A meta-analysis of the employment interview was carried out to investigate the impact of interview format (individual vs. board interviews) and interview structure (unstructured vs. structured) on the validity of interviews. A thorough review of the unpublished and published literature worldwide yielded 150 usable validity coefficients for the meta-analysis. Contrary to the predominantly pessimistic views of previous researchers, the interview was found to be a generally good selection instrument. These findings suggest that the ' received doctrine ' of interview invalidity is false. However, interview structure moderated predictive validity coefficients to a considerable extent. In fact, structured interviews produced mean validity coefficients twice as high as unstructured interviews. Although considerable variance in structured interviews remained unaccounted for after adjustment for statistical artifacts, all of the variation in observed validity coefficients for unstructured interviews was accounted for. It was concluded that a number of social psychological processes examined in previous interview research would have little effect in moderating the validity coefficients of the unstructured interview. T h e results also suggest that higher validity coefficients are associated with more reliable interviews and the use of formal job-analytic information in developing interview questions. Implications for research and practice in personnel psychology are explored.The employment interview is a tenaciously popular but controversial selection method. In particular, reviewers of the interviewing literature repeatedly question the predictive validity of the employment interview (Arvey

In this study we compared two cognitive processes that are often thought to precede leadership perceptions: causal attributions and categorization. This was done by experimentally manipulating factors relevant to attributions (consensus information) and categorization (stimulus prototypicality). Dependent measures were undergraduate subjects' perceptions of the leadership exhibited by stimulus people, shown on a 12-min videotape of a management group. The interaction of the leader prototypicality and consensus information factors on leadership perceptions was opposite to that predicted by attribution theory. The experimental evidence suggested that the interaction effect was based on subjects' categorization of stimuli in terms of leadership. A methodology developed to measure encoding of on-going leader behavior allowed tests of the social-information-processing sequence involved in forming leadership perceptions. Results support recent propositions of socialinformation-processing theory and demonstrated the usefulness of the encoding methodology.The topic of leadership perceptions is of interest to scientists with both theoretical and applied orientations. Theoretically, leadership perceptions reflect the broader processes used to form many types of social perceptions, and they can be analyzed in terms of underlying social or cognitive processes. Practically, leadership perceptions involve key interpersonal processes in organizations that impact on the formation of status or influence structures and the development of superior-subordinate relations (Seers & Graen, 1984).We investigated this important topic by comparing two cognitive processes that are often thought to be immediate antecedents to leadership perceptions, namely, categorization and attributional processes. Social categorization (Cantor & Mischel, 1979) and attributional (Kelley, 1973) theories are the two major theoretical approaches to understanding person judgments that are current in the social cognitive literature. Yet, they remain largely independent research domains, although some preliminary work has established interesting interrelations between these constructs in the leadership area . We extend this work by comparing the impact of categorization and attributional processes on leadership perceptions This study is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation under supervision of the second author.

Perspectives from 22 countries on aspects of the legal environment for selection are presented in this article. Issues addressed include (a) whether there are racial/ethnic/religious subgroups viewed as “disadvantaged,” (b) whether research documents mean differences between groups on individual difference measures relevant to job performance, (c) whether there are laws prohibiting discrimination against specific groups, (d) the evidence required to make and refute a claim of discrimination, (e) the consequences of violation of the laws, (f) whether particular selection methods are limited or banned, (g) whether preferential treatment of members of disadvantaged groups is permitted, and (h) whether the practice of industrial and organizational psychology has been affected by the legal environment.

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