The Sound of Silence

If you ever felt like the most attractive people always have the greatest career success, you may be on to something. As it turns out, success, at least in some part, is skin deep. Of course attractive people aren't always dealt the best cards — just more frequently than the rest of us average joes. Here's how being attractive influences success: Attractive people tend to get paid more Because of what social psychologists call "the halo effect" — our tendency to assume someone possesses other positive qualities because the posses one — the better someone looks, the better a person we think they are. Thanks to this cognitive bias, attractive people tend to be paid a premium. Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas psychologist who studies beauty in the workplace, has found that a person with above-average looks earning $20 an hour over a 40-year career would earn $1.69 million, while a person with below-average looks would pull in $1.46 million. In one sample of Americ...

Do you ever feel like nobody takes you seriously at work? If so, you're not alone. More than 50% of people don't feel respected at work, according to a global survey of more than 20,000 employees by the Harvard Business Review. Maybe colleagues ignore your input in meetings. Perhaps they interrupt you or don't include you in important decisions. It's easy to blame that on a bad boss or a toxic work environment. In some cases, that's even true. But if you really want to be taken more seriously at work, you should start by looking in the mirror and doing what you can to increase your influence. There are eight things you can do right now to increase your credibility, get people to take you more seriously and ensure you get treated with the respect you deserve. 1. Don't let your statements sound like questions One of the most common things people do to undermine their credibility is end their sentences on a higher inflection than where they started. It's called...