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Physical Appearance: How it Affect us in our lives
By: Kadija Chenekan
When we look back to History there are many mentions of how appearance plays animportant role in our life. We as a people tend to be more acceptable of other people who look acertain way. Human beings appreciate beauty, we love what is beautiful and tend to be judgmental or critical about unattractive things, be they people or objects. In our Society today,physical attributes tend to be more important than other attributes that makes the character of aperson. In the articles
 
“Beware of the Halo and Horns Effects”
by Nagesh Belludi
 ,
“Beautiful Women
Face Discrimination in Certain Jobs
”, and
“Why looks are the last bastion of discrimination”
byDeborah L. Rhode, The authors discuss how physical appearance affect people today in life. Inour lives today, people are judged more favorably if they are physically attractive, they tend to beaccepted faster than an unattractive person and they are appreciatively looked upon when in acompetition for a job, or any other situation.In the article
 Beware of the Halo and Horns Effects
by Nagesh Belludi, he argues that people basetheir judgment on how a person looks physically and what they perceive to be true of that person. One reasonwhy Belludi believes this is because of a study done by Professor Emily Pronin of Princeton University. Thisstudy shows how Participants chose to invest more money in a candidate that was dressed in a suit and has adegree from Cornell University rather than the same candidate dressed in casual clothing but with a degree from
a “nondescript college”. According to Belludi this is because of 
the Halo and Devil effect. The Halo effect
isthe concept by which a person who is judged positively on one aspect is automatically judged
 positively on several other aspects without much evidence.”
For example, Charismatic peopletend to move up faster the corporate ladder regardless of their skills and experience. This shows
 
that despite the fact that some people may be more qualified for the job, they are overlookedbecause of their unattractive physical appearance.In the Article
“Beautiful Women face
 
 Discrimination in Certain Jobs”
published in theScience Daily we learn that sometimes attractive physical attributes is detrimental to women incertain jobs. This pertains to Women who are in a male dominated career. According to a studyby Stephanie Johnson an assistant professor of Management at UC Denver Business School,
Attractive women were discriminated against when applying for jobs considered "masculine"
and for which appearance was not seen as important to the job.” Despite
this rare occurrence,physical appearance is always considered first.On the other hand the Devil Effect is
“the concept by which a person who is judged
negatively on one aspect is automatically judged negatively on several other aspects without
much evidence.”
An example of this is the battle of perception that American car manufactureshas had to deal with. People perceive Japanese cars to be better despite the fact
that they “
useidentical components from the same suppliers and assemble their cars using identical
manufacturing processes.” The concept of the “devil effect” is emphasized in the Article
“Beautiful Women face Discrimination in Certain Jobs”
where Women are judged asincompetent for male oriented jobs because of their attractive appearance. Throughout his article,Belludi emphasizes the importance of appearance, how perception especially the perception of physical appearance, or outgoing personality, or the impression with which people see us playsan important role in our lives. The idea that people are susceptible to the physical aspects of aperson is much more prevalent. People judge and have been known to distinguish individualswho are more attractive against those who are not.
 
In the article
“Why looks are the last bastion of discriminat 
ion
” by Deborah Rhode,
Rhode shows us how people are being discriminated against because of their appearance, howthey look physically
instead of their ability to do their jobs. An example of this is “in
2001,Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor, was denied a franchise by Jazzercise, a
national fitness chain” because Jazzercise’s
 
“image demanded instructors who are "fit" and
"toned." But Portnick was both: She worked out six days a week, taught back-to-back classesand had no shortage of willing students.
” This
stresses the importance of physical attractivenessin our society today and how this was illustrated in the article written by Belludi.Another Example of how Physical attractiveness is important is a study done by Stephen
Ceci and Justin Gunnell at Cornell University. In the study these two researchers “
gave studentscase studies involving real criminal defendants and asked them to come to a verdict and apunishment for each. The students gave unattractive defendants prison sentences that were; onaverage, 22 months longer than those they gave to attractive defendants.
This shows that peopleput a lot of emphasis on physical attractiveness and how it affect us daily in whatever situationwe may find ourselves.When I was in High School, there was an internship available at the American InsuranceGroup (AIG). I was told about it at the last minute. It was the day of the deadline, and I had to be
interviewed but I wasn’
t dressed appropriately. I told my teacher that I was not dressed properlyand he called the interviewer and told him. I was told to come in anyway. I was reallyapprehensive and concerned because of my physical appearance. I put on some make up andwent to the interview. I went in wearing jeans, but I put on a friendly face, smiling, and I wasengaging, and the interviewer told me that he was not expecting me. He said he had formed anegative view of me because of the clothes that I was wearing but that because of my outgoing

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