Ask HN: How influential can physical appearance be in professional environments?

Coming to grips with the hidden influence of my own physicality has been a long term struggle for me. I realised over a long time that the fact that I was over six foot, male, white, bearded, broad and articulate meant that people inherently saw me as significantly more capable and tended to defer to me in a multitued of situations. This wasn&#x27;t something that naturally gelled with the way I viewed my own competencies, but it&#x27;s also really, really, really hard to get people to stop doing. Basically I have a significant &#x27;self discrepancy gap&#x27;[0] between &#x27;Own Actual&#x27; and &#x27;Other Actual&#x27; that I constantly need to work at. Years of experience have taught me that these kind of gaps are pretty common in our industry.<p>Yes it exists and think it&#x27;s incredibly important for people to be aware of the power of their own physicality and not to abuse it.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Self-discrepancy_theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Self-discrepancy_theory</a>

Very - you can predict success to some extent based purely on people&#x27;s yearbook photos:<p>&gt; Here the authors find that inferences of power from photos of the faces of the managing partners of America’s top 100 law firms significantly corresponded to their success as leaders, as measured by the amounts of profits that their firms earned. More interesting, this relationship was also observed when judgments were made based on photos of the leaders taken from their undergraduate yearbooks, before they began their careers or entered law school. Facial cues to success may therefore be consistent across much of the lifespan (approximately 20–50 years).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;258189428_Judgments_of_Power_From_College_Yearbook_Photos_and_Later_Career_Success" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;258189428_Judgments...</a><p>There is also - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Halo_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Halo_effect</a> - which is different from the above but obviously related.

I once worked with a short, over weight white guy, late 30 or early 40 who moved into a client facing role. It was a disaster. Although he dressed well, he had the body type that clothes just didn’t fit him well. He would always look disheveled and frumpy, his shirts would not stay tucked in. He was very capable but the (east coast) business bros at the client would not take him seriously and openly mocked him. He went back to a technical role.<p>It was sad and I learned a lot about human nature from witnessing it.

It&#x27;s probably controversial to say, because we _want_ to be better than just animals, but the hard truth is that we are still animalistic in every sense and physical appearance plays a fundamental role in absolutely everything in life.<p>Being good looking, tall and physically fit is the biggest privilege in life. You don&#x27;t need to be Jeff Bezos rich, if you look good you can pick and choose partners as and when you wish. You can live out some of your craziest fantasies because women&#x2F;men will do things which they wouldn&#x27;t do in normal circumstances. Married people will cheat because they want a taste of you, people will be extremely inviting to you even they don&#x27;t know you, people will give you the benefit of trust, they will be extra friendly, at Christmas parties people will seek conversations with you which will increase your social score at work and help with promotions because popular people are more likely to get given extra opportunities and responsibilities and so forth. In short, if you are good looking you will be able to experience things in life which so many people will never even dream of. Things that you&#x27;d think only happen to filthy rich people or in movies will all of a sudden happen to you even when you didn&#x27;t look for it. Doors just open and you will be able to either say yes or no to those chances in life.<p>I am not saying it is good, as mentioned, we try to be better than this, but the facts speak against it.<p>This was posted on HN a while ago and I really enjoyed this read:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@sfard&#x2F;the-greatest-privilege-we-hardly-talk-about-beauty-7db3f70c1116" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@sfard&#x2F;the-greatest-privilege-we-hardly-t...</a>

Pretty people get undeserved favor form basically everyone.<p>Presentation has a lot of power. We&#x27;re all shallower than we&#x27;d like.<p>You can game this with little effort. Dress well, maintain a good haircut and pretend to be confident.

Good looking people have always an edge. Tall people always appear more competent than their shorter colleagues.<p>These are biases. They can be overriden by the experiences of people in a community quite easily, but towards unfamiliar people these biases can be quite strong.

It matters. If you are tall and good looking, it helps.<p>BUT…<p>Amongst the vast majority of the most capable, successful, and broadly well-respected people I have worked with, their status has had little to do with their beauty. I am thinking of folks that are not “attractive” in any conventional sense, yet their wits and competence and heart makes them so.<p>In certain professions, the effect of beauty is outsized. I hardly need name these; look for shallow aesthetes and cameras. In technical professions that value actual competence, I have found that it doesn’t matter (much.)

I have a classic British accent. When I started teaching in foreign universities, I found that in meetings people would stop and listen to what I was saying… even defer to me. In the UK, I was just another Brit, is a sea of Brits, and thusly ignored.

