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

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

#111

Post by BoorishBears »

tempnow987 wrote: post #65
BoorishBears wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

There are some studies I believe that show even attractive african american women can have trouble with low click through / match / rating on dating sites. So if the model was trained on who folks wanted to date (as a measure of attractiveness) the model could still be somewhat accurate, even though not accurately measuring attractiveness. How would models work on rating who would be a good NBA player / runner etc. I…

Are you missing the part where the model gave two scores for the same picture based on extreme desaturation?

Terrible pictures don't make you more attractive on dating sites...

It's just a bad model. There's bound to be bias in the model but ML 101 would be randomize saturation and hue on your training set

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

#112

Post by mrshadowgoose »

nostromo wrote: post #81
projektfu wrote: post #16

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 int…

There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. I don't know why these forms of identity are almost entirely ignored, while we obsess over others. Imagine if tech companies published the height, weight, and facial symmetry of their workforces, like…

I've always been amazed at the hypocrisy of all of this. A portion of attractiveness is culture-invariant, and quantifiable based on measurable factors such as facial symmetry. Study after study have demonstrated that humans innately treat attractive individuals better than others.

Yet we obsess over skin colour and genitalia, without a single peep about the physical appearance discrimination that most humans take part in.

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

#113

Post by alimov »

projektfu wrote: post #16

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 int…

That’s an interesting practice… I’m glad this is not the case in the states, aside from maybe applying for acting roles. I don’t know if it’s common practice nowadays but I remember there was a period of time when employers would request your social media profiles.. did they encourage something similar in England? Im asking because if they already encouraged photo submissions, this seems like a related piece of information they might have also liked to receive. To be honest I don’t know why they would want an SWE candidates photo in the first place, it’s not a PR heavy role… maybe they want to use A.I to measure a level of greasiness or the size of a candidates head (kidding!)

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

#114

Post by leereeves »

dragonwriter wrote: post #108
leereeves wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every group that is now protected was once not protected. Were, say, the actions taken against Alan Turing acceptable simply because they were legal at the time? I must say, I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice. From what I've read of your posts here over the years, I thought you were against such things.

> Were, say, the actions taken against Alan Turing acceptable simply because they were legal at the time Kind of an odd example to use to defend that “protected classes make people think other discrimination is acceptable” argument, since protected classes didn't exist then and people thought that discrimination was perfectly acceptable. > I must say, I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice. I must say, I’m surp…

> I must say, I’m surprised you think I am defending prejudice.

You are literally arguing in favor of the idea that "it's ok to discriminate against anyone who isn't protected".

Prejudice is still prejudice even if the particular characteristic on which that prejudice is based isn't protected (yet...).

> Kind of an odd example to use to defend ...

I'm not using that example to defend my statement, I'm using it to discredit the idea that the law can be used as a basis or guide for morality.

Edit to add: Feel free to have the last word. I can't respond at the moment because I'm "posting too fast", even though I'm posting less often than some others here...

I will say simply that the point is to oppose discrimination against a marginalized group. I don't understand your confusion about that.

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

#115

Post by lotsofpulp »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #105
daenz wrote: post #13

>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.

Haha. Yet somehow we get old wrinkly people running the country.

Being incumbent might be more advantageous than being attractive. You would have to test non incumbent more attractive vs non incumbent less attractive.

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

#116

Post by noirbot »

dijonman2 wrote: post #57
sjhuang26 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the "polish" of the resume is a signal for "professionalism and attention to detail." But I worry that the professionalism of the resume is a signal mostly for wealth and social status, factors which should be ignored in the hiring process. So I think that unless the resume is atrociously formatted, its "polish" should be ignored. I read an article on LinkedIn [1] touching on a similar issue. The ideal resume…

> But I worry that the professionalism of the resume is a signal mostly for wealth and social status What?

It's just generally easier to do more things well/professionally when you're well off and have the time to work on it or hire someone to do it.

It's similar to the issues with standardized testing in schools. If your parents are wealthy and able to get you better test prep or tutoring, you'll do better on the test, and likely be actually more academically successful aside from it. It doesn't mean that one should totally ignore that signal, but it does confound it if you're trying to be fair about things in a more holistic sense.

I think of it in tech as being acutely similar to folks who complain about recruiters who care a lot about your side projects or OSS contributions. If you're rich and successful, you have more time for those sorts of things than someone who's less well off and taking care of their family or such outside of work. That doesn't mean that someone who maintains a major OSS project isn't likely a good engineer, but that you should understand that not everyone who is a good engineer can casually do a second job on the side.

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

#117

Post by erosenbe0 »

elptacek wrote: post #52

And there it is, the one thing I can never have an honest conversation about. The rules are different for ugly people, based on my personal experience as one data point. We're the last lot that everyone can discriminate against, or abuse, and get away with it.

Heartbreaking to be discriminated against as a result of largely immutable characteristics but there are other groups abused with impunity as well. For example, unintelligent people who are not obviously disabled. Or people with speech defects that are not readily considered disabilities. Even people with acne, rosacea, or eczema -- which is a medical issue and protected to some extent.

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

#118

Post by Jensson »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
RachelF wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Height as well. We instinctively think tall people make better leaders.

Tall people tend to be more relaxed in leadership roles, because they feel less of a need to prove themselves.

Maybe they actually have more need to prove themselves since short peoples leadership gets challenged much more often? Why else would they feel greater need to prove themselves? It isn't like short peoples brains are wired differently.

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

#119

Post by leereeves »

drekk wrote: post #110
leereeves wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every group that is now protected was once not protected. Were, say, the actions taken against Alan Turing acceptable simply because they were legal at the time? I must say, I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice. From what I've read of your posts here over the years, I thought you were against such things.

Kind of a reach to claim the poster is defending prejudice. Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being gay. Society finding you conventionally unattractive and thus passing you over for a promotion at work isn't exactly the same thing. People are discriminated against for lots of reasons, many subconscious, but protected categories didn't emerge from a vacuum. The reason being queer is protected whereas being sho…

Well, competent legal representation wouldn't have been much help if you hadn't had some favorable law to call upon, so I suspect you may be wrong that "being in a protected category has never really helped me avoid discrimination".

As for the first part of your comment, I'd just like to ask: what is up with disadvantaged groups fighting one another about who's more disadvantaged?

I do agree about poverty; that's a big disadvantage and is often itself the foundation of another prejudice. That's another group that the law fails to protect.

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

#120

Post by burnished »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #112
nostromo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. I don't know why these forms of identity are almost entirely ignored, while we obsess over others. Imagine if tech companies published the height, weight, and facial symmetry of their workforces, like…

I've always been amazed at the hypocrisy of all of this. A portion of attractiveness is culture-invariant, and quantifiable based on measurable factors such as facial symmetry. Study after study have demonstrated that humans innately treat attractive individuals better than others. Yet we obsess over skin colour and genitalia, without a single peep about the physical appearance discrimination that most humans take pa…

Because that starts to verge on telling you who to find fuckable instead of who to treat as a peer. Plus the level of baggage is completely different. I'm surprised at your surprise.
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