Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Theme：Universal Mindset Debiases the Attractiveness Halo Effect

Speaker：Ee Hwee Lau (London Business School)

Time：2022-05-11 14:00

Address：Online Meeting

Language：English

ABSTRACT： 

Can beliefs about leadership potential reduce the attractiveness halo effect in a hiring context? Past research has established that physically attractive individuals tend to receive more positive performance appraisals and hiring ratings, than less attractive individuals (e.g., Tu et al., 2021; Wong & Penner, 2016). This is a problem since positive outcomes are bestowed upon individuals based on attributes unrelated to actual performance. In this research, we propose that people’s beliefs about how leadership potential is distributed across the population (i.e., nonuniversal-universal mindset) could be a possible low-cost solution to debiasing the attractiveness halo effect during employee recruitment. Across six studies, two of which preregistered, we show that people who believe nearly everyone has high leadership potential (i.e., universal mindset), relative to those who believe only some people have high leadership potential (i.e., nonuniversal mindset), perceive a weaker relationship between candidates’ attractiveness and their competence during employee recruitment; debiasing the attractiveness halo effect.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY：

Ee Hwee Lau is a 2nd year PhD student at London Business School. She obtained her BA in Psychology from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research interests focus on mindsets, status and prestige, and decision-making during employee recruitment. One project that she is currently working on examines how mindsets about ability shape organizations’ use of institutional prestige as an exclusion factor to gatekeep certain individuals over others, despite all individuals being equally qualified.