Yes, in good and bad ways.<p>I&#x27;ve witnessed very competent and attractive female colleagues get discredited for their appearance, every comment implying that they fucked their way up to their position, or being unable to be close friends with any male coworker for the same reason.<p>But all in all dressing appropriately to your body, being clean and well groomed is a positive for everyone.

There is some evidence that if there was any single physical characteristic that <i>seems</i> to be positive it is tallness.<p>However, there are obviously many possible arguments on subtle cause&#x2F;effects with correlated characteristics etc.<p>I provide no references, but plenty exist if you search.

Not an answer to your question per-say but I believe there is a strong correlation. Anecdotally I&#x27;ve seen traditionally good looking people get promoted far more often even for technical non-sales roles.<p>I&#x27;ve actually become a little obsessed with this idea (stopping shy of being unhealthy).<p>To the point where I lost 25 lbs (through diet and exercise over 6 months), wear nicer cloths (even on Zoom meetings), and whiten my teeth. And it may be a placebo effect. It may just be increased confidence. But I think I&#x27;ve seen results from it.<p>I&#x27;m lucky I have a starting point that was already good (but not great) by US societal standards (I&#x27;m average height, male, was only slightly overweight, in good health, and my body responds well to exercise for someone almost hitting 40). But some people may not be lucky.<p>Edit: For context, I&#x27;m a technical founder (CxO). I think the effect may be more limited if you are, say, a junior software developer where technical and soft skills may be enough to differentiate you and run you up the ladder. But at the very competitive higher levels it often boils down to who they board&#x2F;execs&#x2F;principals&#x2F;investors like more. And looks, unfortunately, play a role.

Being in shape is an honest and almost unfakable signal of work and personal discipline, which has knock on effects to your credibility in any discussion.<p>It may be worth asking what the quality of the assumption that we don&#x27;t have control over our appearance is. Consider someone who just doesn&#x27;t take care of themselves, and what beliefs and choices their consequent appearance is the effect of. There is a contra- effect as well, where in some environments, being physically repulsive is a signal of power. Government and academia spring to mind.<p>In tech we have a natural suspicion of shiny looking sales and marketing people, but when you examine that closely, it&#x27;s because they live and die based on the <i>actual revealed desires</i> of others, where in tech power is independent of desire, and power comes from outsmarting, defeating, and overpowering others intellectually or politically. There is a conflict addiction among &quot;nerds,&quot; where we have to tilt at machines and objects instead of people to get our adrenal hit because other people don&#x27;t really tolerate that aggressive need from others very enthusiastically. Since we prevail based on intellectual domination, we don&#x27;t index on physical appearance as much, but people who prevail based on actual desire necessarily do.<p>In the thousands of co-workers I can remember, I would say the main strategy of people who prevail in discussions, but who have neglected their physical appearance - is disagreeableness. It either originates from some quirk that causes them to miss social cues, or it was learned behaviour where they realized they didn&#x27;t need to make themselves appealing if they were persistent. There is also a cliche about PhD&#x27;s being like this, where a great number have been trained to be weirdly combative based on their recieved authority, while lacking the normal signifiers of success like basic physical fitness, collegiality, benevolence, charisma, wit, charm, and ultimately other people just attribute their uncanny ignobility to their institution.<p>We have tons of data from social media sites, chat apps, and online forums where it would be plausible to rank text-based charisma (pure ideas) and physical attractiveness as judged by an algorithm, and we could find out empirically whether there is a strong correlation, but I don&#x27;t think we need to. Appearance is an evolutionary strategy, and I would say, yes it is very influential because we listen to people based on it because it&#x27;s a signal of how invested they likely are in certain values.

If you are more beautiful (or at the very least more trained) than the person next to you, folks will listen to you more. Your natural looks influence that, but focusing on that won&#x27;t help: You cannot change that. Going to the gym is something you can do.<p>You will not have debates in an organisation. You will have popularity contests. Sometimes those are judged on the merit of what you say, but usually they are judged on how much what you say appeals to the other listeners.

If I consider my own biases, I would consider a fit, well groomed person to be more competent. I believe this bias is based on fact that if someone is fit also means he&#x2F;she is disciplined and well groomed is meticulous and these traits would transfer to other aspects of work also. Now, I understand that lot of things like age, genetics, ... make up for some of the signal that I am reading, but that is the nature of biases.

