Many theories of social psychology influence the employment interview. Some give us a greater understanding of how dangerous and easy it is to be ‘sucked’ in by candidates and our own internal biases when conducting an interview.
Selecting employees based solely on an interview is, at best, a ‘toss of the coin’; in other words, there is about a 50/50 chance that you will make the right decision. If the interview is unstructured, in other words, a general chitchat, your odds decrease to about one in every six. Why is the interview so unreliable? Let us look at a few social psychology theories.These fall under the general heading of social cognition.
- Primacy and Recency
- Positively and Negatively
- Implicit Personality Theory
- Stereotypes
- Physical appearance
The order in which a person receives information can have profound effects on subsequent impressions. Asch (1946) conducted an experiment using six traits to describe a hypothetical person. For half the sample, the traits described them as intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious (i.e. positive traits first, negative traits last). The other half received the traits in reverse order. Traits presented first proportionately influenced the final impression; subjects made more favourable impressions when the positive information was presented first. This has a link with our next bias.
Research by Fisk (1980) indicates that negative information attracts our attention more and we assume a disproportionate importance on the subsequent impression – in other words, we have a bias towards negativity. What is even more telling is that once we make a negative impression, it very difficult to change in light of subsequent positive information than is a positive impression likely to change in light of subsequent negative information.
It is easy to understand how the above two theories influence the interview process. If the candidate furnishes negative information early in the interview, you will tend to form a total negative impression of that person despite latter positive answers. It is also very difficult for the candidate to turn this negative impression around.
Kelly (1955) suggested that individuals tend to develop idiosyncratic ways of characterising people. For example, you might consider humour is the most important organising principle for forming impressions of people while somebody else may consider intelligence more important. We have different personal construct systems that make us likely to form very different impressions of the same person. These personal constructs, developed over time, are resistant to change.
We also tend to use our single most important characteristic(s) to help us form opinions of other unseen characteristics. Examples may be, intelligent people are friendly people or humorous people are honest people. In the employment interview, a candidate may trigger one of your own implicit personality characteristics that lead you to assume a number of other characteristics. For example, the person dresses neat and tidy and therefore must be a well organised and planned.
Impressions of people are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions about personalities, attitudes and behaviours of people based on group membership – for example ethnicity, nationality, sex, race and class.
Although we like to believe we are far too sophisticated to let physical appearance sway us, research suggest that this is not true. People’s appearance is often the first information that we have about them; appearance is very influential in first impressions. Physically attractive people tend to be perceived as ‘good’ people (Dion, 1972) – they are assumed interesting, warm, outgoing and socially skilled.
Physical appearance also affects people’s careers. Knapp (1978) found that professional men over 1.88 metres received 10% higher salaries than men under 1.83 metres, and that attractive male executives were considered more able than less attractive male executives. Interestingly, the reverse was found for female executives – participants suspected that attractive female executives might have been promoted by appearance and not ability!
Physical appearance and stereotyping are common biases in employment interviews. They are dangerous and have on numerous occasions landed many employers in hot water (expensive hot water at that!). During an interview, the interviewer(s) performs what psychologists term as cognitive algebra. In other words, the interviewer must try and weigh up the positive and negative attributes of the candidate and make a decision all based on a 30 minute face-to-face meeting. This is very difficult and as explained at the start, accurate about fifty percent of the time, at best!
Obviously there are more theories we could draw on, but I think these are telling enough. Relying on the interview alone when employing only explains the ‘fruits on the tree’, the knowledge, experience and skill to do the job. We call this the ‘can’ factor. It is coachable, observable and trainable. What we never see during the job interview are the ‘roots of the tree’. This is the ‘will’ factor, will they, or how will they, do the job. Are they good problem solvers, can they negotiate, are they prone to erupt under stress, or will they rob you blind? These are innate personality, mental ability and attitudinal questions that can only be answered through psychometric profiling.
Most managers hire on the fruits but terminate on the roots!
