Study on the Use of Makeup and Fashion in Women

Skin Deep

Up the Career Ladder, Lipstick In Hand

In a study, women were photographed wearing varying amounts of makeup, from left: barefaced, natural, professional and glamorous. Viewers considered the women wearing more makeup to be more competent.

Oct. 12, 2011

WANT more respect, trust and affection from your co-workers?

Wearing makeup — simply not gobs of Gaga-conspicuous makeup — apparently can aid. Information technology increases people's perceptions of a woman's likability, her competence and (provided she does not overdo it) her trustworthiness, according to a new study, which too confirmed what is obvious: that cosmetics boost a woman's attractiveness.

Information technology has long been known that symmetrical faces are considered more comely, and that people assume that handsome folks are intelligent and good. In that location is also some evidence that women feel more confident when wearing makeup, a kind of placebo consequence, said Nancy Etcoff, the study's lead author and an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Academy (yeah, scholars there written report eyeshadow as well as stem cells). But no research, till at present, has given makeup credit for people inferring that a woman was capable, reliable and amiable.

The written report was paid for by Procter & Adventure, which sells CoverGirl and Dolce & Gabbana makeup, merely researchers similar Professor Etcoff and others from Boston University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Constitute were responsible for its design and execution.

The study'south 25 female subjects, aged twenty to 50 and white, African-American and Hispanic, were photographed bluff and in three looks that researchers chosen natural, professional and glamorous. They were non allowed to expect in a mirror, lest their feelings about the way they looked touch observers' impressions.

One hundred forty-nine adults (including 61 men) judged the pictures for 250 milliseconds each, enough fourth dimension to brand a snap judgment. Then 119 dissimilar adults (including xxx men) were given unlimited fourth dimension to look at the same faces.

The participants judged women made upward in varying intensities of luminance contrast (fancy words for how much eyes and lips stand up out compared with skin) as more competent than bluff women, whether they had a quick glance or a longer inspection.

"I'm a picayune surprised that the relationship held for even the glamour look," said Richard Russell, an assistant professor of psychology at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa. "If I call to mind a heavily competent adult female similar, say, Hillary Clinton, I don't think of a lot of makeup. And so over again, she's ofttimes onstage and then for all I know she is wearing a lot."

All the same, the glamour expect wasn't all roses.

"If you lot wearable a glam look, you should know yous look very attractive" at quick glance, said Professor Etcoff, the writer of "Survival of the Prettiest" (Doubleday, 1999), which argued that the pursuit of beauty is a biological every bit well equally a cultural imperative. Simply over time, "there may exist a lowering of trust, so if you are in a state of affairs where yous demand to exist a trusted source, perchance you should choose a different look."

But as boardroom attire differs from what you would vesture to a nightclub, so tin can makeup be called strategically depending on the agenda.

"There are times when you desire to give a powerful 'I'1000 in accuse here' kind of impression, and women shouldn't be afraid to do that," by, say, using a deeper lip color that could expect shiny, increasing luminosity, said Sarah Vickery, another author of the study and a Procter & Gamble scientist. "Other times you want to give off a more than balanced, more collaborative appeal."

In that case, she suggested, opt for lip tones that are low-cal to moderate in colour saturation, providing contrast to facial skin, but not being too glossy.

Merely some women did not view the report's findings as progress.

"I don't wear makeup, nor do I wish to spend 20 minutes applying it," said Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University who wrote "The Beauty Bias" (Oxford Academy Printing, 2010), which details how appearance unjustly affects some workers. "The quality of my teaching shouldn't depend on the color of my lipstick or whether I've got mascara on."

She is no "beauty basher," she said. "I'm against our preoccupation, and how judgments virtually attractiveness spill over into judgments about competence and job performance. We like individuals in the job market place to be judged on the basis of competence, not cosmetics."

But Professor Etcoff argued that there has been a cultural shift in ideas near self adornment, including makeup. "Twenty or thirty years agone, if you got dressed up, it was simply to please men, or it was something you lot were doing because guild demands it," she said. "Women and feminists today see this is their ain selection, and information technology may be an effective tool."

Dr. Vickery, whose Ph.D. is in chemistry, added that cosmetics "can significantly change how people see you, how smart people call up y'all are on first impression, or how warm and approachable, and that look is completely within a woman's control, when in that location are and then many things y'all cannot command."

Bobbi Dark-brown, the founder of her namesake cosmetics line, suggested that focusing on others' perceptions misses the point of what makes makeup powerful.

"We are able to transform ourselves, not only how we are perceived, but how we feel," she said.

Ms. Brownish besides said that the wrong color on a field of study may have caused some testers to conclude that women with loftier-contrasting makeup were more than "untrustworthy." "People will have a bad reaction if it'southward not the right color, not the right texture, or if the makeup is not enhancing your natural dazzler," she said.

Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the determination that makeup makes women look more likable — or more socially cooperative — made sense to him because "we conflate looks and a willingness to have care of yourself with a willingness to take intendance of people."

Professor Hamermesh, the author of "Beauty Pays" (Princeton Academy Printing, 2011), which lays out the leg-up the beautiful go, said he wished that good-looking people were not treated differently, but said he was a realist.

"Similar any other thing that society rewards, people will take advantage of information technology," he said of makeup's benefits. "I'm an economist, and then I say, why not? Merely I wish gild didn't reward this. I retrieve nosotros'd exist a fairer world if beauty were non rewarded, simply information technology is."