ABCs of the Interview: The Role of Affective,Behavioral, and Cognitive Responses by Applicants in the Employment Interview

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of a job applicant's verbal statements on interviewer ratings of an applicant's interpersonal characteristics. Applicant verbal statements were coded as containing affective, behavioral, and cognitive components. Verbal statements were analyzed using regression analysis and findings indicated that behavioral and cognitive speech components significantly impacted interviewer ratings of an applicant's self-confidence. In turn, interpersonal characteristics of enthusiasm, self-confidence and effectiveness had a significant influence on an interviewer's rating of an applicant's overall quality and the ultimate hiring decision.     

The Antecedent and Consequence of Person–Organization Fit: Ingratiation,similarity, hiring recommendations and job offer

This study investigates how the ingratiation and perceived similarity of a job applicant can affect the judgment of an interviewer in determining person–organization fit (P–O fit), hiring recommendations and the job offer during a job interview. Data were collected from 144 interviewers and 184 applicants from 28 companies in Taiwan. The results suggest that applicant ingratiation has a positive effect on an interviewer's perceived similarity with the applicant, and that this perceived similarity mediates the relationship between applicant ingratiation and the interviewer's judgment of the applicant's P–O fit. The results further suggest that the relationship between the interviewer's judgment of the applicant's P–O fit and the job offer is mediated by hiring recommendations. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Investigating the unique predictability and boundary conditions of applicant physical attractiveness and non‐verbal behaviours on interviewer evaluations in job interviews

Through the lens of the dramaturgical perspective, the present study investigated (1) the unique predictability of applicant non‐verbal cues (physical attractiveness and non‐verbal behaviours) on interviewer evaluation, and (2) whether situational variables (i.e., customer‐contact requirement and sex‐type consistency) moderate the relationships between applicant non‐verbal cues and interviewer evaluations. Data were collected from 177 interview sessions held in 39 firms in Taiwan. Results showed that applicant physical attractiveness explained unique variance in interviewer evaluations beyond that explained by applicant verbal content. Moreover, the effect of physical attractiveness became weaker when jobs possessed lower customer‐contact requirements, or when the applicant's gender was inconsistent with the interviewer's sex‐type belief relative to the job. No main or moderating effects, however, were found for non‐verbal behaviours on interviewer evaluations.     

Testing the Assumptions of Attribution Theory in India

Abstract

Although numerous studies have investigated Weiner's (Weiner et al., 1971) attribution theory, little of this work has been conducted outside the West. Thus, the cultural boundaries of the theory have not been well established. In the present research, the basic tenets of the theory were tested in a conservative Asian Indian setting by examining the patterns of causal attributions, task evaluations, affective responses, and predictions for future performance among Asian Indian students when task outcomes were similar or discrepant with initial expectancies. Patterns of sex differences were also examined. The results showed that high expectancy individuals attributed their success more than their failure to ability and were less outcome contingent in their affective and cognitive reactions to their performance than lower expectancy groups. Indian women held slightly lower generalized expectancies than Indian men and attributed outcomes less to ability if initial performance expectancies were not high. The general pattern of results showed that Weiner's theoretical model was quite generalizable to the non-Western Asian setting.     

Applicant impression management in job interview: The moderating role of interviewer affectivity

In light of the organizational need to obtain talented personnel, an appropriate evaluation of applicant behaviour in the selection interview is crucial. Extending past research on applicant use of impression management (IM) tactics, this study examines the effects of a broad set of IM tactics in a field setting, and also investigates the moderating roles of two rarely tested interviewer characteristics: interviewer positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA). Due to the nested nature of the data, consisting of 142 job applicants and 33 interviewers, we adopt hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that three IM tactics (self‐focused IM, SFIM; other‐focused IM, OFIM; and non‐verbal IM, NVIM) are significantly positively related to interviewer evaluations. Furthermore, interviewer PA appears to strengthen the positive effects of SFIM tactics on interviewer evaluations, while the effects of NVIM tactics may be weaker when interviewers are high in NA. In addition, these findings suggest the importance of interviewer trait affectivity in explaining interviewer's decision‐making variability, which may lead to low inter‐rater reliability and in turn restrict the level of achievable validity.     

Rater Correction Processes in Applicant Selection Using Videoconference Technology: The Role of Attributions1

Increasing global competition for the best employees has resulted in a significant increase in the recruiting and selection of geographically dispersed applicants. Innovative telecommunication technologies (e.g., videoconferencing) have provided a means to interview distant applicants at relatively low cost, compared to face‐to‐face interviews. However, some have suggested that interviewer ratings could be affected by the use of communication media to conduct the interview. In the present laboratory study, we tested a model of rater decision processes to help explain a mechanism for inflated ratings of videoconference‐based applicants. Participants who believed that they were making judgments for a real selection process rated simulated videoconference or face‐to‐face interviews. Raters who perceived interview media to be lower in richness were more likely to make external attributions for the applicant's performance, and consequently rated him more favorably.     

