Using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure to examine implicit beauty-bias in the context of employability evaluations

The current research aimed to examine the presence of attractiveness bias in ratings of employability by undergraduate university students using an implicit measure (the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; IRAP) and a number of explicit measures (Interpersonal Judgement Scale, Byrne, 1971; Measures of Interpersonal Attraction, McCroskey & McCain, 1974; and Likert scales). A number of explicit (self-report questionnaires etc.) have shown that attractiveness can be an influencing factor in important human social interactions. Limitations related to self-report measures, however, have been well documented, thus, the use of implicit measures such as the IRAP may extend research findings in this field. In study 1, participants (N=24) were presented with an IRAP consisting of images of individuals of high and low attractiveness alongside the explicit measures and a behavioural task (a Curriculum Vitae choice task between unattractive and attractive individuals). Results revealed statistically significantly higher scores on employability measures for attractive images than for unattractive images, and a significant pro-beauty bias on implicit measures. There was no effect of gender on IRAP D-scores, and a multiple regression revealed no predictive power of the IRAP D-scores for the CV choice of participants. The procedure for Study 2 (N=52) was identical to study 1 with the exception of images of high and medium attractiveness used in the IRAP and explicit measures. Results from study 2 indicated similar results to study 1: there was statistically significantly higher scores on employability measures for high attractive images than for medium attractive images, and a statistically significant pro-beauty bias on implicit measures. However, the implicit measures also indicated that there was a statistically significant anti-unattractive bias present also. Again, there was no effect of gender on IRAP D-scores and no predictive power of the IRAP D-scores for participants’ CV choice. Study 3 (N=28) aimed to investigate the ‘beauty is beasty’ effect found for female applicants applying for executive jobs, using the same implicit measure as studies 1 and 2 and explicit measures taken from Heilman and Saruwatari (1979). Results from study 3 indicated statistically significantly higher ratings for male images in executive jobs and female images in nonexecutive jobs on explicit measures. On implicit measures, however, the IRAP indicated that there were statistically significant biases towards both male and female images in executive jobs. Again, there was no effect of gender on D-scores. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research and implications for the use of implicit measurement to measure attractiveness bias in the domain of employability