Good looking bias presents marketing opportunities

Marketing beauty products at professionals eager to climb the greasy pole to career success may be a successful advertising strategy for cosmetics companies. In mock interviews where employers where given the task of allocating job packages to good and average looking people, both sexes were guilty of letting beauty influence their decisions. Commenting on the research Carl Senior and Michael Butler, the co-authors of the study, said: "When someone is viewed as attractive, they are often assumed to have a number of positive social traits and greater intelligence." ​"This is known as the 'halo effect' and it has previously been shown to affect the outcome of job interviews." ​ Published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the study found that women were particularly likely to be influenced by looks. Female interviewers were found to allocate more high status jobs to good looking men while average looking men received more low status jobs than their ordinary looking female counterparts. The news could be used by companies looking to market cosmetics at men who are otherwise cynical about the value of using beauty products. A recent cross cultural survey of attitudes towards beauty conducted by Allergan suggested that men are already interested using personal care products to looking good at work. A total of 31 percent of American male respondents and only 10 percent of European men considered grooming to be important because they wanted to look professional at work.