We report the findings of a meta-analytic review of experimental studies concerned with the biasing effect of physical attractiveness on a variety of job-related outcomes. In support of implicit personality theory, attractive individuals were found to fare better than unattractive individuals in terms of a number of such outcomes. The weighted mean effect size, d, was .37 for all studies. In addition, tests for moderating effects showed that (a) the attractiveness bias did not differ between studies that provided low versus high amounts of job-relevant information about the targets, (b) the same bias was greater for within-subjects research designs than for between-subjects designs, (c) professionals were as susceptible to the bias as were college students, (d) attractiveness was as important for men as for women, and (e) the biasing effect of attractiveness has decreased in recent years. Implications of these findings are considered.Over the past few decades, numerous individual studies and several meta-analytic reviews have shown that physical attractiveness is important in the U.S. More specifically, the same studies have demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between physical attractiveness (referred to hereinafter as attractiveness) and a host of outcomes. For example, attractiveness has been shown to influence, among other variables, initial impressions (We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Meymi Hosoda,
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