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APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2013, 62 (4), 678–700 doi: 10.1111/j.1464-0597.2012.00510.x

The Boundaries of Effects on the Relationship between Interviewer Moods and Hiring Recommendation Chien-Cheng Chen* National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan

Hsien-Wen Chen Chienkuo Technology University, Taiwan

Ying-Yin Lin National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan

Past research has found that interviewers’ positive and negative moods could influence their evaluations of applicants. This study extends previous research by examining the moderating roles that interview structure and accountability played in the effects of interviewer moods on interviewer recommendation. Results from 105 interviewers in actual employment interviews for job openings partially support the hypotheses and indicate that the more structured the interview, the weaker the relationship between interviewer negative moods and hiring recommendation. In addition, when the interviewer’s perceived accountability was relatively high, the influence of interviewer positive moods on hiring recommendation was minimised.

INTRODUCTION Among many selection tools, the interview has been said to be the most favorable and widely used tool for personnel selection (Dipboye, 1997; Marcus, 2003), though past researchers have still had doubts about the validity and reliability of interviews (Posthuma, Morgeson, & Campion, 2002). Recent research on employment interviews has focused mainly on (1) the characteristics and behaviors of the applicant (e.g. gender, physical attractiveness, and impression-management tactics) that purportedly cause interviews to have poor validity (e.g. Howard & Ferris, 1996; Jawahar & Mattsson, 2005), (2) how to help interviewers accurately assess applicant * Address for correspondence: Chien-Cheng Chen, Department of Business Management, National Taipei University of Technology, 1, Chung-Hsiao E. Road, Section 3, Taipei 106, Taiwan. Email: ccchen@ntut.edu.tw © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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job-related characteristics (e.g. Barrick, Patton, & Haugland, 2000; Caldwell & Burger, 1998), and (3) how to mitigate the dysfunctional effects of job-irrelevant information on interviewer judgment (e.g. Tsai, Chen, & Chiu, 2005). An additional important issue that pertains to interview research and has recently received greater attention in the literature concerns the potential effects of interviewer characteristics on interview evaluation (e.g. Bernardin, Cook, & Villanova, 2000; Chen, Yang, & Lin, 2010; Hazer & Jacobson, 2003). Most empirical studies have focused on interviewers’ personal characteristics, particularly personality traits (e.g. conscientiousness, agreeableness, self-monitoring, and trait affectivity). However, interviewer-decision research has seldom addressed interviewers’ during-interview feeling states, such as affective moods. Limited research has shown that interviewers’ moods during interviews may play an important role in determining the interview results (e.g. Baron, 1987, 1993; Chen et al., 2010), although many of the moods attributable to interviewers originate from factors irrelevant to applicant qualification (Baron, 1987). To extend previous research involving laboratory experiments (Baron, 1987, 1993), the present study examines the effects of interviewer mood states on interview decisions in real employment interviews for real job openings. According to some research, “[M]any promising theoretical models exist that should be explored for their applicability to the employment interview” (Posthuma et al., 2002, p. 49). In the present study, we adopt the Affect Infusion Model (AIM; Forgas, 1995)—which accounts for and integrates affective influences on various information-processing strategies that people employ—to discuss how interviewer mood may influence interview decision. AIM asserts that affect infusion into thinking and judgment is most likely to occur when people interpret ambiguous or indeterminate information while lacking the benefit of objective evidence, and when people employ highly elaborate, open thinking, and a substantive processing strategy to make a decision (Forgas, 1998). It is also suggested that “affect infusion is greater when learning new information versus elaborating what one already knows” (Elfenbein, 2007, p. 349). Indeed, the selection interview discussed in this study is an open-ended constructive task that requires deep thinking and that involves the active generation of new information. In such a situation, AIM predicts that interviewer mood will lead to a priming effect in terms of interviewer’s attention, thinking, memory, and judgment processes, which in turn may influence the interviewer’s hiring recommendations. Another purpose of the present study is to examine the boundary conditions of the effects of interviewer moods on hiring recommendation. To our knowledge, only one study, conducted by Baron (1993), has examined such issues. He found that (1) if the applicant’s qualifications were ambigu© 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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ous, interviewers with positive moods tended to rate the applicant more positively and leniently than interviewers with negative moods, (2) if the applicant was unqualified for the target job, interviewers with positive moods tended to rate the applicant more harshly than interviewers with negative moods, and (3) if the applicant was highly qualified for the job in question, interviewer moods would not influence the interview rating. The present study extended Baron’s (1993) work in the following two ways: First, in contrast to the work of Baron (1993), where a laboratory experiment served for the collection of data, the present study uses real employment interviews for real job openings. It is unclear whether the influence identified by Baron (1993) generalises to situations that involve real consequences for the candidates and the interviewers. Posthuma et al. (2002) argued that because laboratory studies of the employment interview are low-investment situations for interviewers, they may be more influenced by rating biases in rating applicants for hypothetical jobs than would actual interviewers who are making a higher investment decision about hiring a real candidate for a long-term employment relationship. Thus, our research design has the advantage of reflecting “the physical, emotional, and cognitive fidelity of interviews where there are real outcomes for both interviewer and applicant” (Posthuma et al., 2002, p. 41). Second, Baron (1993) examined the moderating role that applicant characteristics (i.e. applicant qualifications for the target job) played in the effects of interviewer moods on interviewer recommendation. This study, however, examines another two moderating variables that capture important aspects of interview context (i.e. interview structure) and interviewer characteristics (i.e. accountability) (see Dipboye, 1992, for a categorisation of interview variables). According to Whetten (1989), studies that present a well-known model working normally in a new setting are of little theoretical value. In other words, studies that make a theoretical contribution to the literature are studies that explore settings in which a given model should not work. Therefore, our study can contribute to the literature by answering Whetten’s (1989) call for a rigorous study on the “qualitative changes in the boundaries of a theory (applications under qualitatively different conditions)” (p. 493).

THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

Main Effects of Interviewer Mood States In the current study, we propose that interviewers’ positive moods are positively related to hiring recommendation, while interviewers’ negative moods are negatively related to hiring recommendation. There are three reasons for this assertion. First, it has been argued that people will more easily recall © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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information congruent with their current mood (i.e. mood-congruent memory effects; Bower, 1981). Thus, when making evaluations of an applicant, interviewers with high levels of positive moods are more likely than interviewers with low levels of positive moods to encode and recall the positive aspects of the applicant’s qualifications, strengthening the likelihood that the interviewers will favorably assess the applicant for the job. Conversely, interviewers with high levels of negative moods are more likely than interviewers with low levels of negative moods to encode and recall darker aspects of the applicant, strengthening the likelihood that the interviewers will assess the applicant unfavorably for the job. Second, scholars have argued that individuals usually use their current mood as a basis for judging how they feel about their or others’ performance (i.e. mood as information effects; Schwarz & Clore, 1988). Thus, interviewers may use their current mood both when evaluating an applicant’s suitability for a job and, subsequently, when making their hiring recommendation. Specifically, the positive moods that interviewers experience will inform the interviewers that, in general, everything is OK; this generally sunny outlook will encourage interviewers to take certain interview-related risks (i.e. being flexible, keeping things simple, being less rigorous in the processing of information). Fredrickson’s (2001) “broaden-and-build theory” suggests that positive emotions can broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires and widen the array of thoughts and actions that come to mind. This will strengthen the likelihood that the applicant will receive lenient ratings from the interviewers. In contrast, negative-mood messages will inform interviewers that their dealings with an applicant may lead to disappointment. This situation, therefore, will push interviewers who are in a deeply negative mood to emphasise details and to adopt a deliberate and cautious processing strategy when examining any information about the applicant. Suspicious interviewers generally write up harsher evaluations of applicants (Forgas, 1998). Third, past research has confirmed that individuals with high levels of positive moods are more prone than individuals with low levels of positive moods to help others (e.g. George, 1991; Tsai, Chen, & Liu, 2007), while individuals with high levels of negative moods tend to be less inclined than individuals with low levels of negative moods to lend help (Hui, Law, & Chen, 1999). These arguments support the expectation that in the context of employment interviews, interviewers with high levels of positive moods are more likely than interviewers with low levels of positive moods to assist applicants during the interview process by asking them relatively easy questions, which may in turn enhance the applicant’s question-answering performance and the interviewers’ subsequent interview evaluation. In contrast, interviewers with high levels of negative moods may be more prone than interviewers with low levels of negative moods to ask an applicant some © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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moderately difficult (or even tough) questions, which in turn may lower the applicant’s interview performance and the interviewers’ subsequent interview rating. To date, only two studies have examined the effects of interviewer moods on interviewer evaluation. Baron’s (1987, 1993) experimental studies found that interviewers’ moods during interviews positively influence the interviewers’ subsequent evaluations of job applicants. Hence, we propose the following hypotheses: H1a: Interviewer positive recommendation.

moods

will

positively

hiring

H1b: Interviewer negative moods will be negatively related to hiring recommendation.

