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Abstract: The goal of the current research is to reveal the role of physical attractiveness in labor market discrimination, with a focus on medium attractive individuals. We describe the "Aphrodite Effect", namely the discrimination of those highly attractive compared to medium attractive people, in the labor market and in other areas of personal and professional development. Based on a secondary analysis on Eurobaromeler no 265/2008 and no 393/2012, the current study shows people's perceptions over the influence of the "Aphrodite Effect" in job recruitment. The data show that discrimination based on people's beauty is perceived as the fifth most important factor in accessing a job, even more important than people's gender (feminine/masculine). The same is valid for Romanian people interviewed in the sample. Furthermore, managers hold the same opinion over the importance of the "Aphrodite Effect* in job selection and their opinions are even stronger than the one of the general audience in this respect. At the end, we suggest some policies to reduce discrimination based on physical attractiveness in a working environment.
Keywords: "Aphrodite Effect", lookism, discrimination based on look, anti-lookism
Introduction
Born from the foam of the sea, the Goddess of Beauty Aphrodite (trans. gr. afros meaning "foam") troubles the routine of daily life by offering advantages to those who are physically attractive and volens nolens disadvantages to those who are less attractive. As Michel de Montaigne wrote, "one man's profit is another man's loss" (1571/1984 : 122) ; so we name "Aphrodite effect" - a form of attractiveness effect - the labor market discrimination against those who are moderately attractive, for the benefit of highly attractive individuals. Note that the current literature addresses the topic of discrimination against less-attractive individuals, but it did not deal with discrimination against the moderatelly attractive, relative to the highly attractive. In the American social-psychological literature, the term lookism is well-known. Generally speaking, lookism is defined as prejudice or discrimination based on people's look (Desir, 2010: 632) and its meaning extends not only to labor market discrimination, but to other social spheres such as marital relationships, political campaigns and elections, friendships, and so on. In the current work, we are focusing on lookism in relation to labor market access and people employability. Based on secondary...