Top Stories - Posted by Amy Hodges-Rice on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 11:10 - 1 Comment 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Facial blemishes hurt chance of landing job
"The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview," says Rice psychology professor Mikki Hebl. (Credit: MIT Center for Biological and Computational Learning lab)
RICE (US) — People with birthmarks, scars, and other facial disfigurements are more likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews, according to a new study.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
The findings by researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston show that interviewers recalled less information about these candidates, which negatively impacted evaluations of the applicants.
“When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, it’s important to remember what they are saying,” says Rice psychology professor Mikki Hebl. “Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.”
Straight from the Source
Hebl co-authored the research paper with University of Houston professor and Rice alum Juan Madera. The findings were published online last month in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
The research, funded by Rice University, included two studies, the first of which involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while their eye activity was tracked. After the interview, they were asked to recall information about the candidate.
“When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth,” Madera says. “We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate’s interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant.”
The second study involved face-to-face interviews between candidates who had a facial birthmark and 38 full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for their current or past staff positions.
Despite the increase in age, experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera says. In fact, the effects of the stigma were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting.
“It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma,” Madera adds.
Both Hebl and Madera hope the research will raise awareness about this form of workplace discrimination.
“The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview,” Hebl says. “There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further, showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.”
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so, if you’re interviewing a stunner, you would also remember less about her interview since you are consumed by her gorgeous blue eyes or smoky eye shadow, right??