The Moderating Effect of Interview Structure The term “interview structure” can be defined as “the reduction in procedural variance across applicants, which can translate into the degree of discretion that an interviewer is allowed in conducting the interview” (Huffcutt & Arthur, 1994, p. 186). Scholars generally agree that increasing the structure of interviews can improve the psychometric properties of employment interviews (Banki & Latham, 2010; Campion, Palmer, & Campion, 1997) as well as the predictive validity of employment interviews (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998; Macan, 2009). Certain components of interview structure seem to have the potential to reduce the biasing effects of interviewer mood. For instance, the components of “having specific questions to ask prior to the interview” and “questions are relevant for assessing the applicants’ job-related abilities” encourage the interviewers to focus their questions on applicants’ job-relevant performance and behaviors. Thus, interviewers’ mood states during an interview are less likely to influence their questioning strategies and subsequent evaluation of applicants. The component of “evaluating applicant responses to each question” can mitigate the cognitive loading that takes place while interviewers make interview-oriented decisions; consequently, it is possible to reduce the influence of irrelevant information (i.e. information stemming from interviewer mood-states) on interviewer decisions. The component of “asking identical questions in an identical order for each candidate” limits the process of interviewers’ questioning and, thus, helps enhance the possibility that applicants’ answers reflect applicants’ actual qualifications rather than interviewer biases (Dipboye, 1997). Thus, we propose the following hypotheses: H2a: The higher the interview structure, the weaker the relationship will be between interviewer positive moods and interviewer hiring recommendation. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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H2b: The higher the interview structure, the weaker the relationship will be between interviewer negative moods and interviewer hiring recommendation.

The Moderating Effect of Accountability The term “accountability” has been defined as “being answerable to audiences for performing up to certain prescribed standards, thereby fulfilling obligations, duties, expectations, and other charges” (Schlenker, Britt, Pennington, Murphy, & Docherty, 1994, p. 634). In the context of employment interviews, being accountable means “being monitored and evaluated by others for the quality of one’s judgment or decision, being obligated to others, or having to justify one’s thoughts or actions to others” (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002, p. 185). Often experiencing a powerful need to “maintain the approval and the respect of those to whom they are accountable” (Tetlock, 1985, p. 309), individuals who are held accountable for their decisions were found to gather and encode information with relatively low levels of bias (Rozelle & Baxter, 1981), to think through related matters with comparative thoroughness and care (Ford & Weldon, 1981), and to make accurate decisions (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002). Interviewers with a heightened sense of accountability may adopt a more thorough and cautious information-gathering process than interviewers who lack this heightened sense. Likewise, interviewers with a heightened sense of accountability may be more likely than accountability-lacking interviewers to engage in pre-emptive self-criticism that minimises not only the possibility of incorrect hiring decisions but also subsequent blame and punishment (Eder, 1999). These self-accountable interviewers will process applicant messages in detail rather than rely simply on personal heuristic or summary evaluations of the source of the messages (Chaiken, 1980). Therefore, self-accountable interviewers will be motivated to make sensible interview decisions by engaging in thoughtful and systematic processing strategies (Palmer & Feldman, 2005) and by focusing on information relevant to the target job (Feldman & Lynch, 1988). All this would mitigate the influence of extraneous information (e.g. interviewer moodstates) on these interviewers’ decisions. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses: H3a: The greater the accountability of interviewers, the weaker the relationship will be between the interviewers’ positive moods and the interviewers’ hiring recommendations. H3b: The greater the accountability of interviewers, the weaker the relationship will be between the interviewers’ negative moods and the interviewers’ hiring recommendations. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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METHODS

Participants Participants in this study consisted of 50 interviewers at 50 firms in Taiwan (14 firms in the financial industry, 19 in the manufacturing industry, three in the service industry, and 14 in miscellaneous industries). In general, each interviewer was invited to rate at most five applicants (mean = 2.10). Of the 50 interviewers, 35 (70%) were male, their mean age was 36 years, and mean tenure was 7.05 years. On average, they had received interviewer training about three times and had conducted over 50 interviews. The types of job vacancies included in this study were predominantly limited to entry-level jobs.

Procedure We first obtained permission from each firm’s management to contact prospective participants in this study, and then asked the given firm’s staff to solicit the interviewers for participation. To refrain from influencing interviewers’ moods and decisions during the interviews, we did not disclose the true objectives of this study to the interviewers: we simply told them that the main purpose of this study concerned the procedural aspects of selectioninterview processes. We guaranteed the participants that we would ensure their privacy by keeping all responses anonymous. In this study, each interview involved only one interviewer and one interviewee (i.e. the applicant). As soon as each interview was completed, interviewers were invited to fill out a survey concerning their positive and negative moods, their perception of the applicant’s application qualifications, and their post-interview hiring recommendation regarding the applicant. Also upon completion of an interview, the interviewer would receive an invitation to fill out a survey concerning levels of interview structure, accountability, and personal demographic information. Of the 305 questionnaires issued, 116 were returned. In order to identify the reasons for the low response rate, we contacted those firms whose management had helped us solicit participation from interviewers. We found that the most prevalent reason for the low response rate was that some interviewers disliked interruptions when making interview decisions—and filling out the survey would have been just such an interruption. After deleting invalid questionnaires, we had a valid sample of 105 interviews, which amounts to a 35 per cent valid-return rate.