It obviously does.<p>It will be interesting how much of a shift we&#x27;ll see with more work from home. Do the same effects carry over in calls and async communication? Will &quot;more video calls&quot; mean attractiveness plays a larger role? Will doing voice calls weaken that (or focus it on the voice alone)?

Height:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.premiumtimesng.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;naija-fashion&#x2F;203429-many-ceos-tall-people-height-matter-bisi-daniels.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.premiumtimesng.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;naija-fashion&#x2F;2...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economictimes.indiatimes.com&#x2F;the-necktie-syndrome-why-ceos-tend-to-be-significantly-taller-than-the-average-male&#x2F;articleshow&#x2F;10178115.cms?from=mdr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economictimes.indiatimes.com&#x2F;the-necktie-syndrome-wh...</a><p>Attractiveness:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;study-ugly-men-tougher-time-raising-venture-capital&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;study-ugly-men-tougher-time-ra...</a>

Absolutely, in a major way. There are piles of studies showing all kinds of pay discrimination based on physical characteristics. The meritocracy is bullshit. People hire tall sexy people. You really think the workplace is all that different from Tinder?

I believe this is a subject that is not talked about enough. First because of a) If you haven&#x27;t experienced it or paid close attention it will go over your head and b) People don&#x27;t like to openly talk about &#x27;pretty privilege&#x27; because they think the mere act of talking about it will inherently catalogue them as &#x27;ugly&#x27;.<p>I have firsthand experience on this since I grew up with a brother who is objectively hot, and of course hotter than me. And Im not talking &#x27;yea hot&#x27; im talking &#x27;way better looking than models&#x27; hot, we literally couldn&#x27;t go anywhere without a girl approaching one way or another, and thats crazy to say about a guy.<p>Since a young age i realized our social interactions always tended to gravitate towards him, and understood as I was already seeing, he was going to get better opportunities, and would have to work way less for the same objectives. What I did was I started taking advantage of it. p.e, when we were younger i used to bring him to work with me wherever I was working, cause I knew the reactions he provoked on people. So whenever we worked at the same place I never got fired bc usually the manager was either in love with him if it was a girl, or wanted to be friends with him if it was a guy. I admit it was funny seeing the same reactions on people every single time they met him, and their behavioral changes towards me, and thats just a small example.<p>What im saying is life is mostly unfair. The best we can do is work with the cards we&#x27;re dealt towards the best we can do.

I&#x27;d say that physical appearance affects yes, and I&#x27;d add that your name is also part of that physical appearance impact.<p>If you have a commonly accepted name (like &quot;John&quot;), your life will not be hard nor easy. If your name is a mixup of your parents name or something just invented on the spot, you&#x27;ll life will be harder. You may ease it up by adding a nickname.<p>If your name is not a common one, but accepted in previous generations (like &quot;Anastasius&quot; or &quot;Manfred&quot;, &quot;Vincent&quot;, etc.) it&#x27;ll be seen as a bold choice by your parents and impact positively your life.

As much as everywhere else, everyone will tell you it doesn&#x27;t matter but we&#x27;re all biased in a way or another

Here it is asked whether appearance makes any difference in professional setting, but comments seem to be diverged from the question. Young people seem to exaggerate the role of their appearance, it might make a slight difference when you first trying to find a job, but after that all that is left is your experience and talent. I can&#x27;t imagine getting fired for being ugly or landing (and then staying at) a job for being attractive.

One attribute that I haven&#x27;t seen mentioned yet is voice. A man with a deep voice absolutely will get more attention than their peers, while a high and&#x2F;or nasal voice (male or female) can be a significant handicap. A bit of training can help, but to a large extent these are innate and immutable characteristics that can effect career (and romantic) trajectories.

Out of all the above adjectives, the ones that are &quot;actionable&quot; are skinny&#x2F;strong and fat&#x2F;fit.<p>I made an effort to improve in those areas and I feel the results.<p>Simple things like people looking away if you look back at them, abusive bosses shouting at my colleagues but never at me, or reining in a couple of misbehaving 8 year olds with a determined look.

It&#x27;s probably just me (I&#x27;m probably neurodivergent in some way) but in discussions like this people keep using the word &quot;attractive&quot; and I honestly have no idea what they mean by that word.<p>If you showed me two photographs of people and asked me which looks more &quot;intelligent&quot;, which looks more &quot;wise&quot;, which looks more &quot;honest&quot;, which looks more &quot;friendly&quot;, which looks more &quot;approachable&quot;, or dozens of questions like that, I could have a go at answering the question. But if you asked me which looks more &quot;attractive&quot; I would have no idea how to answer.<p>Would I understand the question if it were phrased differently, or is the concept itself something that I have for some reason never acquired?<p>Does anyone else have this problem, or is it really just me?<p>(Sorry if this is a little bit off-topic: of course the original question doesn&#x27;t use the word &quot;attractive&quot;.)

