Resumen de Using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) to Investigate Attractiveness Bias in the Domain of Employability

Margaret Was, Mairéad Foody, Carol Murphy

• Attractiveness bias is a robust finding in social domains, but the data is less clear regarding attractiveness bias in other domains including employability. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) was used to investigate implicit attractiveness bias favouring employability for attractive versus unattractive facial image stimuli with a sample of university students (N= 35; 25 Females). The IRAPs four trial-type methodology facilitated a nuanced analysis to determine if participant data showed pro-attractive bias, anti-attractive bias, some combination of both, or no evidence of any such bias. A pro-attractive bias was found in D-scores on three of the four IRAP trial-types. Results from an explicit Beliefs About Appearance Scale (BAAS; Spangler, 1999) showed high ratings for the importance of appearance for employability across both genders with no statistically significant gender impact. Findings extend extant research providing nuanced data about implicit attractiveness bias beyond social domains in the important area of employability.

  Key words: IRAP, attractiveness bias, employability, BAAS.