“You look so beautiful… but why are you so distressed?”: The negative effects of appearance compliments on individuals’ psychological well-being in the workplace

The primacy of beauty for women is frequently conveyed through language and, more particularly, through a particular class of conversational devices, compliments. Although previous research has been conducted on the impact of appearance compliments on individuals’ psychological state, research has yet to examine what happens when a compliment about the appearance clearly conveys a positive evaluation in a domain that is completely unrelated to the evaluation’s context, such as a selection interview for a job. Because the selection of a candidate should be based solely on their skills and competence, with no role for physical appearance, we purposely chose an a job interview scenario to examine the psychological impact of inappropriate compliments. Through two 2*2 experimental studies (Ns respectively = 135 and 301), we examined whether and how anxiety and depression levels vary in women (Study 1 and Study 2) and men (Study 2) applicants who received compliments on their physical appearance, vs. their competence and had a neutral vs. positive feedback on the result of the interview. Findings of the two studies consistently showed that inappropriate compliments increase anxiety and depression levels in women but not in men, independently on the positive or neutral result of the selection interview. This research provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of inappropriate appearance compliments on psychological well-being of the recipients in the workplace setting.