent, and decisive—are thought to be required for success.
To test that possibility we did a study with Gillen and Steve Burns, a student in our department, in which professional personnel consultants were hired to rate a "job applicant’s" suitability for six positions. We matched the positions for the skill required, the prestige offered, and the degree of supervisory independence allowed. Two jobs were stereotypically masculine (automobile salesperson, and wholesale hardware shipping and receiving clerk), two feminine (telephone operator and office receptionist) and two were sex-neutral (motel desk clerk and photographic darkroom assistant).
Each of the seventy-two personnel consultants who participated received a resume package for an individual that contained the typical kinds of information that a job applicant might submit: academic standing, a list of hobbies and interests, specific skills and recommendations from teachers and counselors. All of the resumes were identical with the exception of the name ("John" vs. "Janet" Williams) and the inclusion of a photograph of the applicant. Photographs showed either an extremely attractive applicant or an unattractive one, previously judged on an attractiveness scale. |
