Correlational tests of predictions from a process model of the interview.

We conducted a field study to test eight propositions derived from a process model of the selection interview (Dipboye, 1982; Dipboye & Macan, 1988). According to the model, interviewers' preinterview impressions of an applicant bias the subsequent conduct of the interview and processing of information in the direction of confirming these initial impressions. To test predictions from the model, we surveyed managers and the applicants they interviewed in each of 164 interviews. In support of the model, interviewers' preinterview evaluations were positively related to postinterview evaluations of applicant qualifications and process variables predicted to mediate this relation. Results also supported the model in that interviewers with favorable preinterview impressions were more likely to attribute good interview performances to the applicants' qualifications for the job and poor performances to external factors. Contrary to the model, confidence failed to moderate the above findings, and preinterview impressions were not predictive of applicant reports of interviewers' time spent in questioning. Some possible implications of the model for future research and for improving interview practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of actual deception and suspiciousness of deception on interpersonal perceptions.

36 undergraduate "interviewers" each interviewed an introverted and an extraverted "applicant," as assessed by the Eysenck Personality Inventory. One of the applicants acted honestly, the other dishonestly (i.e., extraverts presented themselves as introverts and introverts presented themselves as extraverts). Interviewers were either naive or primed to expect the possibility that deception might be occurring. Primed interviewers were not more accurate than naive interviewers in detecting deception or in discerning applicants' true dispositions. However, the primed interviewers were less confident about their judgments, and they tended to perceive all applicants as more deceptive than did the naive interviewers. Applicants who were interviewed by primed interviewers felt somewhat less successful in their attempts to portray their intended impressions (even though they really were not less successful), and they perceived their interviewers as more manipulative. In the dishonest interviews, the correspondence between the applicants' and the interviewers' perceptions of the interview, and of each other, was significantly lower than in the honest interviews. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relational control in the employment interview.

This exploratory study compared communication behaviors and patterns in successful and unsuccessful initial recruiting interviews. Subjects were 28 university seniors interviewing for jobs with seven corporate recruiters who held interviews on campus. The interviews were videotaped and subsequently analyzed for applicant and interviewer behavior. Applicant behavior was significantly different when successful interviews were compared with unsuccessful ones. Unsuccessful interviews were approximately two-thirds as long as successful interviews. Successful applicants dominated the conversations more. When interviewers attempted to structure the conversation, unsuccessful applicants tried to structure the conversation in return. Successful applicants tended to be submissive when the interviewer dominated and to dominate when the interviewer was submissive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Looked over or overlooked? Prescreening decisions and postinterview evaluations.

Past research indicates that interviewers' initial impressions of job applicants affect their subsequent evaluations. These findings, however, come either from naturalistic studies that do not control for the applicants' qualifications or from laboratory experiments that cannot assess what occurs in real interviews. The present study examined preinterview impressions and postinterview evaluations in the context of prescreening decisions. Job applicants who were prescreened into interviews were judged more favorably by recruiters than applicants who were not prescreened. Because many applicants were prescreened by some organizations and not by others, the authors were able to control for applicant qualifications and show that the same individuals were rated more favorably when prescreened than when not prescreened. Finally, the results ruled out the possibility that findings simply reflect accurate preinterview assessments of applicant-job "fit." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of dimensional relevance on accuracy of simulated hiring decisions by employment interviewers.

Presented to 52 experienced employment interviewers (32 male and 20 female) videotaped simulated interviews with 2 applicants (APs) who were differentially qualified for 2 jobs. APs' qualifications and job requirements were manipulated to produce a match or mismatch between each AP and the 2 jobs. However, APs were about average in overall qualifications and were not significantly different in favorability. In a repeated measures design, half the Ss rated the APs on specific job dimensions relevant to the critical behaviors involved in the jobs, while the remaining Ss rated the APs on general job dimensions. Both rating procedures emphasized work behaviors but differed in the relevance of the work behaviors for the jobs under consideration. Results show that Ss who rated on the specific and relevant dimensions accurately discriminated between the more qualified and less qualified AP, whereas Ss who rated on the general job dimensions were not able to discriminate accurately between the 2 APs. There was also a trend for greater agreement among Ss who rated along specific job dimensions. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Policy capturing in the employment interview.

