In the eye of the examinee: likable examiners interfere with performance

We investigated effects of examiners’ ascribed likability and examiners’ gender on test performance during a standardized face-to-face testing situation assessing self-estimated and de facto verbal knowledge. One hundred fourteen nonpsychology students were individually tested by one of 22 examiners. A moderated regression analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction of test taker’s gender, examiner’s gender, and examiner’s likability on de facto knowledge: Men and women showed lower scores on de facto knowledge with a same-gender examiner rated as likable compared to their performance with a likable opposite-gender examiner or in interaction with a nonlikable examiner.