How Interviewers Judge Job Applicants: A Qualitative Study

The aim of a job interview is to allow an interviewer to judge whether an applicant will fit into the job at stake. This study investigated how various constructs (for instance, preinterview impressions, professional competencies, and attraction to applicants) influence interviewers’ judgment of applicants. The data were obtained from 49 qualitative interviews with job interviewers about their judgment of applicants. Attraction to the applicant was considered the most important construct in interviewers’ judgment processes, despite the fact that this has little to do with an applicant's job performance. The study argues that interviewers’ judgment processes are problematic, and that this is not due to poor interviewers. Instead, the very concept of the job interview leads to interviewers’ use of problematic constructs. The qualitative approach in the study provides insight into the way in which specific job interviewers judge applicants. Such insight cannot be gained from a quantitative approach, which has traditionally been used in job interview research. Finally, the study will provide a critical discussion of the psychological reasons for job interviewers’ use of problematic constructs in their decision making process.     

Eliciting intelligence from sources informed about counter‐interrogation strategies: An experimental study on the Scharff technique

The Scharff technique aims to elicit information by affecting the source's perception of the interviewer's existing knowledge. Although the technique has been found to be effective for gathering new information, countermeasures to the technique have not been examined. In a 2 × 2 between‐subjects experiment, we informed half of the 120 sources about the counter‐interrogation strategy of carefully considering the interviewer's prior knowledge and the tactic of providing information perceived as already known to the interviewer. After this, sources were interviewed with the Scharff technique or the Direct approach, widely used in human intelligence‐gathering situations and consisting of open‐ended and direct questions. We found that “informed sources” did not succeed in revealing information already known to the interviewer, where informed sources and uninformed sources revealed known information to a similar degree (1.62 pieces vs. 1.65 pieces). Sources interviewed with the Direct approach (vs. Scharff technique) revealed a larger amount of information previously known to the interviewer (2.18 pieces vs. 1.08 pieces). When interviewed with the Scharff technique, sources informed about the counter‐interrogation strategy attempted to adopt more counter‐interrogation strategies. The present study replicates earlier research on the Scharff technique as a technique effective in affecting the source's perception of the interviewer's prior knowledge. The results of the current study indicate that both the Scharff technique and the Direct approach might be similarly robust against counter‐interrogation strategies, in terms of gathering new information. Future studies should focus on implementing more comprehensive training in counter‐interrogation strategies for the sources.     

The moderating role of interviewer's regulatory focus in the effectiveness of impression management tactics: Regulatory fit as a source of subjective value

Based on the recently explored regulatory fit effect in social contexts, the present research is the first to investigate the interaction between interviewer's regulatory focus and interviewee's impression management (IM) tactics. We hypothesized that assertive and defensive IM tactics would fit with interviewer's promotion and prevention focus, respectively, and that interviewer's experience of this regulatory fit would lead to enhanced interview evaluation. We conducted four studies in which the participants were asked to rate an interviewee after reading a list of the interviewee's IM-related behaviours or watching a videotaped interview. Additionally, the participant's regulatory focus was operationalized as both an induced situational state and a measured chronic trait. The results supported our hypotheses by showing a significant interaction of the interviewer's regulatory focus and the IM tactics on interview evaluation: the promotion-assertive and the prevention-defensive ratings were more positive than the prevention-assertive and the promotion-defensive ratings. Moreover, mediation analysis revealed that the interaction exerts its effects on interview evaluation by providing interviewers with an intrapersonal regulatory fit experience.     

Facing away from the interviewer: Evidence of little benefit to eyewitnesses' memory performance

Averting gaze from another person's face generally improves cognitive performance, yet, little is known about how witnesses' gaze direction affects their recall during investigative interviews. Here, participants witnessed a video-recorded incident, and were interviewed via free recall and closed questions following a short delay. In Experiment 1, participants either faced the interviewer or faced away during the interview. In Experiment 2, alongside this manipulation, the interviewer also either faced the witness or faced away. In Experiment 3, witness gaze direction was manipulated alongside rapport-building. In Experiment 4, the effect of facing away was directly compared with that of eye-closure. Mini meta-analysis of all four experiments showed that the effect of witness gaze direction on memory performance was minimal. Furthermore, neither aversion of interviewer's gaze nor rapport-building magnified this effect. Added to the cumulative literature on eyewitness gaze aversion, these findings afford better estimates of the likely size of these effects.     

Can Multiple Biases Occur in a Single Situation? Evidence From Media Bias Research

This study explored multiple biases—the possibility that different biases would concurrently occur in a given situation, and each would exert its influence independently on people's judgments. The study focused on media bias through nonverbal (NV) behavior, where viewers judged an interviewed politician after they viewed the interview with a nonverbally friendly or hostile interviewer. In a meta‐analysis of several replications, 2 independent biases were found: media bias (viewers rated the interviewee more favorably when the interviewer's NV behavior was friendlier); and halo effect (viewers rated the interviewee according to the degree that they personally liked him). Regression analyses indicated that these 2 biases operated independently and additively on viewers' judgments. Implications for the study of multiple biases are discussed.     

