Impressions Of Candidates Research Articles

Manning the British Empire: Gender, Identity and Emotions in Early Twentieth Century Britain

This article analyses the thought processes of Ralph Furse, a senior civil servant tasked with selecting and training senior colonial officials during the early twentieth century. It makes use of his desk diaries between 1910 and 1914, which he used to record his impressions of candidates for the colonial service, and his autobiography, published after his retirement in the 1960s. Furse based his assessments on masculine qualities of the candidates, as he saw them, and on their emotional styles. Those who projected authority as men, were physically imposing and could manage their emotions effectively were generally deemed suitable, whilst the more gregarious candidates lacking these masculine qualities were rejected. Furse was a gatekeeper to elite male status and his job helped shape his own sense of identity as a landed gentry man.

How a Social Network Profile Affects Employers’ Impressions of the Candidate: An Application of Norm Evaluation

Employers have used social network sites (SNSs) to screen job candidates. However, the mechanism by which SNS posts shape employers’ impressions of the candidates is unclear in previous research. Two studies were conducted to examine how employers develop impressions of job candidates by evaluating their SNS profile against perceived organizational and societal injunctive norms (perceived organizational injunctive norms [POINs] and perceived societal injunctive norms [PSINs], respectively), through a 2 (SNS profile type: alcohol-free vs. alcohol-included) × 2 (industry: Catholic school vs. information technology [IT]) × 2 (gender-role perceptions based on candidate’s sex: male vs. female) between-subjects experiment design. Findings contribute to the scholarship on impression formation via SNSs by showing that individuals develop their impressions by evaluating how much the target SNS profile aligns with POINs. Specifically, an alcohol-included Facebook profile violated POINs and PSINs more than an alcohol-free profile. In addition, both studies found that the interaction effect between the profile and the industry on the extent to which the SNS profile aligned with POINs and PSINs was significantly different for the male and female candidate. This research offers practical implications about how to manage professional self-presentation on SNSs.

Attentiveness in Elections with Impressionable Voters

We propose a model of attentiveness in elections with impressionable voters under various electoral rules. Voters' behavior is determined by their attentiveness and impressions of candidates. We show that attentiveness is as important as voters' preferences for the outcome of the election. Specifically, we show that candidates benefit from increased voter attention under all rules other than negative plurality. Second, less attentive voters have a larger impact on the election outcome under plurality and negative plurality rules, but not under approval voting. Third, under limited and endogenous attentiveness, a unanimously first-ranked candidate may not win under plurality and approval voting, but he always wins under negative plurality. We finally consider the case of tonality in news coverage and show that under plurality rule and approval voting candidates may benefit from frequent news coverage even if the news is negative.

Confronting the 'Electability Trap': Effects of Campaign Messages, Information, and Perceived Competence on Voter Evaluations of Underrepresented Candidates

While voters may form negative impressions of candidates that do not immediately fit traditional expectations, equal electoral success rates demonstrate that voters are not biased against women and racial minority candidates. I argue that candidates address voter perceptions through their campaign strategy and messages. Thus, a key dimension of campaign strategy is the extent to which perceptions of candidate gender and racial identity may encourage, or even necessitate, the use of differing campaign message strategies. This paper seeks to determine whether candidate profile characteristics might account for the seeming discrepancy between voter bias and electoral outcomes. I use large-scale observational and experimental messages to show how candidate identity, communication---particularly image-managing messages that express individualistic work-ethic and perseverance---and signals of competency affect voter perceptions. In a preliminary forced-choice paired-conjoint and a menu-based choice experiment (n=500), I find that constituents make judgments regarding vote choice, candidate issue competencies, and character using identity. Nevertheless, respondents positively respond to other dimensions of candidate profiles, specifically messages of work-ethic and previous political experience. In particular, Image-Management is consistently shown to be associated with a significant positive increase in these evaluations. In the menu-based survey experiment, I find that when respondents craft the candidates they would consider ideal and worthy of their vote, women and racial minorities are often recommended to pursue messages of Image-Management and higher educational attainment. Taken together, these findings suggest that candidate messaging may provide an account for why women and racial minority candidates are able to obtain electoral success despite evidence of voter biases. This work provides cutting-edge analysis of strategic campaign messaging and puts to the test its effectiveness in attenuating voter biases.

Dear Program Director: Deciphering Letters of Recommendation.