Employed an information-processing perspective to analyze the judgments of individual employment interviewers in a corporate setting. Linear policy-capturing equations were estimated from 3 interviewers' ratings of 120 job applicants in live and audiotaped interviews. The equations were evaluated across interviewers to identify sources of predictive validity and consistency in information use. In competition with the interviewers from whom they were derived, regression models displayed higher predictive validities in a majority of instances. Following training on selected rating dimensions, interviewers' predictive validities improved. After interviewer training, the regression models of the training dimensions yielded higher predictive validities than all 3 interviewers. Results suggest specific directions for enhancing the effectiveness of interviewing in the employee-selection process. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex and physical attractiveness of raters and applicants as determinants of resumé evaluations.

110 male and female student "interviewers," classified as either high, moderate, or low on physical attractiveness, evaluated 12 bogus job applicants for whom sex, physical attractiveness, and qualifications had been varied. A 2?×?3?×?2?×?3?×?2 analysis of variance was computed, with the 1st 2 variables (interviewer sex and attractiveness) constituting between-group factors, and the last 3 variables (applicant sex, attractiveness, and qualifications) constituting repeated measures factors. Regardless of interviewer sex and attractiveness, highly qualified applicants were preferred over poorly qualified applicants, male applicants were preferred over female applicants, and attractive candidates were preferred over unattractive candidates. Discrimination in employment decisions was attributed to sex-role and physical attractiveness stereotypes. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Realistic job previews: A test of the adverse self-selection hypothesis.

The realistic job preview (RJP) literature has focused more on posthire outcomes such as employee retention than on prehire outcomes such as applicant attraction and job choice behavior. This study extends the RJP literature by focusing on 2 important issues related to applicant attraction: (a) the weight applicants place on negative information in relation to other variables such as pay level and promotional opportunity and (b) whether the "best" applicants react differently to negative information than do other applicants (adverse self-selection). Results indicate that applicants place a fairly high negative weight on negative job information, relative to other vacancy characteristics. The results regarding adverse self-selection are less clear but suggest that the highest quality applicants may be less willing to pursue jobs for which negative information has been presented, especially when doing so imposes opportunity costs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The goal of forming accurate impressions during social interactions: Attenuating the impact of negative expectancies.

Investigated the idea that impression formation goals may regulate the impact that perceiver expectancies have on social interactions. In simulated interviews, interviewer Ss were given a negative expectancy about one applicant S and no expectancy about another. Half the interviewers were encouraged to form accurate impressions; the others were not. As predicted, no-goal interviewers exhibited a postinteraction impression bias against the negative-expectancy applicants, whereas the accuracy-goal interviewers did not. Moreover, the ability of the accuracy goal to reduce this bias was apparently mediated by more extensive and less biased interviewer information-gathering, which in turn elicited an improvement in negative-expectancy applicants' performances. These findings stress the theoretical and practical importance of considering the motivational context within which expectancy-tinged social interactions occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Target complicity in the confirmation and disconfirmation of erroneous perceiver expectations: immediate and longer-term implications

The authors explored the role of target self-presentational goals in the expectation confirmation process within the context of simulated employment interviews. As predicted, applicants encouraged to be deferential inadvertently succumbed to their interviewers' expectation; applicants encouraged to be challenging, to advance their own agenda, did not. The challenging-motivated applicants succeeded in disconfirming negative expectations by presenting favorable information about themselves even in the face of negatively constraining interviewer questions; other theoretically relevant behaviors were not supported as mediators. Of added interest, the self-fulfilling prophecies observed for the deference-motivated applicants carried over to a 2nd interview because of changes in applicant self-perceptions following the 1st interview.     

A field study of job applicants' reactions to personality and cognitive ability testing.

Eighty job applicants were screened through 1 of 3 job-selection conditions depending on the job for which they were applying: interviews only; interviews plus a personality inventory (the NEO Personality Inventory); or interviews, personality inventory, and cognitive ability testing. Applicants' reactions were generally favorable in all conditions but were significantly less positive in the interview plus personality test condition. The condition of a battery of both personality and ability tests (in addition to the interview) was perceived as positively as the no-test control condition. These results suggest that personality inventories can be included in employee-selection procedures without creating adverse reactions among job applicants as long as they are used in conjunction with ability tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making the right impression: A field study of applicant impression management during job interviews.

