Does It Take Two to Tango? Examining How Applicants and Interviewers Adapt Their Impression Management to Each Other

Annika Wilhelmy,Timothy G Wingate,Nicolas Roulin

doi:10.1007/s10869-020-09720-5

Abstract

Although research has long examined applicants’ use of impression management (IM) behaviors in the interview, interviewers’ IM has only been recently investigated, and no research has attempted to combine both. The aim of this research was to examine whether and how applicants and interviewers adapt their IM to one another. To answer this question, we bring together IM, signaling theory, and the concept of adjacency pairs from linguistics, and carried out two studies. Study 1 was an observational study with field data (N = 30 interviews including a total of 6290 turns of speech by interviewers and applicants). Results showed that both applicants and interviewers are more likely to engage in IM in a way that can be considered as a “preferred” (vs. “dispreferred”) response pattern. That is, self-focused IM is particularly likely to occur as a response to other-focused IM, other-focused IM as a response to self-focused IM, and job/organization-focused IM as a response to job/organization-focused IM. In study 2, we used a within-subjects design to experimentally manipulate interviewer IM and examine its impact on (N = 120) applicants’ IM behaviors during the interview. Applicants who engaged more in “preferred” IM responses were evaluated as performing better in the interview by external raters. However, “preferred” IM responses were not associated with any other interview outcomes. Altogether, our findings highlight the adaptive nature of interpersonal influence in employment interviews, and call for more research examining the dynamic interactions between interviewers and applicants.

Highlights

Research has long examined applicants’ use of impression management (IM) behaviors in the interview, interviewers’ IM has only been recently investigated, and no research has attempted to combine both
Even relatively scarce behaviors can lead to important theoretical insights and have strong effects on interview outcomes
IM use is sometimes perceived as biasing interview outcomes, and our findings suggest that IM adaptations tend to not add potential biases

Summary

Introduction

Research has long examined applicants’ use of impression management (IM) behaviors in the interview, interviewers’ IM has only been recently investigated, and no research has attempted to combine both. Study 1 was an observational study with field data (N = 30 interviews including a total of 6290 turns of speech by interviewers and applicants) Results showed that both applicants and interviewers are more likely to engage in IM in a way that can be considered as a “preferred” (vs “dispreferred”) response pattern. Past research has focused on individual differences (e.g., personality) or situational factors (e.g., interview format) as antecedents of IM use, but interviewers and applicants are likely to adapt their IM according to new information communicated (i.e., signals sent and received) during the interview (Bangerter, Roulin, & König, 2012). We further video recorded the interviews, coded applicant IM, and obtained outcome measures from applicants, interviewers, and observers to examine whether patterns of applicants’ IM adaptation relate to various interview outcomes such as positive affect, interviewer liking towards the applicant, and interview performance

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