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Visible Tattoos as a Source of Employment Discrimination Among Female Applicants for a Supervisory Position

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Journal of Business and Psychology
Authors:
Chris Henle at Colorado State University
Chris Henle
Ted H. Shore
Ted H. Shore
Ted H. Shore
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Kevin Murphy at University of Limerick
Kevin Murphy
Alyssa D. Marshall
Alyssa D. Marshall
Alyssa D. Marshall
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
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Although tattoos have increased in popularity, they may put individuals at a disadvantage when seeking employment. Drawing on the justification-suppression model and the stereotype content model, we propose that job applicants with visible tattoos experience prejudice in hiring and starting salary recommendations because they are stereotyped as less competent and warm than those without visible tattoos. In Study 1, we compared equally qualified Caucasian female applicants in their mid to late 20s with no visible tattoos, a mild visible tattoo, and extreme visible tattoos for the position of a sales manager. Tattooed applicants were less likely to be hired, especially if they had extreme visible tattoos, and were offered lower salaries and rated lower on competence (but not warmth) than applicants without visible tattoos. Furthermore, competence mediated the relationship between visible tattoos and hiring and salary recommendations. In Study 2, we examined if young Caucasian female applicants with visible tattoos can overcome prejudice through their job qualifications and found they were able to mitigate salary discrimination, but not hiring discrimination by being highly qualified. In Study 3, we proposed that young Caucasian female applicants with visible tattoos can neutralize discrimination by being highly qualified and having volunteer experience. However, volunteering did not mitigate prejudice related to visible tattoos. Our findings suggest that it is difficult for applicants with visible tattoos to overcome discrimination.
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Visible Tattoos as a Source of Employment Discrimination
Among Female Applicants for a Supervisory Position
Christine A. Henle
1
&Ted H. Shore
2
&Kevin R. Murphy
3
&Alyssa D. Marshall
4
Accepted: 5 January 2021
#This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2021
Abstract
Although tattoos have increased in popularity, they may put individuals at a disadvantage when seeking employment. Drawing
on the justification-suppression model and the stereotype content model, we propose that job applicants with visible tattoos
experience prejudice in hiring and starting salary recommendations because they are stereotyped as less competent and warm
than those without visible tattoos. In Study 1, we compared equally qualified Caucasian female applicants in their mid to late 20s
with no visible tattoos, a mild visible tattoo, and extreme visible tattoos for the position of a sales manager. Tattooed applicants
were less likely to be hired, especially if they had extreme visible tattoos, and were offered lower salaries and rated lower on
competence (but not warmth) than applicants without visible tattoos. Furthermore, competence mediated the relationship be-
tween visible tattoos and hiring and salary recommendations. In Study 2, we examined if young Caucasian female applicants with
visible tattoos can overcome prejudice through their job qualifications and found they were able to mitigate salary discrimination,
but not hiring discrimination by being highly qualified. In Study 3, we proposed that young Caucasian female applicants with
visible tattoos can neutralize discrimination by being highly qualified and having volunteer experience. However, volunteering
did not mitigate prejudice related to visible tattoos. Our findings suggest that it is difficult for applicants with visible tattoos to
overcome discrimination.
Keywords Body art .Discrimination .Hiring .Stereotypes .Tattoos
Organizational policies and practices based on physical ap-
pearance, such as requiring makeup or a certain level of at-
tractiveness and limiting facial or body hair, have been legally
challenged over the years (HRFocus, 2008). Although only a
handful of US locations outlaw employment discrimination
based on appearance (e.g., Michigan, District of Columbia,
San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Madison), practices such as
Abercrombie & Fitch’s“Look Policy”have been legally chal-
lenged (King, 2016) and recently laws have been passed
prohibiting discrimination based on hairstyles and facial hair
(e.g., Phillis & Brailey, 2020). Given the increased attention
by the EEOC, legislators, and the courts (Pating & Cruse,
2019), employers need to reevaluate their appearance-based
practices and policies. Even if they are not legally challenged,
employers may be missing out on a viable portion of the labor
force if they screen applicants or treat employees adversely
because of aspects of their appearance that may not be indic-
ative of job performance (Graham, Harvey, & Puri, 2016;
Jackson, Hunter, & Hodge, 1995).
