‘Beauty bias’ strongly shapes who we view as leaders
New research shows physical attractiveness is one of the first qualities used to determine leadership skills.
According to a new Texas A&M University study, physical attractiveness has a measurable — and surprisingly strong — effect on who’s viewed as leadership material, influencing decisions across industries and institutions.
The findings, based on a meta-analysis of 65 pre-existing studies, confirm that the “beauty bias,” a term often used to describe situations where attractive people gain advantages based on looks alone, plays a significant role in who is chosen for leadership roles in classrooms, companies and executive suites. Published in the Journal of Management, the paper co-authored by Dr. Stephen Courtright, professor of management at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School and director of the Flippen Leadership Institute at Mays, concludes that physical attractiveness is consistently linked to perceived warmth and competence, in turn influencing who is seen as a leader.
“What we find is that people lend a lot of credence to good looks when they’re selecting leaders, even though good looks have no effect on leader effectiveness whatsoever,” Courtright said. “And the reason we fall into this beauty bias is because we assume that better looking people are more caring and competent—which also isn’t the case based on past research.”
The tendency to associate attractiveness with perceived warmth may explain why certain individuals are perceived as leaders before they’ve demonstrated their skills or experience. Courtright, whose research focuses on organizational leadership, teamwork and work-family dynamics, said that people subconsciously associate attractiveness with having strong people skills and intellect.
One famous example: the 1960 presidential debates between candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Viewers who watched on television overwhelmingly favored Kennedy’s youthful, charismatic and suave appearance, while radio listeners preferred Nixon.
“Essentially, in the face of limited information, we use physical attractiveness as an indicator of the key skills we want in leaders—namely, being smart and being good with people,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if you’re an executive, a politician, a frontline manager or a college student. We find that the beauty bias is very common and more pervasive than what we originally thought.”
To quantify the beauty bias, Courtright and his colleagues empirically analyzed dozens of pre-existing studies conducted by social scientists after reviewing more than 1,000 research articles exploring how physical traits relate to organizational outcomes. Their goal was to identify how attractiveness specifically influences perceptions of who should become a leader — and whether that influence differs by gender, culture, work experience, and other factors.
The results show that this link is not only real, but sizeable. Compared with gender, personality traits, or IQ, physical attractiveness was a stronger predictor of who is seen as a leader. Furthermore, the beauty bias was equally strong for men and women — meaning both could be unfairly helped or hurt by it – and it was consistent across different contexts and cultures.
The good news is that while physical attractiveness heavily shapes early impressions of leadership potential, it has no impact on actual leadership capabilities, Courtright said. Over time, teams begin to value qualities that determine leadership success — like knowledge and empathy — far more than appearance.
Hiring managers can also use well-defined and valid criteria when determining leadership potential so they can avoid promoting unqualified individuals to leadership positions, Courtright said.
“You can’t control some things about attractiveness other than ‘dressing the part,’ but what you can control is how much you can connect with people and gain competence as a leader. Ultimately, that’s what makes the most difference in becoming a successful leader: Can you do your job well, and are you good with people? If you have those two down, you have the skills needed to be a great leader, no matter what your level of attractiveness might be,” he said.