Letters of recommendation (LORs) are an important part of applications for residency and fellowship programs. Despite anecdotal use of a "code" in LORs, research on program director (PD) perceptions of the value of these documents is sparse. We analyzed PD interpretations of LOR components and discriminated between perceived levels of applicant recommendations. We conducted a cross-sectional, descriptive study of pediatrics residency and fellowship PDs. We developed a survey asking PDs to rate 3 aspects of LORs: 13 letter features, 10 applicant abilities, and 11 commonly used phrases, using a 5-point Likert scale. The 11 phrases were grouped using principal component analysis. Mean scores of components were analyzed with repeated-measures analysis of variance. Median Likert score differences between groups were analyzed with Mann-Whitney U tests. Our survey had a 43% response rate (468 of 1079). "I give my highest recommendation" was rated the most positive phrase, while "showed improvement" was rated the most negative. Principal component analysis generated 3 groups of phrases with moderate to strong correlation with each other. The mean Likert score for each group from the PD rating was calculated. Positive phrases had a mean (SD) of 4.4 (0.4), neutral phrases 3.4 (0.5), and negative phrases 2.6 (0.6). There was a significant difference among all 3 pairs of mean scores (all P < .001). Commonly used phrases in LORs were interpreted consistently by PDs and influenced their impressions of candidates. Key elements of LORs include distinct phrases depicting different degrees of endorsement.

Candidate characteristics driving initial impressions during rapport building: Implications for employment interview validity

We examine the antecedents impacting interviewers’ initial impressions of candidates formed during the rapport‐building stage of the interview and subsequent evaluations of answers to highly structured interview questions. Ratings for 130 mock interview candidates reveal a strong relationship between interviewers’ initial impression of the candidate and their evaluations of candidate responses to structured questions. These initial impressions correspond with candidate extraversion and verbal skill, controlling for job qualifications. Interviewers’ initial impressions mediate the effect of candidate characteristics, relevant for some jobs more so than others, on later evaluations. Thus, initial impressions formed during rapport building appear to influence subsequent evaluations whether they are clearly job‐relevant or not. These findings have important implications for the validity of structured interviews.

Initial evaluations in the interview: Relationships with subsequent interviewer evaluations and employment offers.

The authors of this study examine how evaluations made during an early stage of the structured interview (rapport building) influence end of interview scores, subsequent follow-up employment interviews, and actual internship job offers. Candidates making better initial impressions received more internship offers (r = .22) and higher interviewer ratings (r = .42). As predicted, initial evaluations of candidate competence extend beyond liking and similarity to influence subsequent interview outcomes from the same interviewer (ΔR² = .05), from a separate interviewer (ΔR² = .05), and from another interviewer who skipped rapport building (ΔR² = .05). In contrast, assessments of candidate liking and similarity were not significantly related to other judgments when ratings were provided by different interviewers. The findings of this study thus indicate that initial impressions of candidates influence employment outcomes, and that they may be based on useful judgments of candidate competence that occur in the opening minutes of the structured interview.

Proposing Emotion as a Dimension of Affective Agenda Setting: Separating Affect into Two Components and Comparing Their Second-Level Effects

This study expands the theory of second-level agenda setting to include emotion as affect and seeks to understand its valence. Three important findings emerged; first, the media's emotional-affective agenda corresponds with the public's emotional impressions of candidates; second, negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions even when the topic is not a negative “problem”; and third, agenda-setting effects are greater on the audiences' emotions, defined as feelings, than on their cognitive assessments of character traits, the most common way affect is measured in agenda-setting studies.

Ballot Photographs as Cues in Low‐Information Elections

In low‐information elections, voters are often faced with the task of choosing from a list of unknown candidates. By examining a set of low‐information elections where candidate photographs were displayed on the ballot, we test how first impressions of candidates can influence election outcomes. We find that attractive candidates are more likely to be attributed the qualities associated with successful politicians and these trait inferences, based on facial appearances, influence the outcomes of elections. We also find that these trait inferences are based on physical characteristics of the candidates, such as age, race and ethnicity, evident from a photograph. Therefore, first impressions can be important determinants of election outcomes, especially in low‐information elections.