I&#x27;m kinda glad to read these comments, because they mostly align with my perception. The popular opinion among my circle of friends and relatives is that appearance doesn&#x27;t matter for men: it is all hard-work and grind. It is exhausting to make people see that all else being equal, physicality play a non negligible role.

On average and in statistics - absolutely. The effect has been measured by numerous studies. But studies use large numbers and actively try to eliminate other factors, which is why I would caution against using this on a personal level to try to explain certain outcomes. Remember this thing about statistics: on average Bill Gates and any one of us are billionaires.<p>I think a lot of people are using studies like this to justify some shortcomings in their life when you can easily look around the people you know and see hugely varied outcomes regardless of looks. And good looks can be a career trap too, especially if you actively rely on them.<p>And one more thing: by far one of the most important physical appearance factors is youth. Which goes away for the best looking. And it also clearly shows the importance of other factors as we don&#x27;t have a world full of 22 year old CEOs.

Throw into that list, the way you talk, the set of vocabulary you use, the clothes you wear, your Cultural Capital.

I&#x27;m sure it has a role, alongside other features such as charisma and confidence.<p>Of course the effect is subjective and varied, but oftentimes I&#x27;ve found that people that claim a decision being down to appearance to be those that blame their computer when their code doesn&#x27;t run :)

Short answer: Yes<p>Long answer : people with better physical appearance are generally more successful, leaving all other conditions similar.<p>Bottomline: part of career growth planning should focus on improving physical appearance. Join gym, eat right, get timely haircut etc.

There&#x27;s only so much you can do about being tall and good looking. Even losing weight is extremely difficult for some people.<p>You should focus on the things you can influence easily, i.e. clothes (including shoes), grooming, manners, ...

I&#x27;m in my late twenties but look about four years younger, I&#x27;m in good shape but I&#x27;m also bald and have supposedly a &quot;weird&quot; face. I&#x27;m sure if I was forced to go back to an in-office environment I&#x27;d encounter progress issues because of my appearance.<p>While at FAANG I actually started to wear makeup to mask the dark circles I naturally have under my eyes - for better or for worse I also have an expensive skincare routine now.<p>Undeniably I look weird - I really worry about this going into the future.

Beside all those mentioned, I&#x27;ve seen people with loud and sharp (not high pitch sort of) voice getting an edge (sometimes unfair advantage) in many professional settings.

All things been equal (which they never are) then physical attractiveness is probably a slight benefit to the attractive person.<p>Similar to the statistical correlation with tallness (though again whether that&#x27;s a matter of taller than average people doing well because they are taller or because physical height is correlated with better diet&#x2F;socio-economic group as a child etc).<p>This stuff is always so blurry because of confounding factors and inability to control for other factors.

Last year a few months after confinment I went on vacation and while I was having a break in a too expensive restaurant in the Geneve airport something weird was going on but I couldn&#x27;t tell what. An hour later it hit me, all these people around me were good looking and outright elegant. Most of them were doing business.<p>A lot of studies shows that indeed good looking people does have better odds in the traditional success game.

open a twitter account as someone working in tech, with a photo of a cute girl and watching your following number skyrocket.

Gives me a chance to reference the best Harvard Business Review title ever:<p>How Earlobes Can Signify Leadership Potential (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2011&#x2F;11&#x2F;how-earlobes-can-signify-leadership-potential" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2011&#x2F;11&#x2F;how-earlobes-can-signify-leadership-...</a>)

This is just one single study - I would prefer a meta analysis, if anyone has one - but it&#x27;s worth sharing nonetheless.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.journals.uchicago.edu&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1086&#x2F;715141" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.journals.uchicago.edu&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1086&#x2F;715141</a>

Not exactly where you were going with this, but yes, absolutely: the way you present and thus perceive yourself absolutely affects how you behave, which in turn affects your performance, as well as how others see you.

Sexism and racism....are huge areas of concern...whereas tall men and good looking people are treated much better than short men and ugly people...our morality, in the West, is inconsistent and arbitary..

