A blind spot for attractiveness discrimination compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination)

Jaeger, Bastian, Gabriele Paolacci, and Johannes Boegershausen. 2022. “A Blind Spot for Attractiveness Discrimination.” PsyArXiv. November 24. psyarxiv.com/5uz8g

Abstract: Discrimination remains a key challenge for social equity. There is widespread agreement that discrimination is unfair and should be punished. A prerequisite for this is that instances of discrimination are detected. Yet, some types of discrimination may be less apparent than others. Across seven studies (N = 3,486, five preregistered), we find that attractiveness discrimination often goes undetected compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination). This blind spot does not emerge because people perceive attractiveness discrimination to be unproblematic or desirable. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s ability to detect discrimination is bounded. People only focus on a few salient dimensions, such as gender and race, when scrutinizing decision outcomes (e.g., hiring or sentencing decisions) for bias. Consistent with this account, two interventions that increased the salience of attractiveness increased the detection of attractiveness discrimination, but also decreased the detection of gender and race discrimination.