Letters of Recommendation: An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the appeal and tone of letters of recommendation using an evolutionary psychological perspective. Several hypotheses derived from this framework are developed and tested. The authors’ theoretical argument makes two major points. First, over the course of human evolution, people developed a preference for narrative information about people, and the format of letters of recommendation is compatible with that preference. Second, because recommenders are acquaintances of applicants, the tone of letters should reflect the degree to which the relationship with the applicant favors the recommender’s interests. We hypothesized that, over and above an applicant’s objective qualifications, letters of recommendation will reflect cooperative, status and mating interests of recommenders. We used 532 letters of recommendation written for 169 applicants for faculty positions to test our hypotheses. The results indicated that the strength of the cooperative relationship between recommenders and applicants influenced the favorability and length of letters. In addition, male recommenders wrote more favorable letters for female than male applicants, suggesting that male mating interests may influence letter favorability. We conclude with implications for practice and future research.

Women, power, and sex composition in small groups: an evolutionary perspective

“…Therefore, many of the practices that exist in modern organizations, particularly those that persist despite organizational researchers' insistence that they are problematic, are likely to be understood with more research on how evolved mechanisms guide behavior towards activities that people find inherently rewarding (Colarelli, 2003). The widespread use of the employment interview, for example, may be due to our evolved preference for acquiring information about other people through FtF interaction (Colarelli, 2003;Colarelli, Hechanova-Alampay, & Canali, 2002). The difficulty that women have in integrating themselves into male coalitions is probably another example of evolved mechanisms influencing organizational practices.…”

Letters of Recommendation: Controversy and consensus from expert perspectives

“…Although LORs have not generated voluminous research (roughly 130 psycINFO hits over 82 years), many aspects of LORs have been explored. Past research has studied factors biasing letters (e.g., Colarelli, Hechanova-Alampay, & Canali, 2002), letter inflation (e.g., Miller & Van Rybroek, 1988), writer characteristics (e.g., Judge & Higgins, 1998), and legal issues surrounding LOR usage (e.g., Range, Menyhert, Walsh, Hardin, Ellis, & Craddick, 1991). Several researchers have recently articulated specific areas of concern regarding LORs (see Aamodt, 2005), and we believe that these areas also represent the theoretical domain of LOR research well.…”

Why is dialogue on performance challenging in the public sector?

“…The form points to different types of knowledge. Studies have shown that, for example, knowledge describing individual events may be preferred over statistical knowledge describing how such events in general occur (Colarelli et al, 2002). The essence of the information may sometimes deviate from the essence of the phenomenon that the information is supposed to describe in the opinion of the information user (e.g., complex matters are presented in a simple fashion).…”