Women wearing heavy makeup are not as likely to become thought of as good leaders, based on new information.
A study led by Dr Christopher Watkins in the University of Abertay in Scotland has revealed that the quantity of makeup a lady wears can have a negative effect on perceptions of her leadership ability.
During the study 168 participants judged 16 ‘before-and-after’ images (each featuring the face of a woman makeup-free and with makeup applied for a “social night out”) on leadership ability.
According towards the study, all of the participants evaluated the ladies more negatively as a leader in the images where they were wearing the makeup than in the pictures where they were makeup-free.
“Regardless from the participant's sex or ethnicity, makeup employed for a social evening out were built with a negative effect on their perceptions of women's leadership ability,” said Dr Watkins.
Dr Watkins said the study contradicts previous studies which suggested that wearing makeup enhances how dominant a lady looks – and for that reason her perceived leadership ability.
The study however only compared makeup-free faces to faces made-up for any “social night out” – what you want for many women could be the mid-point between both looks.
In 2022, the 'Gender and also the returns to attractiveness' paper by Jaclyn Wong, a Ph.D. student in sociology in the University of Chicago, and Andrew Penner, an affiliate professor of sociology in the University of California, found that “physically attractive individuals have higher income than average individuals” which “well-groomed people earned more income than poorly groomed people”.
The paper took it's origin from data and interviews with 14,600 adults tracked throughout the US's National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health from 1994 to 2008.
During the research participants were regularly rated as unattractive, average, attractive or very attractive as well as poorly groomed, average grooming, well groomed or perfectly groomed. This data was then matched along with other information on the participants including their annual incomes.
Wong and Penner concluded “that attractive individuals earn roughly 20 % a lot more than people of average attractiveness, but this gap is reduced when controlling for grooming, suggesting that the beauty premium can be actively cultivated”.
In short, when individuals are equally attractive the well-groomed ones will earn a lot more than their poorly groomed counterparts.
“For both men and women, grooming matters more than attractiveness: Being attractive is not enough; it is doing attractiveness appropriately [being well groomed] that proves one’s deservingness and it is what gets rewarded in the labour market,” the paper said.
