Effect of Framing on Applicants' Reactions to Personnel Selection Methods

This research demonstrates the effect of framing on applicants' reactions to two personnel selection methods: undergraduate grade point average and personnel interview scores. Presenting a selection situation framed positively (to accept applicants) caused applicants to rate both selection methods more favorably relative to presenting them with an identical selection situation framed negatively (to reject the remaining applicants). Framing affected reactions that emphasized distributive justice aspects of the selection situation and procedural justice aspects. The results are consistent with Prospect theory and with Fairness Heuristic theory. The paper offers a theoretical explanation for the effect of framing on applicants' reactions to personnel selection methods, discusses the implications of this effect, and suggests directions for future research.     

Interviewer evaluations of interviewee nonverbal behavior

Personnel representatives (N = 52) were shown one of four videotaped job interviews in which the verbal content of the 16-min interview was identical, but the interviewee's nonverbal behavior was manipulated. A “low nonverbal” interviewee was defined by minimal eye contact, low energy level, lack of affect and voice modulation, and a lack of speech fluency. The “high nonverbal” interviewee demonstrated the opposite behavior on each of these components. The subjects were asked to rate the videotaped candidates on dimensions previously identified as critical in influencing a job interviewer's decisions. Nonverbal behavior was found to have a significant effect on almost every rating made by subjects in this study. After reviewing the entire 16-min interview, 23 of the 26 subjects who saw the “high nonverbal” candidate would have invited him/her for a second interview. All 26 of the subjects who saw the “low nonverbal” candidate would not have recommended a second interview.     

: Applicants' experiences with discrimination explain their reactions to algorithms in personnel selection

Algorithms might prevent prejudices and increase objectivity in personnel selection decisions, but they have also been accused of being biased. We question whether algorithm-based decision-making or providing justifying information about the decision-maker (here: to prevent biases and prejudices and to make more objective decisions) helps organizations to attract a diverse workforce. In two experimental studies in which participants go through a digital interview, we find support for the overall negative effects of algorithms on fairness perceptions and organizational attractiveness. However, applicants with discrimination experiences tend to view algorithm-based decisions more positively than applicants without such experiences. We do not find evidence that providing justifying information affects applicants—regardless of whether they have experienced discrimination or not.     

A Follow-up Study of Counseling Effectiveness in Placement Outcomes—Data for Fiscal Years 1973 and 1976

A comparison was made of data from fiscal years 1973 and 1976 to determine if the findings of a study made in 1973 were true also in 1976. Basic findings of the 1973 study were “Your chances of being placed on a job by the Employment Service in Utah are greater if you receive assistance from counseling”; “The chances are even greater when you have more than one counseling interview”; “Personalizing the services seems to be the key to being placed on a job.” Other findings of the 1973 study regarding applicant characteristics often considered barriers to placement were not treated in the present study because of difficulties in obtaining the information from fiscal 1976 records. Results of the current study of 1976 data indicate: Although the advantage in favor of counseled applicants being placed was somewhat less in fiscal year 1976 than in fiscal 1973, counseled applicants' percentage-of-placement rate was still higher than that for all applicants in general, and increased numbers of counseling interviews did seem to have a positive effect on the placement rates of counseled applicants but at a slower rate than was found for fiscal 1973. In the current study an additional factor—renewals—was investigated to determine if higher placement rates accompanied higher numbers of renewals. The findings were positive but deemed inconclusive. Since renewals indicate repeated use of the service, they can be considered to be another measure of the effect of satisfactory service, like placement, rather than a cause of increased placement rates. This additional investigation did determine, however, that at all levels of renewal (except no renewal) the placement rate of counseled applicants was significantly higher than the placement rate of applicants who did not receive counseling.     

Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

Brainteaser interview questions such as “Estimate how many windows are in New York” are just one example of aggressive interviewer behaviour that lacks evidence for validity and is unsettling to job applicants. This research attempts to shed light on the motives behind such behaviour by examining the relation between dark-side traits and the perceived appropriateness of brainteaser interview questions. A representative sample of working adults (n = 736) was presented with a list of interview questions that were either traditional (e.g., “Are you a good listener?”), behavioural (e.g., “Tell me about a time when you failed”), or brainteaser in nature. Results of a multiple regression, controlling for interviewing experience and sex, showed that narcissism and sadism explained the likelihood of using brainteasers in an interview. A subsequent bifactor analysis showed that these dark traits shared a callousness general factor. A second longitudinal study of employed adults with hiring experience demonstrated that perspective-taking partially mediated the relationship between this general factor and the perceived helpfulness and abusiveness of brainteaser interview questions. These results suggest that a callous indifference and a lack of perspective-taking may underlie abusive behaviour in the employment interview.     

Social salience does not transfer to oculomotor visual search

ABSTRACT

Evidence suggests that socially relevant information, such as self-referential information, leads to perceptual prioritization that is considered to be similar to prioritization based on physical stimulus salience. The current study used an oculomotor visual search paradigm to investigate whether self-prioritization affects visual selection early in time, akin to physical salience, or later in time, where it would relate to processing of top-down strategies. We report three experiments. Prior to each experiment, observers first performed a manual line-label matching task where they were asked to form associations between two orientation lines (right-tilted and left-tilted) and two labels (“you” and “stranger”). Participants then had to make a speeded eye-movement to one of the two lines without any task instructions (Experiment 1), to a dot probe target located on one of the two lines (Experiment 2), or to the line that was validly cued by its associated label (Experiment 3). We replicate previous findings with the manual stimulus-matching task. However, we did not find any evidence for increased salience of the self-relevant “you” stimulus during visual search, nor did we observe any self-prioritization due to later goal-driven or strategic processing. We argue that self-prioritization does not affect overt visual selection. The results suggest that the effects found in the manual matching task are unlikely to reflect self-prioritization during perceptual processing but might rather act on higher-level processing related to recognition or decision-making.     

The insistence of vision: Why do people look at a salient stimulus when it signals target absence?

Researchers and practitioners across many fields would benefit from the ability to predict human search time in complex visual displays. However, a missing element in our ability to predict search time is our ability to quantify the exogenous attraction of visual objects in terms of their impact on search time. The current work represents an initial step in this direction. We present two experiments using a quadrant search task to investigate how exogenous and endogenous factors influence human visual search. In Experiment 1, we measure the oculomotor capture—or the tendency of a stimulus to elicit a saccade—of a salient quadrant under conditions in which the salient quadrant does not predict target location. Despite the irrelevance of quadrant salience, we find that subjects persist in making saccades towards the salient quadrant at above-chance levels. We then present a Bayesian-based ideal performer model that predicts search time and oculomotor capture when the salient quadrant never contains the search target. Experiment 2 tested the predictions of the ideal performer model and revealed human performance to be in close correspondence with the model. We conclude that, in our speeded search task, the influence of an exogenous attractor on saccades can be quantified in terms of search time costs and, when these costs are considered, both search time and search behaviour reflect a boundedly optimal adaptation to the cost structure of the environment.     

Company Norms Affect Which Traits are Preferred in Job Candidates and May Cause Employment Discrimination

This study investigated a possible mechanism behind employment discrimination. Participants completed a recruitment task where emphasis on cohesion (employees should “fit in”) versus fairness (everybody should be treated equally) was manipulated by describing the norms of a fictitious company differently. There was a comparatively stronger preference in the cohesion condition for traits and interview questions related to social competence (e.g., friendliness, gregariousness, empathy). Furthermore, participants in the cohesion condition primarily pictured socially competent employees, whereas those in the fairness condition primarily pictured employees possessing productivity-related characteristics (e.g., education, experience, and talent). The norm effect was moderated by participants’ awareness of the applicants’ ethnicity. When expecting applicants with foreign backgrounds, participants in the cohesion condition showed increased preference for selection methods related to social competence. Implications for recruitment practices are discussed.     

