Bosses often miss good hires for very dumb reasons and one of the dumbest is looks.

The bias holds true for investors, too.

A series of three studies reveals that investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical. Attractive men are the most persuasive pitchers of all, the studies show.

According to Gordon Patzer, author of The Power and Paradox of Physical Attractiveness,

“We are just hard wired to respond more favorably to attractive people. This is something anthropologically that has existed for as long as history exists.”

Anthropologically, not biologically.

Every living creature “responds more favorably” to attractiveness as defined by its species, but that isn’t the same as biological hardwiring.

Awareness of a prejudice allows you to put it in perspective and see past it.

But you have to want to.

I’ve always said that charm is the number one reason for bad hires, what I forget is that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.

Now it seems that applies to funding as well.

Flickr image credit: Image Editor

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 at 1:15 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Personal Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: attitude, attractiveness, awareness, bias, consequences, prejudice
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