A large body of literature has shown that we judge others
based on physical appearance. For example, attractive people
are seen as more competent (e.g., Todorov, Mandisodza,
Goren, & Hall, 2005), intelligent (Zebrowitz, Hall, Murphy,
& Rhodes, 2002), trustworthy (e.g., Eagly, Ashmore,
Makhijani, & Longo, 1991), employable (e.g., Marlowe,
Schneider, & Nelson, 1996), and earn more (e.g., Mobius &
Rosenblat, 2006). We argue that visible tattoos represent an-
other aspect of physical appearance that could affect employ-
ment outcomes, and that it deserves attention, especially
because of the increasing proportion of the population that
*Christine A. Henle
chris.henle@colostate.edu
1
Department of Management, Colorado State University, Fort
Collins, CO 80523, USA
2
Department of Management, California State University San Marcos,
San Marcos, USA
3
Department of Work and Employment Studies, University of
Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
4
Human Resources Research Organization, Alexandria, USA
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-021-09731-w
/ Published online: 7 March 2021
Journal of Business and Psychology (2022) 37:107–125
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... For example, a subtle form of discrimination targeting women could be represented by offering help in computer matters or in technical aspects of their jobs because women might be portrayed as less technically skilled and in need of support (Dardenne et al., 2007;Feig et al., 2022;Martinez et al., 2017). Likewise, older employees categorized as senile, rigid in thought and old-fashioned, specifically in information technology skills (Ayalon and Tesch-R€ omer, 2017), might be excluded from workgroups or relegated to certain kinds of tasks because they are not considered to be qualified enough (Henle et al., 2022). ...
... Overall, the present study offers the following contributions to the understanding of prevention of discrimination in the remote work context. Firstly, the study builds upon recent developments in the occupational health management literature by examining the discriminations among employee in a way that advances our understanding of the managerial practices in the remote work contextual setting (Henle et al., 2022;K€ ollen, 2021;Konrad et al., 2016). By examining discriminations within the specific context of remote work, we are able to reach an understanding of the work experience in such specific context, as well as the potential role of management practices. ...
... Likewise, employees categorized as senile, rigid in thought and oldfashioned in skills, specifically in information technology skills (i.e. older employees), might be excluded from groups of work or relegated to certain kind of tasks because they are not considered to live up to a request, and this in turn may prevent them from making professional progress (Henle et al., 2022;Kanfer et al., 2020;Schawbel, 2021). ...
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... 97) and thus are easily and quickly observable, like race, gender, and age. Recent work in the organizational sciences that draws on the SCM also often examined surface-level traits, such as visible tattoos (Henle et al., 2022), weight (Henderson et al., 2022), and pregnancy (Pownall et al., 2023). Thus, the present work notably extends the SCM by examining a deep-level trait, which includes differences in beliefs, values, attitudes, and personality that are observed via verbal and nonverbal behavior (Harrison et al., 1998). ...
... Notably, a three-factor solution that contained perceived warmth, competence, and assertiveness (i.e., "confident" and "competitive") was not a better representation of the data than a model that simply removed the two items, and so consideration of an additional assertiveness stereotype was not supported. Given that others assessed competence using a measure that removed assertiveness-related items and added more adjectives to purely reflect competence (Henle et al., 2022), future research would benefit from delving further into measurement validation for the warmth and competence measures. ...
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... A fact that cannot be denied is that there is still a lot of discrimination against females who have tattoos or facial piercings, especially the visible tattoos. Henle et al. gave the result that females with visible tattoos suffering bias when they looked for job opportunities [21]. The research did by McElroy et al. showed that people with facial piercings were affected with the negative effects when they applied for jobs [22]. ...
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... Unjustly, women and people of color with tattoos experience more significant discrimination than men or White people (Baumann et al., 2016;Camacho & Brown, 2018;Guégen, 2013;Solanke, 2017). For example, women encounter prejudice when failing to gain employment due to having visible tattoos regardless of having excellent job qualifications (Al-Twal & Abuhassan, 2024;Henle et al., 2022). Moreover, women of color have experienced job discrimination by being questioned if they have visible or nonvisible tattoos (i.e., inkism), being forbidden from having or being required to cover tattoos regardless of cultural relevance (e.g., covering a traditional Māori tattoo), or being required to prove that they do not have tattoos-as alleged in a legal complaint against a Singaporean airline that required female attendants to wear a swimsuit and demonstrate to their employers that they did not have tattoos (Solanke, 2017, Chapter 8). ...
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... According to Tews and Stafford (2019), employees with a higher number of visible tattoos tend to receive less favorable treatment, which is reflected in interpersonal relationships and perceived discrimination. Furthermore, these tattooed employees are commonly given reduced pay and judged as less competent in comparison to candidates who do not have visible tattoos (Henle et al., 2021). However, this job and wage discrimination is mainly affected by two factors: the type of profession and the age of the interviewers. ...
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