Sexist language and person perception: Evaluation of candidates from newspaper articles

Use of sexist language significantly affects the evaluation and perception of candidates for office. Simulated newspaper articles describing a candidate were presented to subjects who rated candidates on evaluation and gender-stereotyping measures. Variables of degree of linguistic sexism, stimulus person sex, gender appropriateness of elective office, and subject sex were manipulated in a 2×2×3×2 factorial design. A significant three-way evaluation interaction indicated that linguistic sexism causes women to be negatively evaluated when seeking a “masculine” or “neutral” office. A significant two-way stereotype interaction suggested that linguistic sexism made more salient the gender appropriateness of the offices — candidates running for the “masculine” offices were perceived as more “masculine,” and candidates for the “feminine” offices as more “feminine.”     

Salience Reasoning

The thesis of this essay is that social conventions of the kind Lewis modeled are generated and maintained by a form of practical reasoning which is essentially common. This thesis is defended indirectly by arguing for an interpretation of the role of salience in Lewis’s account of conventions. The remarkable ability of people to identify salient options and appreciate their practical significance in contexts of social interaction, it is argued, is best explained in terms of their exercise of what I call “salience reasoning,” a form of common practical reasoning. The more widely accepted understanding of salience competence, the “natural salience” understanding, fails as an interpretation of the notion at work in Lewis and Schelling (on whom Lewis relied) and is inadequate as an explanation of salience competence.     

道德判断中的框架效应:一个新的视角

道德领域亦存在框架效应,但有关这类偏差的研究仍然存在不足。研究以600名大学生为对象,以亚洲疾病和工厂风波两类经典情境为实验情境,设置正面和负面两类属性框架,以研究道德判断的框架效应。结果发现,在面临道德判断情境时,在正面框架下被试倾向于选择确定性方案,而在负面框架下被试倾向于选择风险性方案; 在正面框架下被试倾向于评价风险性方案更违背道德,在负面框架下则认为确定性方案更违背道德; 被试对情境中人物选择确定性或风险性方案道德之可谴责性评价与确定性或风险性方案本身之道德违背性评价的判断并不一致:在正面框架下,若情境中人物选择风险性方案,被试认为其行为更应受到谴责; 但在负面框架下,被试对情境中人物选择确定性方案和风险性方案在道德上应受谴责性的评价并无显著差异。研究还发现道德判断框架效应存在性别差异,负面框架下女生更为风险寻求。     

Attentional selection: A salience-based competition for representation

The role of salience in localized attentional interference (LAI) was examined. In two experiments, target discrimination performance was measured as a function of the spatial separation between the target and a salient distractor item. In Experiment 1, both the salience of the distractor and that of a target were manipulated. Distractor salience was manipulated via size changes to the distractor, and target salience was manipulated by using unmasked or onset targets. When the target was of low salience, the magnitude of interference from the distractor increased with distractor salience. However, when the target had an abrupt onset, the distractor had no impact on target performance. In Experiment 2, the attentional salience of the distractor was manipulated using a probability manipulation. Displays contained both a target and a color singleton distractor. The color singleton produced LAI when it was predictive of the target location but not when it was unpredictive of the target location. The results of both experiments are consistent with models of competition-based attentional selection.     

Justice at any cost? The impact of cost–benefit salience on criminal punishment judgments

This study investigated the effect of cost–benefit salience on simulated criminal punishment judgments. In two vignette‐based survey experiments, we sought to identify how the salience of decision costs influences laypeople's punishment judgments. In both experiments (N₁ = 109; N₂ = 398), undergraduate participants made sentencing judgments with and without explicit information about the direct, material costs of incarceration. Using a within‐subjects design, Experiment 1 revealed that increasing the salience of incarceration costs mitigated punishments. However, when costs were not made salient, punishments were no lower than those made when the costs were externalized (i.e., paid by a third party). Experiment 2 showed the same pattern using a between‐subjects design. We conclude that, when laypeople formulate sentencing attitudes without exposure to the costs of the punishment, they are prone to discount those costs, behaving as if punishment is societally cost‐free. However, when cost information is salient, they utilize it, suggesting the operation of a genuine, albeit labile, punishment preference. We discuss the implications of these findings for psychological theories of decision making and for sentencing policy, including the degree of transparency about the relevant costs of incarceration during the decision process.     

