Asynchronous video interviews (AVIs) have become popular tools for applicant selection. Although AVIs are standardized, extant research remains silent on whether this novel interview format could introduce new forms of bias. Because many applicants complete AVIs from their homes, their video background could provide evaluators with information about stigmatizing features that (a) are usually "invisible" in traditional selection contexts but become observable in AVIs, (b) are not always legally protected, and (c) can impact evaluators' judgments. Across three experimental studies, we examined how cues indicating parental status (Study 1), sexual orientation (Study 2), and political affiliation (Study 3) can impact perceptions of applicant warmth and competence and ratings of interview performance and potential work performance. The effect of background information varied by stigmatized feature.Applicants depicted as parents were perceived to be higher on warmth and received higher interview performance ratings but were not evaluated more negatively on competence or potential work performance. There was no effect of sexual orientation on any outcome variables. However, applicants who supported the same political party as the evaluator were viewed as warmer and received higher ratings of interview performance and potential work performance. Thus, organizations should encourage applicants to use neutral backgrounds.
Abstract. Honesty-Humility is a valuable predictor in personnel selection; however, problems with self-report measures create a need for new tools to judge this trait. Therefore, this research examines the interview as an alternative for assessing Honesty-Humility and how to improve judgments of Honesty-Humility in the interview. Using trait activation theory, we examined the impact of interview question type on Honesty-Humility judgment accuracy. We hypothesized that general personality-tailored questions and probes would increase the accuracy of Honesty-Humility judgments. Nine hundred thirty-three Amazon Mechanical Turk workers watched and rated five interviews. Results found that general questions with probes and specific questions without probes led to the best Honesty-Humility judgments. These findings support the realistic accuracy model and provide implications for Honesty-Humility-based interviews.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.