Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

emerald.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 279 posts

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#11

Post by oh_sigh »

altdataseller wrote: post #4

Does being attractive really help you in getting hired in engineering positions? I would understand client-facing/sales jobs, but unsure it would help in engineering roles

I don't think it is a bad question to ask. In fact, there might even be negative biases against attractiveness for engineers. Will a dude with cheeto dust on his star wars t-shirt give a fair shake to a good looking woman who is wearing business attire and makeup, compared to another dude in a t-shirt?

Let's do a test. Who would you imagine is the better engineer of these two old timey people?

https://i.imgur.com/omRXYde.png

and

https://i.imgur.com/3QDIkme.png

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#12

Post by mdoms »

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants

It's a gross thing to consider but I wonder if the filter lightened the skin of black female applicants. These results are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#13

Post by daenz »

>Both male and female applicants whose photos were filtered were perceived as more competent

A tale as old as time. Politicians who are attractive have a huge perception advantage. And political campaigns that use actors (who are almost by definition attractive) appeal to these same competence biases.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#14

Post by ErikVandeWater »

mdoms wrote: post #12

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants It's a gross thing to consider but I wonder if the filter lightened the skin of black female applicants. These results are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.

I wonder if in predominantly black countries, darkening the skin tones of white applicants would be considered beautifying.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#15

Post by version_five »

oh_sigh wrote: post #11
altdataseller wrote: post #4

Does being attractive really help you in getting hired in engineering positions? I would understand client-facing/sales jobs, but unsure it would help in engineering roles

I don't think it is a bad question to ask. In fact, there might even be negative biases against attractiveness for engineers. Will a dude with cheeto dust on his star wars t-shirt give a fair shake to a good looking woman who is wearing business attire and makeup, compared to another dude in a t-shirt? Let's do a test. Who would you imagine is the better engineer of these two old timey people? https://i.imgur.com/omR…

There is definitely (well, anecdotally) negative bias against "well put together" attractive engineers. Picture a software engineer, male or female, chances are your stereotype isn't a glamorous person in a flashy suit with an expensive haircut and grooming. And if you saw someone like that, you'd be suspicious of their technical ability. It's a sterotype, but it's not all that weird.

I don't think it's necessarily about being attractive with all else being equal, it's more about the level of effort in one's appearance. Once that is accounted for, it's probably likely there is some of the usual bias towards better looking people.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#16

Post by projektfu »

When I was in England for a short time I was tasked with screening candidates for employment (software engineers). As an American, I was taken aback by most of the resumes including photos. That's just not done here in the US. Some American HR departments might even send back your resume and ask you to resubmit it without a photo. It seems to be standard practice in Europe, perhaps to convince you that the person interviewing is the person associated with the resume.

Of course, attractiveness factors in highly once you get your foot in the door, even if people try to act like it doesn't. Even straight male engineers seem to think more highly of attractive male engineers, just because of the "coolness" factor they may bring. There's really just not a lot of information gleaned from an interview beyond whether the person has the basic minimum knowledge for the field they are in, and these soft things take an outsize portion of the score.

Things may be changing or may be different in big orgs, I don't know. I was only familiar with SME hiring.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#18

Post by BoorishBears »

mdoms wrote: post #12

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants It's a gross thing to consider but I wonder if the filter lightened the skin of black female applicants. These results are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.

I remember stumbling across a "beauty rating" site that had an ML model trained to rate photos on beauty.

At the risk of sounding conceited, when it gave me (black male) a bad score, I knew something had to be wrong. I went and searched for photos of famous black males generally accepted as attractive and noticed it also gave them poor scores.

That gave me a hunch about what was going on, and lo and behold: taking the same exact photos, but processed to black and white and brightened, resulted in extremely high scores.

The model was essentially measuring how light your skin is.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#19

Post by dwater »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #14
mdoms wrote: post #12

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants It's a gross thing to consider but I wonder if the filter lightened the skin of black female applicants. These results are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.

I wonder if in predominantly black countries, darkening the skin tones of white applicants would be considered beautifying.

Generally, European colonizers imported their anti-dark skin biases (colourism) to their African colonies and they persist to this day among the black populations.

https://www.e-ir.info/2020/04/11/critical-reflections-on-eth...

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#20

Post by joshgachnang »

Natsu wrote: post #7
space_fountain wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a baked in assumption that hiring is fair. Because you might think that when interacting with clients it makes sense to hire based on looks or at least implicitly it sounds like that's what you're thinking. But we have lots of biases that don't actually make sense. Thinking good looking people are somehow better seems totally likely to be one. And, in fact, this study says is a bias

The study is kind of weird, because that's simply not how things are conducted during hiring: nobody puts their picture on their resume. I think some other countries do, but the norms are decidedly against that in the USA, probably to avoid biases like this.

But it is very common to go search out someone's LinkedIn, which does have a profile picture.
Post reply on HN