Is It Unprofessional To Not Wear Makeup Research

SA Mind

Should You Wearable Makeup at Work?

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

Should You Wear Makeup at Work? — Credit: Getty Images

For women, wearing makeup at work can be a complex issue. They must balance looking professional with the risk of beingness objectified. Overall, research shows that employ of cosmetics signals status. A new newspaper, published in October 2016 in Perception, examines how it projects success—while explaining some of its costs.

In the first of two experiments, researchers photographed 40 female college students with and without makeup and presented them to another grouping of 128 (mostly heterosexual) male and female undergraduates. The observers rated the pictures on "attractiveness" and ii components of social status, "potency" and "prestige." The words were left undefined, merely dominance typically refers to control over others through forcefulness or threat, whereas prestige is freely offered respect. In this study, women wearing makeup were seen past men (simply not women) equally more prestigious and seen by women (but not men) every bit more ascendant. Viktoria Mileva, a researcher at the University of Stirling in Scotland and the paper's principal author, calls this asymmetry a "standout surprise."

The researchers speculated that men tend not to see women as physically threatening, and then makeup should not touch on their ratings of dominance. Women, on the other manus, might come across their peers in makeup equally sexually competitive and thus socially ascendant. Meanwhile men might see women in makeup equally prestigious because, every bit past studies show, attractive people are assumed to be competent. This positive "halo issue" might be absent in female observers because they feel socially threatened.

The researchers conducted a second written report to run into if makeup really does trigger feelings of sexual competition. Forty-eight new female undergraduates evaluated the photos from the first study, answering questions such equally "How jealous would you lot feel if this woman were to interact 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 top," Mileva observes. "But in certain contexts there may be some cause for concern." Reactions may be different in the real world and with older men and women. But nosotros could all be more than careful with the assumptions that we make about a woman's appearance at work.

This article was originally published with the title "The Cosmetics Conundrum" in SA Mind 28, 1, 12 (January 2017)

doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0117-12b