When Beauty is Beastly at Work

Femme fatale or the downside of attractiveness for women in work

We also seek to support our suggestion that the femme fatale effect is rooted in sexual insecurity by demonstrating that the effect is eliminated when participants are primed to feel sexually—but not generally—secure.

That is from the paper When Beauty is Beastly at Work or the "lack-of-fit" theory.

Cash et al. (1977) first documented the liability of attractiveness for women at work, demonstrating that attractive women were deemed less suitable than their less attractive counterparts for masculine jobs (automobile salesperson and wholesale hardware shipping/receiving clerk), whereas the opposite was true for feminine jobs (telephone operator and office receptionist). In contrast, the authors found that attractiveness was always beneficial for men in terms of their perceived suitability for both masculine and feminine roles.

Heilman and Saruwatari (1979) referred to this phenomenon as the beauty-is-beastly effect. In their own study, they discovered that attractive women applying for managerial positions were deemed less qualified, were less likely to be recommended for hire, and were perceived as deserving lower salaries than non-attractive women were. This effect was reversed when attractive women were being considered for clerical positions, which is consistent with the what-is-beautiful- is-good effect. The authors also documented that attractiveness heightened perceptions of gender-related attributes for both men and women. That is, attractiveness enhanced ratings of femininity for women and masculinity for men, which sup- ported their proposition that their findings occurred due to the perceived lack-of-fit between attractive women and masculine (e.g., managerial) roles. Interestingly, however, the enhanced masculinity of attractive men did not deem them less suitable for the clerical position, which challenges the lack-of-fit perspective more generally.

Moreover, in a study of the effect of speech variations on deception detection, target gender emerged as an important factor, such that women’s speech was believed to be more truthful than men’s speech (Boltz et al. 2010). Theoretically and practically, this makes sense. Women are perceived as being more interpersonally warm and nurturing than men (Prentice and Carranza 2002), which spills over into general assumptions about their moral character.

They, however, question this assumption.

However, we argue that highly attractive women will not enjoy this female advantage, but rather will be judged as being less trustworthy than their less attractive counterparts. This proposition is somewhat intuitive when we consider the widespread depiction of beautiful women in literature and film as femme fatales—women who use their manipulative powers to make men do their will, often with disastrous or even fatal ends. Sirens depicted in Greek mythology are beautiful and dangerous female creatures that lure sailors to steer their boats into jagged rocks with their beauty and the sweetness of their song. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is sidetracked from his journey home to Ithaca by Circe, a beautiful goddess. She seduces and takes him as her lover for a year before allowing him to return home to his wife. In Georges Bizet’s opera, Carmen, hapless soldier Don Jose sacrifices everything, including his childhood sweetheart and his station in the military, to win the heart of a beautiful gypsy, Carmen—only to lose her to another man in the end. These are just a few examples of many femme fatales depicted in the arts.

If you are lucky to call a beautiful, attractive woman your spouse you might want to think again because projected marital happiness tends to get lower.

"As such, both men and attractive women stand to mutually benefit economically and socially from this partnering. However, given that attractive women facilitate their attainment of such a partnering through an attribute that is perceived as resulting from luck as opposed to work ethic, they could become the targets of others’ condemnation (Gee et al. 2017). Notably, Bar-Tal and Saxe (1976) discovered that raters’ evaluations of men were bolstered in most ways when their spouses were more attractive—except for projected marital happiness, which was lower. This is in alignment with our theorizing, and it suggests that although men enjoy status enhancements through their romantic couplings with attractive women, they may also be perceived as likely victims of their spouses’ manipulation or infidelity."

Be that as it may. They conclude with the

General Discussion 

In the current research, we report the results of six experiments, which are suggestive of a tendency for individuals to perceive attractive women as less truthful than their less attractive counterparts. We label this the femme fatale effect. Specifically, we demonstrated that attractiveness predicted lower perceptions of truthfulness for women, but not men, when delivering news of an organizational change (Studies 1, 2, and 3). We revealed the limitations of the traditional lack-of-fit explanation by demonstrating that this effect persisted when the attractive female target was depicted in a stereotypically feminine role (Study 2), in a feminine industry (Study 3), and when delivering either positive or negative news (Study 4). We also provided support for our suggestion that the femme fatale effect is rooted in sexual insecurity by demonstrating that the effect was eliminated when participants were primed to feel sexually—but not generally—secure (Studies 5 and 6). Finally, we demonstrated that perceptions of situation-specific truthfulness positively predicted the broader construct of interpersonal trust (Study 5) and negatively predicted perceived deservingness of termination (Study 6). 

Taken together, these results suggest that attractive women are penalized in terms of their perceived truthfulness relative to non-attractive women and that this could have detrimental consequences for them in terms of employment security and whether their leadership is trusted by followers. This penalization of attractive women happened regardless of whether they were delivering positive or negative news and regardless of whether the context was masculine or feminine. When primed to feel sexually secure as opposed to generally secure (Study 5) or sexually insecure (Study 6), the femme fatale effect was eliminated, supporting our theoretical assertion that this effect is at least partially rooted in sexual insecurity.

Beautiful but less truthful. Damn it!

We conducted the current research to contribute to and broaden our understanding of how physical attractiveness influences organizationally relevant constructs for women. The findings reported here demonstrate that negative views of attractive women extend beyond the explanatory capability of the lack-of-fit theory. Attractive women are perceived as less truthful than their less attractive counterparts, and this judgment appears to be linked to sexual insecurity. Moreover, our results show that lower truthfulness perceptions translate into lower levels of interpersonal trust and heightened perceptions of deservingness of termination. Although few people might be inclined to feel sympathy for attractive women, these findings reveal a consistent form of discrimination that could negatively impact their careers.