It's conventional wisdom that women wear make-up to appear more beautiful, but according to a new study, there's another effect: they appear more competent.
Here's the intriguing study by Pyschology professor Nancy Etcoff and colleagues:
The study’s 25 female subjects, aged 20 to 50 and white, African-American and Hispanic, were photographed barefaced and in three looks that researchers called natural, professional and glamorous. They were not allowed to look in a mirror, lest their feelings about the way they looked affect observers’ impressions.
One hundred forty-nine adults (including 61 men) judged the pictures for 250 milliseconds each, enough time to make a snap judgment. Then 119 different adults (including 30 men) were given unlimited time to look at the same faces.
The participants judged women made up in varying intensities of luminance contrast (fancy words for how much eyes and lips stand out compared with skin) as more competent than barefaced women, whether they had a quick glance or a longer inspection.
This would explain why attractive people are generally judged to be better at everything. Not because they are better, but because the judge is biased in favor of their own affective lens. They derive a sutble visual-consumptive pleasure from laying eyes on and receiving the image of something beautiful and subconsciously aim to preserve that relationship.
But, hey these are just my thoughts, not the Gospel.
Now, I say "he" but the judge could just as well be a woman. It is important that we are always "affected" by our environments, even in subtle and imperceptible ways. This affect informs, or one might say clouds, our judgments.