Beauty has always been regarded as something praiseworthy. Almost everyone thinks attractive people are happier and healthier, have better marriages and have more respectable jobs. Personal advisors give them better advice for finding jobs. Even judges are softer on attractive defendants. But in the executive (主管的) circle, beauty can become a liability. While attractiveness is a positive factor for a man on his way up the executive ladder, it is harmful to a woman. Handsome male executives were considered having more honesty than plainer men; efibrt and ability were thought to lead to their success. Attractive female executives were considered to have less honesty than unattractive ones; their success was connected not with ability but with factors such as luck. All unattractive women executives were thought to have more honesty and to be more capable than the attractive female executives. Interestingly, though, the rise of the unattractive overnight successes was connected more to personal relationships and less to ability than that of the attractive overnight successes. Why are attractive women not thought to be able? An attractive woman is considered to be more feminine and an attractive man more manly than the less attractive ones. Thus, an attractive woman has an advantage in traditionally female jobs, hut an attractive woman in a traditionally manly position appears to lack the 'manly' qualities required. This is true even in politics. 'When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men and women differently,' says Anne Bowman, who recently published a study on the effects of attractiveness on political candidates (候选人). She asked 125 undergraduate students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in order of attractiveness. The students were told the photographs were of candidates for political offices. They were asked to rank them again, in the order they would vote for them. The results showed that attractive males completely defeated unattractive men, but the women who had ranked most attractive unchangeably received the fewest votes. The word 'liability' most probably means______.