| Abstract: | This experiment attempted to determine if eye contact affects job interviewers' evaluations of applicants. Photographs were taken of a male and a female in two eye positions: looking straight into the camera and looking downward. Forty-four job interviewers in an employment agency were randomly assigned to one of the four photographs. Each subject was told to assume that he or she was interviewing the stimulus person for a job as a management trainee and was instructed to rate the stimulus person on a series of scales. The findings supported the hypothesis that eye contact is a determinant of the decision to hire. The findings also suggested that the effects of eye contact are mediated by the perceived attributes of applicants; that is, eye contact affected the interviewers' evaluations of the applicants, and those evaluations were related to the decision to hire. |