Measures Interviewer Moods. We used six items from an instrument devised by Bono, Foldes, Vinson, and Muros (2007). We used the instrument, which © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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was a short version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), to measure the extent to which three nouns described interviewers’ feelings of positive moods (i.e. “happiness”, “enthusiasm”, and “optimism”) and three nouns described interviewers’ feelings of negative moods (i.e. “anxiety”, “anger”, and “irritation”) during the interviewers’ given interview (the extent of the description was measured on a scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 4 = very much so). We chose to use the short version because its affective terms could roughly cover the full range of work-relevant emotions (Bono et al., 2007), and because it could reduce the likelihood that interviewers, perhaps growing frustrated with the length of the assessment, would respond carelessly to the items. Results of a principal component analysis with oblique rotation yielded a two-factor solution that explained 85.39 per cent of the variance. The Cronbach’s as for positive moods and negative moods were .92 and .88 in this study. Interview Structure. We used five items from Tsai et al. (2005) to measure the construct of interview structure. Interviewers were asked to indicate the level of structure characterising their respective interviews by responding to the items (i.e. statements) on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Three sample items are “I had specific questions to ask prior to the interview”, “My questions were relevant for assessing the applicants’ abilities to perform the job duties”, and “I used the exact same questions for all applicants”. The Cronbach’s a was .71 in this study. Accountability. We used two items from Brtek and Motowidlo (2002) to measure how much accountability interviewers felt when conducting the interviews. The measurements rested on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Items included “I would have to explain the interview assessment to my supervisors” and “I would have to explain my interview-conducting process to my supervisors”. The Cronbach’s a was .90 in this study. Hiring Recommendation. Two items adopted from Higgins and Judge (2004) served to measure, on a 6-point Likert scale, the interviewers’ postinterview hiring recommendations of applicants. The two items are “I would recommend extending a job offer to this applicant” and “Overall, I would evaluate this candidate positively”. The Cronbach’s a was .95 in this study. Control Variables. Several control variables were included in the present study: application qualifications, interviewer gender, interviewer © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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tenure, interviewer training, and industry type. Past research showed that applicants’ application qualifications would positively influence interviewer decisions (e.g. Cole, Rubin, Feild, & Giles, 2007; Tsai, Chi, Huang, & Hsu, 2011). The reason behind the effects may be that interviewers’ perceptions of applicants’ application qualifications would affect not only the interviewers’ conduct during the interview but the interviewers’ subsequent judgment as well (Tsai et al., 2005). Thus, we included “application qualifications” as a control variable, which we measured according to one item, “I have a good overall impression of the applicant based on written information”, adopted from Chapman and Rowe (2001). Interviewers were asked to indicate their agreement with this item on a 5-point rating scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). In addition, past scholars have shown that interviewers’ gender, tenure, and training were all related to their evaluations (e.g. Dipboye & Jackson, 1999; London & Poplawski, 1976; Stevens, 1998). We assessed interviewer tenure by presenting interviewers with one self-reported item where interviewers would identify the total number of years they had been in their current job. We measured interviewer training according to one item: whether or not interviewers had received job-interview training. Finally, we included industry types as covariates because industry type might direct interviewers’ attention, in turn influencing interviewers’ recommendation-related decisions (e.g. Ford, Heaton, & Brown, 2001). According to the “Standard Industrial Classification System” definition, which Taiwan government agencies have widely adopted, we classified industry type as financial industry, manufacturing industry, service industry, and miscellaneous industries. Thus, we created three dummy variables, with the miscellaneous industries as the referent category. Finally, because the original survey instrument, as stated above, was in English, we had the English scale translated into Chinese and then backtranslated into English to ensure cross-linguistic comparability of the scaleitem contents (Brislin, 1980).

RESULTS Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations of all variables included in this study. Consistent with Baron’s (1987, 1993) research, interviewers’ positive moods were positive in relation to the interviewers’ hiring recommendations (r = .70, p < .01), while interviewers’ negative moods were negatively related to the interviewers’ hiring recommendations (r = -.51, p < .01). In addition, we found that applicants’ application qualifications were positively related to interviewers’ hiring recommendation (r = .78, p < .01), a finding that was consistent with past research (e.g. Tsai et al., 2005). © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

– – – – 5.92 – 1.00 .85 .82 .65 1.20 1.69

Cronbach’s a coefficients are on the diagonal. Gender was coded by 0 = Male and 1 = Female. * p < .05; ** p < .01.

