What Do You Think of My Ink? Assessing the Effects of Body Art on Employment Chances

• Author: Daniel Re,Andrew R. Timming,Dennis Nickson,David Perrett
• Date: 01 January 2017
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21770

Human Resource Management, January–February 2017, Vol. 56, No. 1. Pp. 133–149

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21770

Correspondence to: Andrew R. Timming, School of Management, University of St Andrews, The Gateway,

NorthHaugh, St. Andrews, KY16 9RJ, Scotland, Phone: +44 (0)1334 46 2798. Fax: +44(0)1334 462812,

E-mail: art2@st-andrews.ac.uk.

the present study pinpoints the magnitude of

the effects via statistical analyses and offers the

respondents (N=120) visual cues that are embed-

ded into the survey instrument.

This research is important because of the

increasing prevalence of tattoos and body pierc-

ings, particularly in Western societies. For example,

dermatological investigations by Laumann and

Derick (2006) reveal that around one-quarter of the

US adult population has a tattoo and 14% a body

piercing. Similarly, the Pew Research Center (2010)

reports that 38% of 18- to 29-year-old Americans

has a tattoo, of which 30% are described as vis-

ible. Laumann and Derick (2006) estimate that, in

total, 30% of the US adult population has a tattoo,

a body piercing, or some combination of the two.

This block presents a major demographic chal-

lenge to recruitment and selection, and therefore

cannot be ignored by HR managers.

It is well established that corporeal and aes-

thetic attributes influence one’s chances of

success in a job interview. The probability of

being offered a position is generally reduced if

an applicant presents as obese (Rudolph, Wells,

Weller, & Baltes, 2008), physically unattractive

(Hosoda, Stone-Romero, & Coats, 2003), facially

disfigured (Stevenage & McKay, 1999), unfash-

ionably or inappropriately dressed (Christman &

Branson, 1990), visibly disabled (Jenkins & Rigg,

2004), or even, simply, female or nonwhite, as

widely reported in the workplace discrimination

literature. O ne attribute that has not received

much attention in this literature is body art,

including tattoos and piercings. Using facial per-

ception methods, this article examines the effects

of body art on employment chances. Unlike pre-

vious qualitative research analyzing the impact of

body art on employee selection (Timming, 2015),

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY INK?

ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF BODY

ART ON EMPLOYMENT CHANCES

ANDREW R. TIMMING, DENNIS NICKSON,

DANIEL RE, AND DAVID PERRETT

Using mixed design analysis of variance, this paper examines the effect of body

art on job applicant hireability ratings. It employs the literatures on the social

psychologies of stigma and prejudice, as well as aesthetic labor, to frame the

argument. The results indicate that photos of tattooed and pierced job applicants

result in lower hireability ratings compared to the control faces. The negative

effect of body art on employment chances is, however, reduced for job appli-

cants seeking non-customer-facing roles. In customer-facing roles, the tattoo

is associated with lower hireability ratings than the piercing. The results sug-

gest that visible body art can potentially be a real impediment to employment.

©2015Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: selection, recruitment, impression management, diversity, decision

making

134 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

The present study

can be situated

in a small, albeit

emerging, literature

on body art in the

workplace.

although it is well documented that facial pierc-

ings carry significant stigma (Swami et al., 2012),

generally speaking. Seiter and Sandry (2003), like

the present study, employed a visual methodol-

ogy in order to evaluate perceptions of job can-

didates with facial piercings. They conclude that

an applicant’s credibility and hireability ratings

are significantly lower with a nose ring in place.

McElroy, Summers, and Moore (2014) similarly

found that facial piercings had a negative effect

on employability, largely as a result of the fact that

they communicate a set of disagreeable personal-

ity characteristics. These two studies, however,

were confined to body piercings only, whereas the

present study design also allows for a comparative

evaluation to be made between piercings and tat-

toos concomitantly.

The relative liability of a body piercing vis-à-

vis a tattoo has not been explored previously, so

there is no theoretical basis for a specific hypoth-

esis on this matter. One might, however, expect

the former to elicit less prejudice than the latter

in employee selection. The logic underlying this

loose expectation is twofold. First, although there

is a socially acceptable and “normalized” form

of piercing (the proverbial earring), the same is

not true of tattoos in that no single image has

ever gained widespread acceptance. Second, body

piercings, unlike the more permanent tattoo, are

removable, so the stigma is generally transient.

In short, this study makes an original contri-

bution to the extant literature on body art in the

workplace. Going beyond relationship market-

ing (Arndt & Glassman, 2012; Dean, 2010, 2011;

Pentina & Spears, 2011), we examine the impact

of body art on selection decision making. Unlike

other studies in which respondents are asked to

imagine hypothetically how they would react

to a job applicant with visible body art (Bekhor

et al., 1995; Swanger, 2006; Timming, 2015), the

present study design presents subjects with a

visual prompt in order to standardize the stimu-

lus. Without this visual prompt, there is no way

of knowing what types of images the respondents

are visualizing when asked to reflect on how they

might react to a job applicant with body art on

display. Another strength of the present research

is that it incorporates both tattoos and piercings

on standardized faces, allowing us not only to par-

cel out the pure effects of these two forms of body

art, but also to evaluate the comparative impact of

one vis-à-vis the other.

In the next section, we articulate how the

extant literature can enrich our understand-

ing of the impact of visible body art on one’s

employment chances. The frameworks that we

employ are the social psychologies of stigma and

The present study can be situated in a small,

albeit emerging, literature on body art in the work-

place. Much of this literature examines body art

from the point of view of relationship marketing,

primarily emphasizing consumer perceptions. For

example, Dean (2010, 2011) offers two studies,

both of which examine customers’ expectations

regarding body art in the workplace. The former

study found that tattoos are inappropriate for

white-collar employees; the latter that consumers

have less confidence in tattooed employees and are

less satisfied with the service experience. Pentina

and Spears (2011) deconstruct sociologically the

reasons for body art consumption, but conclude

with recommendations on how best to “place”

tattoos in commercials and advertisements. Arndt

and Glassman (2012) report that most consumers

are more accepting of feminine tattoos than tra-

ditionally masculine ones. Taken together, these

studies examine body art from the perspective of

relationship marketing, whereas the present study

is concerned more specifically with the HR func-

tion of employee selection.

Only a handful of studies have

investigated the recruitment and

selection of visibly tattooed job

applicants. Elzweig and Peeples

(2011) examine body art from the

viewpoint of employment law; they

explain how tattoos, in themselves,

are not legally protected charac-

teristics. Timming (2011) looks at

recruitment and selection practices

in tattoo studios, but his study

has little or no relevance to the

wider service sector. Swanger (2006) conducted a

small (N = 30) statistical study of employer atti-

tudes towards visible body art, finding that 87%

of respondents perceived tattoos negatively.

Similarly, Bekhor, Bekhor, and Gandrabur’s (1995)

quantitative study found that less than 30% of

employers in hospitality, beauty, retail, and office

settings would hire an applicant with visible tat-

toos. But their research was based on telephone

interviews, so respondents had to “imagine” hypo-

thetical tattoos; in contrast, the present study uses

color photographs as a stimulus. Timming (2015)

also examined the impact of body art on employ-

ment chances, but he employed qualitative inter-

views to answer this research question, and only

looked at the impact of tattoos. The present study

goes beyond his research not only in that it quan-

tifies the effects of tattoos, but also incorporates

the relative impact of body piercings on employee

selection decision making.

Even fewer studies have investigated the rela-

tionship between body piercings and hireability,