What is Beautiful is Well Connected: How Alters Help Attractive People Create Advantageous Social Networks

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Social Capital and Networks I

Abstract

That attractive people enjoy relatively better work outcomes—in terms of pay and promotions—is well and widely documented. To explain these same outcomes, sociologists and organizational behavior scholars point to systematic differences in people’s social network structures (Burt & Ronchi, 2006; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001). Integrating the psychological and economic literature on attractiveness and the organizational behavior literature on social capital and social networks, we posited that attractive people do particularly well at work because their networks are structured to deliver gains. In two experiments, we demonstrated how and why attractive people might be able to structure especially beneficial networks. As predicted, attractiveness cued social capital perceptions, which encouraged people to 1) initiate ties with more attractive people, and 2) appoint them to positions richer in social capital potential (i.e., brokerage spots). These results imply that attractive people will have networks that are larger, less dense, and more likely to contain weak ties. Results from a field study confirmed this.

Authors

• Kathleen Mary O'Connor, Cornell University

• Eric Gladstone, Cornell University