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Research.Pdf (1.418Mb) DISPOSITIONAL AND SITUATIONAL PREDICTORS OF CONFIRMATORY BEHAVIOR IN THE EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW A Thesis presented to the Faculty of Graduate School at the University of Missouri – Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by LIVIU FLOREA Dr. Thomas W. Dougherty, Thesis Supervisor AUGUST 2007 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled DISPOSITIONAL AND SITUATIONAL PREDICTORS OF CONFIRMATORY BEHAVIOR IN THE EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW presented by Liviu Florea, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Tom Dougherty Professor Art Jago Professor Dan Turban Professor Michael Kramer Professor Chris Robert ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the result of inspiration, hard work, dedication, persistence, efforts, and sacrifices. At the starting point, I had enthusiasm and a lot of ideas, but I was rather idealistic regarding the requirements of the PhD Program. It took hard work, flexibility, time, financial resources, and a lot of patience from my dissertation advisor, Dr. Tom Dougherty to put me on the right track – to channel my efforts, to improve my writing, and to help structure my ideas. I am grateful to Dr. Dougherty for everything that he has done for me. I am also grateful to my dissertation committee members, Professors Art Jago, Dan Turban, Michael Kramer, and Chris Robert who – each of them in his own way and within his time availability – have inspired and guided me, and helped me gain the confidence to reach this point in my career. Over my years at the University of Missouri - Columbia, I was fortunate to meet other great professors that shaped my research interests and helped significantly to reach this point, including Betty Dickhaus, Ron Ebert, Al Bluedorn, Dan Greening, Jim Wall, Laura King, Lynn Cooper, Jennifer Krull, and Ken Evans. I want to thank them for their support and dedication. I want to thank the administrators and staff from the College of Business Career Office, MBA Program, and my former colleagues and students who helped me during the data collection process. I want to mention that the work on this dissertation required a lot of resources and family and personal sacrifices. I am thankful to my children, Alin and Vlad for their emotional and material support, to my parents, and to all other family, friends, and colleagues who stood by me and helped me carry on and finalize this work. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND LIST OF TABLES ................................................... iv ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................v Chapter 1 – Introduction and Literature Review 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 2. CONTEXT OF THE STUDY ...................................................................................4 3. RATIONALITY IN INTERPERSONAL EVALUATION AND DECISION .......14 Chapter 2 – Hypotheses Development 1. PERSONALITY TRAITS – BEHAVIOR RELATIONSHIPS ..............................57 2. MOTIVATIONAL TRAITS – BEHAVIOR RELATIONSHIPS ..........................68 3. APPLICANTS‟ BEHAVIORAL CONFIRMATION HYPOTHESIS ...................85 Chapter 3 – Methods 1. SAMPLE .................................................................................................................87 2. PROCEDURE .........................................................................................................87 3. MEASURES ...........................................................................................................89 4. ANALYSES ............................................................................................................98 Chapter 4 – Results 1. CODER RELIABILITY ANALYSES .................................................................105 2. CORRELATION ANALYSES ............................................................................107 3. MULTILEVEL ANALYSES ...............................................................................111 Chapter 5 – Discussion and Conclusions .........................................................................119 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................136 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................145 VITA .............................................................................................................................175 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1 – Self-fulfilling and self-disconfirming effects ...........................................................12 2 – Model with the hypothesized relationships..................................................................47 3 – Interaction effect ........................................................................................................117 Table Page 1 – Interaction effects of need for cognition and intensity of first impressions ................79 2 – Interview behavior (interviewer‟s regard toward the applicant) ..................................93 3.1 and 3.2 – Interviewer‟s confirmatory behavior: list and spreadsheet form .................96 4 – Level at which each variable were measured ............................................................102 5 – Estimations of inter-rater reliabilities ........................................................................106 6 – Correlations, means, and standard deviations of variables ................................ 108-110 7 – Overview of hypotheses and research question .........................................................118 iv ABSTRACT This study focuses on antecedents of individuals‟ tendency to engage in less-than- rational decision-making that is based on the use of biases, heuristics, and other judgmental shortcuts. The context of this study is the interpersonal interaction between an interviewer and an interviewee that occurs during the employment interview. The study analyzes the interviewers‟ propensity to use one specific type of heuristics – primacy effect – and to subsequently engage in higher or lower levels of confirmatory behaviors toward their interviewees. Confirmatory behaviors include interviewers‟ behaviors, during the interpersonal interaction with the interviewees, intended to lead those interviewers to confirm their first impressions formed about the interviewees at the beginning of the interaction (i.e., employment interview). This study also explores the tendency of the interviewees to engage in behavioral confirmation toward their interviewers, by taking cues form their interviewers and matching or imitating the behaviors of their interviewers. Results provide moderate support for the hypotheses: confirmatory behavior was found to be related to one specific motivational trait – need for cognition – and to the extremity of first impressions formed about interviewees. In addition, the analysis of the research question indicated that interviewees tend to engage in behavioral confirmation toward their interviewers. This study has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it opens a new direction in the employment interview research, which searches to identify links between individual characteristics and their decision-making strategies and outcomes. Practically, it helps improve interview training and design. v DISPOSITIONAL AND SITUATIONAL PREDICTORS OF CONFIRMATORY BEHAVIOR IN THE EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction Interpersonal interaction is ubiquitous in organizational environments. Most of the time, the interacting organizational members formally or informally evaluate each other. Whether the evaluations are used for organizational purposes (i.e., the evaluation of a subordinate that is part of a performance appraisal) or for individual purposes (i.e., the management of interpersonal relationships within the organization), they have important consequences for individual and organizational outcomes, such as perceived justice, satisfaction, and performance. Formal evaluations that are carried out for organizational purposes may be concluded in decisions regarding other people. As with most interpersonal decisions, these decisions tend to be complex and difficult. They may involve collections and analyses of large volumes of information, which can be perceived differently by various people. These decisions may also involve time pressure or other contextual characteristics that make decisions even more difficult. Finally, the individuals who are evaluated may filter information about themselves so as to increase the likelihood of favorable decisions. 1 Given this complexity and difficulty, some decisions for the purpose of formal evaluation that follow interpersonal interactions may be made by using less than rational decision-making approaches. One such approach consists of engaging in confirmatory behaviors. Confirmatory behaviors or “expectancy confirmation” behaviors (Dougherty, Turban, & Callender, 1994) consist of evaluators‟ behaviors that are intended to confirm evaluators‟ first impressions, such that final decisions are positively correlated with first impressions.
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