Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry17
No. Anyone who thinks physical appearance is not a major factor with respect to income has never worked in a corporate setting. Applying for jobs out of law school your physical appearance was equivalent to about half a letter grade. If your appearance was really bad then you had no chance -- I remember one student who had an A average and an MBA from a good school and he didn't get placed at a respectable firm because he looked like a troll.
There are plenty of studies that show there is a positive correlation between both height/income and physical attractiveness/income but much easier to just look at people who have top legal and finance jobs and look at their peers at the less prestigious firms and it will be pretty self-evident.
When it comes to entrepreneurship physical appearance is of less importance but still a factor. There will still be junctions where you'll desire something that will be at someone's discretion and people work hard to please the attractive so if you send in two equivalent entrepreneurs with identical businesses and one is attractive and the other isn't the attractive individual has a higher probability of getting a yes than the unattractive individual.
I work in a very corporate setting, and I've worked in probably the most corporate of corporate settings (a Wall Street firm, I wasn't in NY though).
There is a difference between someone appearing sloppy and someone being attractive. I'm assuming people know how to dress correctly in a corporate environment.
I've worked in very stuffy/conservative/corporate enviroments. Attractiveness doesn't help you much, especially the higher up you go. I could maybe see some bias at the lower levels, but it sure doesn't help as you move up.
Also there may be other factors involved in theses studies. People who ARE attractive may have a tendency to have a higher self-confidence, which can translate into a positive personality trait.
I'm not sure where you guys worked, but where I worked, being attractive doesn't help much. People who got promoted were smart/communicated well/high performers. In fact, the higher level people I've seen tend to be on the unattractive side much more often than the attractive side.