Can Cosmetic Surgery Help You Land a Better Job?
Studies show we make snap judgements about people based on their facial features – but cosmetic procedures can change the way we’re perceived
Do you keep getting passed up for promotion? Do you ace interviews but never win the job? It might not be because you’re under qualified; it could simply be the case that your face doesn’t fit.
According to a study conducted by psychology researchers at the University of York in England, first impressions are based on a person’s facial features – and once those ideas are fixed, it can be hard to change them. For example, an employer might make assumptions about your competence and ability based on your face alone. These pre-conceived ideas could hold you back from climbing the career ladder even when you demonstrate good work.
Although there are many different character judgements we can make, they can be boiled down to three main categories – approachability, youthful-attractiveness and dominance.
Approachability and dominance help us decide if someone is a friend or a foe and where we stand in the pecking order next to that individual. Youthful-attractiveness, meanwhile, helps us decide if someone is a good romantic partner or, perhaps, a rival.
These traits can be ‘read’ from a glimpse as brief as 100 milliseconds or less, and brain activity appears to track social traits, such as trustworthiness, even when no explicit evaluation is required, indicating that it is likely outside of conscious control.
They believed the model could accurately predict first impressions and, to put it to the test, produced a set of computer-generated faces and asked more participants to rate them. The ratings matched i.e. a computer-generated ‘unapproachable’ face was indeed rated as unapproachable by the human participants.
