Colleagues can be just as immature as classmates in hell called high school. This new study by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and Brent Scott from Michigan State University is the first to link attractiveness to cruelty in the workplace and it sure looks ugly…

The study shows that physical attractiveness plays as much of a role as personality in how a person is treated in the workplace. The researchers surveyed 114 workers at a health care facility, asking them how often their co-workers treated them cruelly, including saying hurtful things, acting rudely and making fun of them. Through digital photos, the workers’ “attractiveness” was then judged by others who didn’t know them.

The researchers state that they found that “…unattractive individuals are more likely the subject of rude, uncivil and even cruel treatment by their coworkers.”

Abstract of the research:

Over the years, much attention has been devoted to understanding counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and its related concepts. Less is known, however, about whether certain employees find themselves more than others to be the targets of CWB. To examine this issue, we tested a model that positioned CWB receipt as a function of employees’ personality (neuroticism, agreeableness), their appearance (physical attractiveness), and the negative emotions felt toward those employees by their coworkers. Two studies using multiple sources of data revealed that disagreeable and physically unattractive employees received more CWB from their coworkers, coworker negative emotion felt toward employees was associated with CWB receipt, and the relationship between employee agreeableness and CWB receipt was due, in part, to coworker negative emotion.