– – – – 36.00 – 3.16 2.54 1.62 4.30 4.26 4.41

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Manufacturing Industry Financial Industry Service Industry Interviewer Genderb Interviewer Age Interviewer Training Application Qualification Positive Moods Negative Moods Interview Structure Accountability Hiring Recommendation

Mean

Variable – -.46** -.39** -.33** -.10 -.22* .12 .09 -.02 .01 -.15 .14

– -.17 -.03 -.20* .12 -.10 -.02 -.20* -.19 -.05 -.03

– -.12 .53** .23* -.12 .00 .40** .28** .23* -.14

– -.28** -.16 .11 -.08 -.18 -.08 .12 -.03

– .39** .01 .03 .38** .30** .27** -.03

– -.05 .01 .32** .08 .52** -.13

– .66** -.39** -.01 -.06 .78**

(.92) -.31** .11 -.04 .70**

TABLE 1 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Variablesa

(.88) .35** .41** -.51**

(.71) .20* -.02

(.90) -.20*

(.95)

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CHEN ET AL. TABLE 2 Prediction of Hiring Recommendation from Interviewer Positive Moods Hiring recommendation

Variables Control variables Manufacturing Industry Financial Industry Service Industry Interviewer Gender Interviewer Age Interviewer Training Application Qualifications Negative Moods

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

.03 .01 .05 -.14† .02 -.04 .68** -.28**

.02 -.00 .01 -.10 .04 -.06 .51** -.24**

.02 .00 .01 -.08 .03 -.03 .51** -.24**

.03 .03 .02 -.09 .05 -.06 .52** -.29**

.28**

.27**

.28**

Independent variables Positive Moods (PM) Moderators Interview Structure (IS) Accountability (AC)

.03 -.05

Interaction Terms PM ¥ IS PM ¥ AC Model F R2 DR2

.04 .02 .01 -.13†

25.22 .68**

26.80 .72** .04**

21.68 .72** .00

18.98 .73** .01

Note: The entries in the table are the standardised bs. † p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01.

As seen in Table 2 and Table 3, we performed two series of hierarchical regression analyses1 to separately test the influences of interviewer positive moods and negative moods on hiring recommendation, and whether interview structure and accountability moderate the relationship between interviewer moods and hiring recommendations. In Table 2, the Model 1 regression, which comprises eight control variables (i.e. three industry 1 As the same interviewer evaluated multiple applicants (mean = 2.01), data collected from such interviewers may be confounded by certain interviewer effects. The assumptions of regression analysis may be violated when using ordinary least square (OLS) regression models to test this kind of data (Hox, 1994). Therefore, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses, which explicitly take into account the nested nature of the data, may be a more proper statistical technique than OLS regression models used in the present study. However, when we followed Hoffmann, Griffin, and Gavin’s (2000) suggestion to fit a null model to estimate the total systematic variance in the dependent variable (i.e. hiring recommendation), results showed an intraclass correlation (ICC[1]) of .00059, which was far lower than the recommended ICC(1)

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dummy variables, interviewer gender, interviewer age, interviewer training, application qualifications, and interviewer negative moods2), accounted for 68 per cent of the variance in hiring recommendation (p < .01). Application qualifications (b = .68, p < .01) and interviewer negative moods (b = -.28, p < .01) were significantly related to hiring recommendation. In Model 2, the regression features the independent variable interviewer positive moods (PM), which explains a significant amount of hiring-recommendation variability beyond that of the control variables (DR2 = .04, p < .01). The standardised regression weight was significant for positive moods (b = .28, p < .01). Therefore, Hypothesis 1a was supported. In Model 3, the two moderating variables, including interview structure (IS) and accountability (AC), were added to the regression. As shown in Table 2, the two variables did not explain a significant amount of hiring-recommendation variability beyond that of the control variables and the independent variables (DR2 = .00, p > .05). Model 4 is a moderated regression in which we added to the predictors the two possible two-way interaction terms about interview structure (i.e. PM ¥ IS) and accountability (i.e. PM ¥ AC). To counter problems of multicollinearity in tests of interaction terms, we centered all independent and moderating variables before creating the interaction terms3 (see Jaccard, Turrisi, & Wan, 1990). Because it is commonly argued that interaction effects have small effect sizes and their tests of significance frequently suffer from low power, we followed past scholars’ (e.g. McClelland & Judd, 1993; Sauley & Bedeian, 1989) suggestion that the significance levels for interaction terms should be relaxed to p < .10. As shown in Table 2, PM ¥ IS was not significantly related to interviewer evaluation (b = .01, p > .10), thereby disconfirming Hypothesis 2a. However, there was a significant two-way interaction between PM and AC (b = -.13, p < .10). The shape of this PM ¥ AC interaction was investigated further in Figure 1. Results of a simple slope analysis (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003) indicate that when the extent of accountability felt by the