JUDGMENTS OF FIT IN THE SELECTION PROCESS: THE ROLE OF WORK VALUE CONGRUENCE

Work values were examined as an antecedent of recruiters' judgments of applicant fit with the organization. Data were collected on the work values of recruiters, their organizations, and job applicants in actual job interviews conducted through the placement center of a large university. Following the interviews, recruiters evaluated applicants' general employability and organization-specific fit. Approximately 4 months following the interviews, data on whether the applicants were invited for a second interview were also obtained. Work value congruence between the applicant and the recruiter was found to be related to judgments of general employability and organization-specific fit. Congruence between the applicant and the organization (as perceived by the recruiter) was not related to judgments of employability and organization-specific fit. Recruiter ratings of employability were related to the decision to invite the applicant for a second interview. Work value congruence was not related to second interview decisions. It is concluded that if work values and judgments of applicant fit influence the personnel selection process, they are more likely to do so at later stages when job offer decisions are made. Work values and judgments of applicant fit seem to have minimal impact on decisions to retain the applicant for additional consideration in early stages of the selection process.     

Applicant reactions and faking in real-life personnel selection

Faking may affect hiring decisions in personnel selection. All the antecedents of faking are still not known. The present study investigates the association between applicants' reactions about the selection procedure and their tendency to fake. The subjects (N = 180) were real-life applicants for a fire and rescue personnel school. After completing the selection process, the applicants filled out a questionnaire about their test reactions (Chan, Schmitt, Sacco & DeSohon, 1998b) and a faking scale, the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1991). The results based on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) indicated that the more positive reactions applicant had about the selection procedure the more impression management they had. The applicant reactions were not associated with self-deception.     

Attentional capture by abrupt onsets and feature singletons produces inhibitory surrounds

Two experiments found that form discriminations to a target item were inhibited when the target appeared adjacent to an attentionally salient item. Experiment 1 manipulated the attentional salience of an irrelevant color singleton through the attentional set adopted by the subjects. Color singletons captured attention when the target was itself a feature singleton, but not when the target was defined as a conjunction of features. Attentional capture was accompanied by an inhibitory region (i.e., slowed target reaction times), which dissipated with distance from the color singleton. In Experiment 2, the attentional salience of abrupt onsets and color singletons was compared. Irrelevant abrupt onsets captured attention, whereas irrelevant color singletons failed to capture attention. Again, an inhibitory region surrounded the attentionally salient abrupt onsets, but not the color singletons. The results are discussed in the context of current models of visual spatial attention and suggest a distinction between attentional preparation and attentional selection.     

Acknowledging One's Stigma in the Interview Setting: Effective Strategy or Liability?1

The current research examines how members of stigmatized groups remediate hiring biases by adopting the strategy of directly acknowledging their stigmatizing condition within the interview context. In the first study, 123 participants responded to a videotaped interview involving an obese or physically disabled job applicant who either did or did not acknowledge a stigma. In the second study, 87 participants responded to scenarios that manipulated type of stigma, controllability of its onset, and acknowledgment. Results across both experiments reveal that applicants who did not acknowledge their obesity or physical disability in an employment context were not viewed differently from each other. However, if applicants did acknowledge, the perceived controllability of the stigmas strongly influenced how they would be perceived.     

Can Changes in Differential Dropout Rates Reduce Adverse Impact? A Computer Simulation Study of a Multi‐wave Selection System

A simulation was used to explore the effects of variations in the rate at which applicants drop out of selection processes on racial differences in selection outcomes. Archival data was used to simulate a realistic range of selection scenarios in which test score differences between groups and selection ratios varied. The basis for dropping out was manipulated in two separate studies. Study 1 simulated dropout decisions that occurred at random within racial subgroups; in this study, dropout rates of minority versus White candidates were varied. Study 2 examined dropout decisions that occurred as a function of test scores. Results from both studies showed that mean test score differences between White and minority applicants have the largest influence on adverse impact. Interventions designed to reduce the tendency of minority applicants to withdraw from selection are likely to have, at best, small effects on the adverse impact of selection tests.