“I think you did it!”: Examining the effect of presuming guilt on the verbal output of innocent suspects during brief interviews

Innocent suspects interviewed by a guilt‐presumptive versus innocence‐presumptive or neutral interviewer may tend more to display non‐verbal behaviours which neutral judges consider indicative of guilt. We examined the effects of interviewer's presumption of guilt on innocent mock suspects' alibis. Participants (N = 90) provided an alibi to convince an interviewer of their innocence of a theft after she implied that she believed that they were guilty or innocent or that she had no belief about their veracity. On the basis of existing conflicting findings for suspects' verbal behaviour during accusatory interviews, we predicted that alibis in the guilt‐belief condition would contain the highest or lowest number of correct details with overall higher or poorer accuracy rates, respectively. Although participants perceived the interviewer's presumptive approach, the number of correct details provided and accuracy rates of alibis did not differ significantly between conditions. We propose explanations to these findings and future research paths.     

The Role of Perceived Barriers in Career Development: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Recent research has verified the claim that high school and college students perceive a variety of career-related barriers. Lent, Brown, and Hackett's (1994, 1996) social cognitive career theory and Weiner's (1979, 1985, 1986) attribution theory are useful approaches to increase understanding of the role that perceived barriers play in career development. This article presents a brief overview of the primary components of each theory as they relate to career-related barriers, discusses counseling implications associated with each approach, and provides ideas for future research to explore the utility of these theories in explaining career-related barriers.     

A test of Weiner's attribution theory inertial motivation hypothesis1

This study (N= 160 males) examined the cognitive and inertial motivation effects of overt success feedback on subjects high and low in resultant achievement motivation. The cognitive effects of overt success feedback were investigated by requesting attributions to effort, ability, luck, and task difficulty concerning performance on a digit symbol substitution task. The inertial motivation effects of overt success feedback were investigated through a transfer design. Results indicated overt success feedback to have an inertial motivation effect on performance efficiency at a subsequent verbal learning task. The results provided evidence against Weiner's (1972) attribution theory version of the inertial motivation hypothesis, and were interpreted within the general learning theory framework combined with the achievement and test anxiety models of Atkinson and Sarason. The interpretation offered considers the various experimental conditions as sources of motivation.     

The Employment Interview via the Telephone: Are We Sacrificing Accurate Personality Judgments for Cost Efficiency?

The goal of the study was to determine whether impoverished personality judgments of job candidates would be yielded by interviewers who conduct telephone interviews in comparison to face-to-face interviews due to the telephone interviews' inherent lack of crucial nonverbal communication. Participants in this study conducted mock job interviews using either the face-to-face format or the telephone format, while their behavior was coded by independent raters. For each participant, self-ratings of job-related personality traits were obtained from the applicant, while ratings of the applicant's personality were obtained from the interviewer and a peer of the applicant. It was found that the average self-interviewer and peer-interviewer agreement correlations, which were used as the criteria for accuracy, were significantly greater when the interviewer implemented the face-to-face interview method, thus supporting the hypothesis. An item analysis further supported the hypothesis in that face-to-face interviewers were found to rate the candidates significantly higher/more favorably on those traits that are typically conveyed via nonverbal communication.     

Examining Applicants' Attributions for Withdrawal From a Selection Procedure

This study applied the attribution framework described by Weiner (1986) to understand the psychological reasons applicants withdrew from a police officer selection process, as well as the consequences of their attributions for withdrawal. Individuals ( n = 196) who withdrew from the selection process were contacted and were asked to indicate their primary reason for withdrawal; and then rated this reason on locus, stability, and controllability dimensions. They also reported future application expectancies. Results indicate minority and female applicants appeared to indicate different reasons for withdrawing than did White and male applicants. Finally, race and controllability interacted in the prediction of reapplication expectancies, such that the relationship between expectancies and controllability was negative for White applicants and positive for minority applicants.     

Index to Volume 119

This longitudinal study focused on the causal relationships between self-concept, locus of causality, and academic achievement. The subjects were 212 male and 213 female students at a prestigious secondary school in the central Philippines. Analysis of the panel data indicated that no single network of causal dominance may exist for males and females but did support Weiner's (1979) causal attribution theory in finding that locus of causality was causally predominant over self-concept.     

A Narrative Review of Post-1989 Employment Interview Research

This narrative review covers both selection- and recruitment/com-munication-oriented employment interview research published since 1989. Brief comparisons of older reviews' findings to recent findings are presented. Key topics reviewed include validity and reliability evidence, decision making in the interview, applicant characteristics, applicant reactions, and interview communication processes. Key findings of the present review include: interview validity, under certain conditions, may rival that of mental ability tests; more structure in selection interviews is better; previewing applicant information (e.g., resumes) by the interviewer can harm selection interview effectiveness; and certain recruiter behaviors can influence applicants' willingness to work for the firm.