values found in the literature (e.g. Bliese, 2000). Further, an assessment of the significance of the between-interviewer variance indicated that it was not significantly different from zero (c2 [70] = 63.33, p > .10), which suggests that the follow-up steps of HLM analysis could not proceed. Thus, OLS regression models were used to test the research framework in this study. 2 As previous research (Isen, 1999) has found that the effects of both positive moods and negative moods on information processing and decision-making are neither symmetrical nor parallel, future research might examine the two kinds of moods simultaneously. Therefore, when examining the effects of positive moods (or negative moods), we simultaneously control the effects of negative moods and positive moods in the regression. 3 Although we centered all independent and moderating variables before creating the interaction terms, the independent variables and moderating variables included in the regression (for all four models) were kept uncentered. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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FIGURE 1.

The moderating effect of accountability.

interviewer was relatively low, interviewer positive moods were positively related to hiring recommendation (t = 3.78, p < .01). In contrast, when the extent of accountability felt by the interviewer was relatively high, the relationship was reduced (t = 1.24, p > .05). Overall, these results support Hypothesis 3a. As seen in Table 3, Model 1’s regression includes the control variables, which accounted for 68 per cent of the variance in hiring recommendation (p < .01). Application qualifications (b = .57, p < .01) and interviewer positive moods (b = .32, p < .01) were significantly related to hiring recommendation. In Model 2, the regression features the independent variable interviewer negative moods (NM), which explains a significant amount of hiringrecommendation variability beyond that of the control variables (DR2 = .04, p < .01). The standardised regression weight was significant for negative moods (b = -.24, p < .01). Therefore, Hypothesis 1b was supported. Model 3, whose regression featured the two moderating variables (i.e. interview structure and accountability), did not explain a significant amount of hiringrecommendation variability beyond that of the control variables and the independent variables (DR2 = .00, p > .05). Model 4 is a moderated regression in which we added to the predictors the two possible two-way interaction terms about interview structure (i.e. NM ¥ IS) and accountability (i.e. NM ¥ AC). Table 3 shows that NM ¥ IS was significantly related to interviewer evaluation (b = .13, p < .10). Figure 2, which supports the expected shape of the hypothesised interaction, illustrates that when the interview structure was relatively low (i.e. low IS), interviewer negative moods were negatively related to hiring recommendation (t = -3.24, p < .01). In contrast, when the interview structure was relatively high (i.e. high IS), the magnitude of the negative relationship was reduced (t = -1.06, p > .05). Overall, these results support Hypothesis 2b. However, the standardised regression weight for NM ¥ AC was not significant (b = -.03, p > .10), thereby disconfirming Hypothesis 3b. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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TABLE 3 Prediction of Hiring Recommendation from Interviewer Negative Moods Hiring recommendation Variables Control variables Manufacturing Industry Financial Industry Service Industry Interviewer Gender Interviewer Age Interviewer Training Application Qualifications Positive Moods

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

-.02 .03 -.06 -.10 .00 -.11† .57** .32**

.02 -.00 .01 -.10 .04 -.06 .51** .28**

.02 .00 .01 -.08 .03 -.03 .51** .27**

.02 -.02 -.02 -.08 .07 -.03 .49** .29**

-.24**

-.28*

.03 -.05

.03 -.08

Independent variables Negative Moods (NM) Moderators Interview Structure (IS) Accountability (AC) Interaction Terms NM ¥ IS NM ¥ AC Model F R2 DR2

.13† -.03 25.83 .68**

26.80 .72** .04**

21.68 .72** .00

18.99 .73** .01

Note: The entries in the table are the standardised bs. † p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01.

FIGURE 2.

The moderating effect of interview structure.