A Model of Candidate Evaluations in Senate Elections: The Impact of Campaign Intensity

We theorize that campaign intensity alters the criteria individuals use when evaluating candidates We define campaign intensity as the culmination of the interplay among the candidates, news media, and the perceived closeness of the race. As the intensity increases, we expect people to adjust their decision-making criteria. Examining the impact of intensity in 97 Senate races between 1988 and 1992, we find that intense campaigns encourage individuals to rely more heavily on both sophisticated criteria and simple decision rules when forming impressions of candidates. As campaigns become more hard-fought, people are more likely to consider policy and ideology as well as partisanship and retrospective evaluations of the president and the economy While the campaign setting clearly affects citizens' decision-making processes, different types of people react differently to the intensity of the campaign. As races become more competitive, novices begin to rely more heavily on issues, sociotropic assessments, part...

Prediction of medical school performance: Use of admission interview report narratives

Background: Most American medical schools interview candidates as part of the selection process for admission and require interviewers to record written comments regarding their impressions of candidates they meet. Admission committees use this interview data to select their candidates for admission assuming that interviewers’ written assertions will forecast future achievement of matriculants in medical school. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether particular attributes of applicants elicited by probe statements on the admission interview report form were associated with performance indices in medical school. Methods: In this study, 930 interview reports were coded for matriculants at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine from 1984 to 1988. Data from the content analysis of the interview reports were correlated with medical school grade point averages and performance on the National Board of Medical Examiners Part I and Part II examinations. Results: Comments from the interview report responding to probes regarding experience and knowledge of the profession, source of motivation, degree of educational, economic, and social advantagedness, and the overall summary were associated with student performance in medical school. Conclusion: Studies such as these give admission committee members insight into applicant attributes that may be positively associated with medical school performance.

An examination of how voters form impressions of candidates' issue positions during the nomination campaign

There is increasing evidence that issues influence voter preferences during the nomination campaign (Bartels, 1985; Bartels, 1988); however, only Bartels (1988) and Conover and Feldman (1986, 1989) have examined how partisans forge perceptions of candidates' positions on issues prior to the general election campaign. The goal of this paper, then, is to examine how individuals develop perceptions of candidates' issue positions during the crucial months leading to the nominating conventions. Relying on theories developed in social-psychology, I tested five competing hypotheses known to influence individuals' perceptions of candidates' issue positions. An examination of the findings revealed that there is strong support for one of the hypotheses and modest support for three additional hypotheses. In summary, it appears that voters are quite ingenious in forming impressions of where candidates stand on the issues. They rely on stored information about politics, they actually adjust candidates' true positions to relieve cognitive inconsistencies, they evoke their own issue positions to assume candidates they like agree with them and candidates they dislike disagree with them, and finally they evoke their own issue positions to assume candidates agree with them even when they hold no sentiment toward the candidate.

Impressions of Ford and Reagan

Candidate organizations recruit delegates from among a candidate's committed partisans and this determines the distribution of votes in advance of the convention. This means that the function of the convention has shifted from choosing the nominee-through bargaining among uncommitted leaders and delegates-to deciding how to respond to the nominee, mainly through individual psychological adjustments. When a candidate loses, his loyalists have a difficult time adjusting to the winner. Within this new context, the images delegates form of candidates help to determine whether they accept the nominee as legitimate and worthy of their support. The images and impressions of candidates are simply what individual delegates think to be the personal characteristics of their man and of his opponent. A favorable impression of an opponent makes it easier for a delegate to adjust to that person as the nominee. The candidates present themselves as they want to be seen by others and, in so doing, provide the raw material out of which delegates fashion their impressions. Erving Goffman distinguishes between how people want to be seen, revealed by how they express or present themselves, and how they actually impress others.'

The structured interview: a selection device.

This study is a first step in evaluating the value of a structured interview in the selection of students for a six-year joint bachelor's-medical degree program. Specifically, the structured interview results were related to the admissions decision. The predictive utility of the interview will be explored in subsequent studies. 73 candidates were interviewed for 40 openings in the first year of the program and 132 candidates were interviewed for 36 openings in the third year of the program. Each candidate was interviewed both by a physician and by a non-physician. Each interviewer rated each interviewee on several traits plus making an over-all recommended admissions decision. Interviewers responded mainly in terms of over-all global impressions of candidates. Correlations between physician and non-physician ratings of the same candidates were low. The influence on admissions decisions of interviewer recommendations (by both physicians and non-physicians) was also low. There was some suggestion that physician ratings had more influence on decisions about candidates for the first year while non-physician ratings had more influence for candidates for the third year.