How Do People At Work Feel About Wearing Makeup

SA Mind

Should You Wear Makeup at Work?

Research shows intriguing differences in how male and female co-workers react to women who wearable makeup in the office

For women, wearing makeup at piece of work can be a complex consequence. They must balance looking professional with the risk of beingness objectified. Overall, research shows that utilize of cosmetics signals status. A new paper, published in Oct 2016 in Perception, examines how information technology projects success—while explaining some of its costs.

In the first of ii experiments, researchers photographed xl female person college students with and without makeup and presented them to another grouping of 128 (mostly heterosexual) male person and female person undergraduates. The observers rated the pictures on "attractiveness" and ii components of social status, "potency" and "prestige." The words were left undefined, but say-so typically refers to control over others through forcefulness or threat, whereas prestige is freely offered respect. In this study, women wearing makeup were seen by men (simply not women) equally more than prestigious and seen past women (but non men) as more dominant. Viktoria Mileva, a researcher at the University of Stirling in Scotland and the paper's primary author, calls this asymmetry a "standout surprise."

The researchers speculated that men tend non to see women as physically threatening, and so makeup should not affect their ratings of dominance. Women, on the other hand, might see their peers in makeup as sexually competitive and thus socially dominant. Meanwhile men might run into women in makeup as prestigious because, every bit past studies show, attractive people are causeless to be competent. This positive "halo effect" might be absent in female observers because they experience socially threatened.

The researchers conducted a second study to encounter if makeup really does trigger feelings of sexual contest. Forty-eight new female undergraduates evaluated the photos from the first report, answering questions such every bit "How jealous would you feel if this woman were to collaborate with your partner?" The participants judged women in makeup to be more attractive to men and more promiscuous and predicted they would feel more jealousy toward them.

"The idea that a woman is always suspicious of other women wearing makeup is a little over the superlative," Mileva observes. "Merely in certain contexts in that location may be some cause for business organisation." Reactions may exist different in the existent world and with older men and women. Just we could all be more conscientious with the assumptions that we make virtually a adult female's appearance at work.

This article was originally published with the championship "The Cosmetics Conundrum" in SA Listen 28, ane, 12 (Jan 2017)

doi:x.1038/scientificamericanmind0117-12b