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DISCUSSION The present study reflects our effort to extend the AIM theory (Forgas, 1995) by examining the influence of interviewer moods on hiring recommendation and the moderating effects of interview structure and accountability. We found that interviewers’ positive moods are positively related to hiring recommendation, while interviewers’ negative moods are negatively related to hiring recommendation, a result that is consistent with previous findings in this area (e.g. Baron, 1987, 1993). Thus, our results may help us better understand the effects of interviewer affect by answering questions regarding the “what” aspects of the underlying theory building (Whetten, 1989). Scholars have argued that interviewer mood states, because they can influence interviewer ratings but are unrelated to the performance of many jobs, often serve as a source of potential bias in the interview process (e.g. Baron, 1987, 1993). Although Baron (1987) has called for future research to determine means for reducing the impact of this possible source of bias, since then, to our knowledge, no study has examined this issue. To answer Baron’s call, we charged our current study with another purpose: explore how to mitigate the effects of interviewer moods by examining the moderating roles played by interview structure and accountability in the relationship between interviewer moods and hiring recommendation. Results of this study partially confirmed the viewpoints of several scholars (e.g. Campion et al., 1997; Huffcutt & Arthur, 1994) and found that a higher level of interview structure reduced the influence of interviewer negative moods on interviewer evaluation, but had no comparable effect on positive moods. A plausible reason for the unexpected finding is that interviewers’ positive moods may originate from some job-related information about applicants, which makes highly structured interviews unable to “filter” out the effects of positive moods. The results shown in Table 1 reveal that interviewers’ perceptions of application qualifications were highly positively related to interviewers’ positive moods (r = .66, p < .01), and this positive relationship implies that the quality of applicants’ application qualifications may be an important source of interviewers’ positive moods. Therefore, even in our study’s structured interviews, interviewers still considered their positive moods to be an indication of the good quality of the applicants’ written information, thus leading to a favorable interviewer evaluation. Past research has generally suggested that increasing the interview structure could enhance the validity of employment interviews (e.g. Campion et al., 1997; Dipboye, 1992; Posthuma et al., 2002), yet the explanation as to “why structured interviews are so much more predictive and reliable than unstructured formats has not been conclusively established” (Macan, 2009, p. 207). Our findings may contribute to the field by clarifying why highly structured interviews lead to better interview validity. By adopting a highly © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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structured interview, interviewers will ignore the effects triggered by their own negative moods, thus perhaps enhancing the quality of interview decisions. Although personnel practices that have been shown to be effective, such as highly structured interviews, are less frequently used (Anderson, Lievens, van Dam, & Ryan, 2004), practically we still suggest that organisations should adopt highly structured interviews in which (1) interview questions reflect the job in question, (2) all applicants respond to an identical set of identically ordered questions, and (3) interviewers assess applicants’ answers on the basis of the corresponding questions. Moreover, researchers suggested that future studies on interviewer accountability should insist on “more realistic decision-making settings that naturally vary across these salient contextual factors” (Eder, 1999, p. 211). The present study has echoed these calls for research by examining the issue relative to real employment interviews for real job openings. Our results demonstrate that accountability could reduce the positive effects of interviewer positive moods, but may not have similar effects on negative moods. According to previous research, positive moods inform people that all is safe, leading to broader, looser, less systematic, and less effortful information processing. In contrast, negative moods signal a problematic state of affairs and propel people to adopt detail-oriented, analytic approaches to understanding situations (Fredrickson, 2001; George & Zhou, 2007), and these approaches are similar to and thus overlap with the effects of accountability. Therefore, a comparison of the moderating effects of accountability on these two types of mood states in our sample reveals that interviewer accountability perhaps uniquely moderated the effects of positive moods, but had no comparable effect on negative moods. In practice, to reduce potential sources of error caused by interviewers’ positive moods and to enhance the quality of interviewer decisions, organisers should increase the level at which an interviewer perceives his or her accountability. In this regard, we propose the following suggestion: organisations should inform their interviewers (before an interview) that, when drawing up their interview ratings, the interviewers must explain their interview process and their interview assessment to a supervisor. Comparing our results with past research findings, we suggest that both positive affect and negative affect are like two double-edged swords regarding the quality of interviewers’ decisions. On the one hand, individuals in positive moods can be well situated to make thorough and flexible use of new information, while individuals in negative moods normally think systematically and are adept at structural cogitation. These patterns can strengthen the effectiveness and the efficiency of those individuals’ decision-making (e.g. Isen & Labroo, 2003). On the other hand, however, Baron’s (1987, 1993) work and the present study have suggested that both positive affect and negative affect in interviewers may bias their recalling, encoding, and decod© 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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ing of applicant information, which in turn can lead to unduly lenient and strict ratings, respectively. Future research should further clarify whether interviewers’ affect can strengthen the accuracy of interviewers’ interview decisions. Our study rests on both Western theory and the successful use of an Eastern (Taiwanese) sample. Scholars have argued that “we know very little about the use and effectiveness of employment interviews across cultures” (Macan, 2009, p. 215). It may be premature to assume that North American findings on the effects of interviewer moods can apply in other cultural settings (Adler, 1983). The present study may contribute to the research field of employment interviews by examining the applicability of Western managerial theories and practices to Eastern contexts. Our results also indicate the difference and consistency between East-based findings and West-based findings, which could help form the basis for a common framework for joint-venture organisations to help interviewers from diverse cultural backgrounds to “filter” the impact of their own moods. We still encourage future research to test our hypotheses in other countries to increase the generalisability of our findings.