Well, tangentially related and I don&#x27;t know enough of the topic (I haven&#x27;t delved into it yet) but &quot;pretty privilege&quot; is a thing.<p>Here are a couple of seed links for further investigation (I have no clue about their quality):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=pretty+privilege+" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=pretty+privileg...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeunlimited" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeun...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeunlimited" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeun...</a><p>--<p>I have some ideas, anecdotes and personal experiences on the topic (as I&#x27;m traveling a lot as a digital nomad and I tend to talk to people wherever&#x2F;whenever since I solo travel).<p>I&#x27;m sorry that I can&#x27;t make this comment razor sharp (also in brevity, it&#x27;s tough to do). The reason I&#x27;m sorry for that is because I know that this is a sensitive topic and I might step on some toes. I don&#x27;t intend to, but it might be a bit inevitable. Some people might think that speaking from personal experience is not enough. And yes, it&#x27;s definitely biased, but I am noticing I am learning a lot more about European&#x2F;western society (as a Dutch person even) than I was in the past 10 years simply because I talk to a lot of people.<p>I&#x27;m currently traveling a lot and in daily life I see a huge difference to how people treat you when attractive. In The Netherlands I&#x27;m at best average in attractiveness (I&#x27;ve asked for brutal feedback from multiple people, and I&#x27;m averaging 6 out of 10). However, in other countries I&#x27;m seen as slightly more attractive because I&#x27;m about 190 cm, which is 6.23 feet&#x2F;inches (whatever you Americans use). Dutch people are one of the tallest if not <i>the tallest</i> in the world. So I&#x27;m more common there. Already in Germany, I&#x27;m seen as more attractive due to my &quot;language skills&quot; (Dutch people speak better English than Germans, on average, I definitely do; combined with some conversational German&#x2F;Italian and some basic French). And I do notice the difference. And I&#x27;m beginning to get a hunch that in Southern Europe I&#x27;m even seen as more attractive since they&#x27;re a lot shorter on average.<p>All of this is based on how I interact with women. I&#x27;ve noticed that men don&#x27;t really act that differently around me. I&#x27;ve been in Lisbon and Berlin recently and met all kinds of people. But yea, I&#x27;m seeing my own &quot;pretty privilege&quot; (however marginal) in the dating market. People treat me differently whereas I stay the same.<p>And I&#x27;m definitely hearing stories of how very stereotypically attractive women are getting whatever they want (even if they don&#x27;t want it). I&#x27;m also hearing how stereotypically attractive women are more prone to having experienced sexual violence. So if you think they have it easy: I&#x27;m not going to compare, I&#x27;m not going to judge. I know too little, but what I do see is that less stereotypical attractive women <i>seem</i> to talk less about having experienced sexual violence (again, I might be biased, my sample might be biased, something else might be off - it&#x27;s just my personal experience and it does beg the question to formulate a hypothesis and investigate if one would be an academic feminist&#x2F;psychologist, provided there is no research on it).<p>But looks influence stuff in daily life so hard that it must have a strong effect in corporate culture as well. This is especially the case since men are the assertive sex when it comes to the mating game, and men are holding more economic&#x2F;political power than women.<p>Humans are not robots. We can&#x27;t keep our emotions fully hidden or suppressed. Biases will leak out, whether we&#x27;re aware of them or not. So logically speaking, yes, it will have some effect. A more interesting question would be more: how much of an effect? Will it have more of an effect for women? If you have a female boss&#x2F;male subordinate will it have more of an effect (if the male is attractive)? There are a lot of variables here that might influence the strength of the effect.<p>With that said, I&#x27;ve also experienced how much pure &quot;inner beauty&quot; can do, from both my side and other men&#x2F;women. It can do a whole lot, especially when presented with positivity and optimism. My experience is that a lot of charisma can be trained. Like, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll ever be <i>wildly</i> charismatic. But compared to my untrained self, I&#x27;m an order to two order of magnitudes better, and it has definitely helped me to make my inner world more relatable to other people. Knowing how you present yourself in a: 1 on 1 conversation, group conversation and presentation... It&#x27;s important and has little to do with personality and looks (other than that the personality and looks need to be incorporated with how to present yourself, but in all look&#x2F;personality variations - communication skills in being relatable and pleasant to be around with is a skill - even the most hardcore pessimist can be relatable and pleasant to be around with by using his&#x2F;her pessimism as very creative playful humor, for example).

It&#x27;s no different than high school is the sad reality

I do believe that yes

<i>deleted</i>