| Abstract: | The selection interview remains the most popular method by which organizations select employees, yet it is also widely criticized for being vulnerable to bias and unfair discrimination. This paper draws upon two specific areas of attribution research: cross-cultural studies of attributional processes and studies of intergroup attributional bias in order to discuss how attributional processes can contribute to unfair discrimination in selection interviews. It is argued that unfair discrimination can arise in two ways: first, as a consequence of ethnocentric attributional biases on the part of interviewers when explaining the behaviour of candidates associated with in-group or out-group status; second, as a result of different patterns of attributions manifest by candidates from diverse cultural groups. |
