Attractive businesswomen are seen as less trustworthy, less truthful and fired with more dignity than less attractive women, new research shows. This "femme fatale effect," as the researchers call it, goes beyond a widely accepted statement that attractive women are simply not seen as appropriate in traditionally masculine roles. Rather, the effect takes advantage of more primary feelings of sexual insecurity, jealousy, and fear in both men and women.
The myth of the femme fatale has been around since ancient Greece, when Homer's Odysseus was seduced by the goddess Circe and deprived of his wife and home for a year. Despite decades of feminism and a growing awareness of gender stereotypes, the effect persists.
The researcher:"There are two stereotypes here:you have the stereotype 'what is beautiful is good', which means that generally attractive people should do better in their lives. "It gets more nuanced when we look at gender," she added. “For women, there are certain contexts where they don't seem to take advantage of their beauty.”
The researchers conducted six separate tests to reach their conclusion. They used images from a Google image search for a “professional woman” and had participants rate them on their attractiveness.
In the first four studies, participants were asked to rate the sincerity of women and men announcing layoffs in fictitious news accounts. Regardless of title or industry—executive or the traditionally female public relations professional, the masculine culture of a tech or female hospital—the attractive women were consistently viewed as less sincere than the unattractive women. Because the results were independent of the role of women or industry, the 'best fit' argument failed.
In the fifth study, the researchers used what's called a prime, a suggestion that puts participants in an emotional state that can color their perspective. They asked participants to think about and write about a time when they felt safe in a relationship and confident that their romantic partner was "faithful and committed to them alone." This was called the prime of "sexual safety". A second general security premium made them think and write about a time when they felt very good about themselves.
Those who were ready to feel sexually safe eventually came to believe that attractive women were just as genuine as less attractive women.
The latest study asked whether participants thought the woman should be fired and some participants were primed to feel sexually safe, but others to feel sexually unsafe. As with the fifth study, the sexually protected participants found both attractive and less attractive women to be equally sincere. Participants who were ready to feel sexually unsafe perceived the attractive women as less sincere and therefore deserved more discharge.
The researcher sees both evolutionary and social factors in the results. Evolutionarily, women have used their attractiveness to get mates. They see more attractive women as competition and threats to steal from their partner. Men, for their part, are attracted to attractive women, but worry that their attractiveness could make them unfaithful. Before the recent advent of the paternity test, they risked raising children that were not theirs.
Socially, attractive women can use their appearance to gain benefits in the workplace, whether they deserve it or not. Both men and other women may find this unfair, the researcher said, if not deceptive.
