Interviewers’ Moods and Evaluations of Job Applicants: The Role of Applicant Qualifications1

Participants were induced to experience positive affect, negative affect, or no shift in current affect. Then they conducted a simulated job interview with an applicant (actually an assistant) who appeared to be highly qualified, ambiguously qualified, or unqualified for the job in question. It was predicted that interviewers’ moods would exert the strongest influence on ratings of the applicant when this person's qualifications were ambiguous. Results offered partial support for this hypothesis. When the applicant's qualifications were ambiguous, participants induced to experience positive affect rated this person higher on several dimensions than participants induced to experience negative affect. When the applicant appeared to be highly qualified for the job, in contrast, interviewers’ moods had no significant effect on their ratings of this person. Contrary to expectations, however, interviewers’ moods significantly influenced ratings of the applicant when this person appeared to be unqualified for the job in question. In this condition, participants induced to experience positive affect actually rated the applicant lower than those induced to experience negative affect. Several mechanisms that may have contributed to these results (e. g., tendencies toward mood maintenance, adoption of a positive-test strategy) are examined. In addition, practical implications of these findings for conducting job interviews and for the use of various impression-management techniques by applicants are discussed.