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, all the variables in our model were measured at a single time point, possibly constraining our ability to make causal inferences about the hypothesised relationships. However, past experimental research (e.g. Baron, 1987, 1993) had already demonstrated that interviewer moods affect interviewer evaluations. Theoretical arguments presented in our paper also suggest a causal direction running from interviewer moods to interviewer decisions. Thus, it seems reasonable to treat interviewer moods as an antecedent to hiring recommendations. To rule out the possibility of a reverse causal-order relationship, future research would do well to adopt a more elaborate design (e.g. involving pre- and post-interview surveys of interviewers and use of mood-change variables to predict hiring recommendation). Another possible limitation of this study is the problem of common method variance (CMV) (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003) because we collected data solely from interviewers. In this case, all the constructs that were evaluated by the interviewers would significantly correlate with each other if CMV were a serious problem. However, the correlation matrix indicates that this was not the case. In addition, we conducted Harman’s one-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003) on all of the items by extracting six distinct factors that accounted for 77 per cent of the total variance, with the first factor explaining 27 per cent. No single factor either emerged or accounted for most of the variance. Therefore, we believe the problem of CMV likely poses no threat to the validity of the findings reported in this study. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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Third, even though we made efforts to collect data from individuals applying for managerial positions, most organisations were less willing to disclose interview information because of confidentiality concerns. This unwillingness may have limited our sample’s job-vacancy types to entry-level jobs and may have weakened the generalisability of our findings. Future research could build on the present results and clarify the generalisability of the present study findings to research on interviewer affect. Fourth, the sample size of this study is slightly smaller than would have been preferred, thus possibly reducing the statistical power needed for rigorous testing of the hypotheses (Schmidt, Hunter, & Urry, 1976). However, our findings can be considered a conservative estimate of (1) actual relationships between interviewer moods and interviewer evaluations and, in particular, (2) the moderating effects of interview structure and accountability on the effects of interviewer moods on interviewer evaluations. We still encourage future research to test the study’s models by using a larger sample to clarify the external generalisations in terms of interviewer affect. To expand on the current findings, future research may explore the potential moderators between interviewer moods and interviewers’ interview decisions. For example, past research has indicated that the use of behaviorally anchored rating scales (e.g. Maurer, 2002), interviewers’ note-taking behavior (e.g. Middendorf & Macan, 2002), analytic thinking style (e.g. Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996), and the personality trait of conscientiousness (e.g. Bernardin et al., 2000) can enhance the quality of decision-making. Apparently these interview practices can work because they can mitigate the potential bias that threatens interview validity and that includes interviewer mood states. For example, in comparison with heuristic-thinking-style interviewers, analytical-thinking-style interviewers usually adopt a systematic approach to decision-making and carefully examine any information about the applicant, thus weakening the effects of their current mood on their interview decision. In addition, the ratings provided by highconscientiousness interviewers, as careful and thorough people, would be less susceptible to the moods experienced by the interviewers when making interview decisions. Future research should examine whether these “best practices” of the employment interview can reduce the potential sources of error caused by interviewer moods and enhance the quality of interviewer decisions. Another suggestion is that future research should examine the interplay between interviewer moods and interviewee moods. For example, according to the emotional contagion mechanism, which refers to an individual’s tendency to “mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994, p. 5), interviewees may imitate interviewers’ positive emotional displays such as friendly eye contact and smiles, thus creating inner cues that inform interviewees’ experience of © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.

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interviewers’ moods. This process can change interviewees’ performances, in turn influencing interviewers’ evaluations. We suggest that future studies examine both sides of the interview event and try to clarify any complex emotional-contagion processes therein. By conducting the study in a real interview setting and collecting data from actual interviewers, we found that interviewer positive moods and negative moods can affect hiring recommendations. Therefore, this study provides insights of considerably greater realism to researchers who study the topic and to both interviewers and interviewees, who operate in contexts where affective states can powerfully shape interviewer decisions (McGrath, 1982). Moreover, the present study extends previous research by exploring boundaries that characterise the effects of interviewer positive and negative moods. This study, in short, contributes to the literature by further deepening the field’s existing knowledge of the complex roles played by both interviewer moods and situational factors of the interview in shaping interviewers’ decisions.

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