Two issues were explored: (a) which impression management (IM) tactics applicants use during actual interviews and (b) whether there is a relationship between applicants' IM tactics and their interview outcomes. The study also examined convergence across different methods and raters when measuring IM. Postinterview survey measures were obtained from applicants and interviewers regarding applicant IM behavior during a specific interview; in addition, a subset (n?=?24) of interviews was audiotaped and analyzed for the presence of IM. Analyses revealed low to moderate convergence across methods and raters, suggesting that IM tactics may be multidimensional constructs. Across methods and raters, there was consistent evidence of greater applicant self-promotion than ingratiation. Similarly, IM tactics significantly predicted interviewers' evaluations and whether applicants later obtained site visits. Implications for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Body image, self-esteem, expectations, self-assessments, and actual success in a simulated job interview.

98 female undergraduates completed the Body Image Satisfaction Scale, Self-Cathexis Scale, Janis-Field-Eagly Self-Esteem Scale, and a job interview performance expectation scale prior to participating in a 15-min simulated job interview. After the job interviews, Ss rated their own performance. Two judges independently rated each S's performance by viewing videotapes of the job interviews. Expectations for job interview success were significantly related to both body satisfaction and self-esteem. Job interview self-ratings and the tendency to overrate or underestimate how well one actually performed were significantly related to self-esteem but not to body satisfaction. Body satisfaction was found to be subsumed by self-esteem in ability to predict interview expectations and self-assessments. Actual quality of interview performance was not related to either self-esteem or body attitudes. Discussion focuses on self-esteem consistency theory and implications for assisting applicants to assess more accurately their behavior in actual job interviews. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selection fairness information and applicant reactions: A longitudinal field study.

Although laboratory studies have found that selection information can affect applicant perceptions, this has not been tested in the field. The authors followed 2 cohorts of police applicants (N = 274) in a longitudinal study to examine the relationship between information, applicant perceptions, and behavior (e.g., turnover). Information was related to perceived fairness measured at the time of testing and 1 month later when applicants received their results. Information moderated the relationship between outcome favorability and test-taking self-efficacy among African Americans but not among Whites. Information was not related to the behavioral measures. The discussion focuses on why certain findings from previous studies were not replicated and on the use of information when applicants have an investment in getting a job. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misanthropic person memory.

Three experiments examined memory for behaviors associated with attributional information. A baseline established in Experiment 1, using behaviors unaccompanied by attributions, indicated that expectancy-inconsistent behaviors were better recalled than consistent ones. Experiment 2 linked these same behaviors to dispositional or situational attributions. After reconceptualizing the results, it was shown that negative dispositionally attributed behaviors and positive situationally attributed behaviors were best recalled, suggesting that there is a negativity bias in person memory for behaviors that are accompanied by attributions. Experiment 3, using a different procedure, served as a replication of this misanthropic memory effect and demonstrated that the effect was only slightly altered by reducing the processing time allocated for this task. The findings were discussed in terms of their implications for expectancy-driven information processing and also with regard to the types of impressions people may form from attributed behavioral information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of race and sex similarity effects in interviews: A multilevel approach to relational demography.

This research studied the effects of race and sex similarity on ratings in one-on-one highly structured college recruiting interviews (N = 708 interviewers and 12,203 applicants for 7 different job families). A series of hierarchical linear models provided no evidence for similarity effects, although the commonly used D-score and analysis-of-variance-based interaction approaches conducted at the individual level of analysis yielded different results. The disparate results demonstrate the importance of attending to nested data structures and levels of analysis issues more broadly. Practically, the results suggest that organizations using carefully administered highly structured interviews may not need to be concerned about bias due to the mismatch between interviewer and applicant race or sex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response requirements and primacy-recency effects in a simulated selection interview.

Mailed information about 8 hypothetical applicants for a secretarial job to 140 personnel interviewers for evaluation. Analysis of the decisions of the 77 respondents shows that contrary to previous findings, recency effects of information favorability were found when Ss made repeated judgments. Consistent order effects were not found when only final judgments were required, although a primacy effect was observed with a rating of overall job suitability in 1 condition. The obtained recency effects were consistent with data from impression-formation studies. It is suggested that the impression-formation literature might serve as a useful source of selection interview research hypotheses. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)