THE NEGATIVITY AND EXTREMITY EFFECTS IN PERSONNEL SELECTION

Abstract

Past applied research found a correspondence between impression formation and personnel selection. This assumption had since been held by applied researchers. The validity of this assumption was questioned in this research because social values have been changing over years. Meritocracy and transparency are increasingly being emphasized. Therefore, it was hypothesized that people would make fair judgments in a selection context. This hypothesis was evaluated within the framework of behavioural adaption theory. Also, both managers (n=27) and students (n=27) served as participants. Participants judged intelligence, attractiveness and suitability for appointment of hypothetical candidates over four trials of judgments. The targets were described by a pair of extreme and moderate intellectual traits. Both traits had negative and positive levels. Weights of the traits were identified by the pattern in their two-way interaction effect: parallelism (i.e., fair); convergence (i.e., positively biased); and, divergence (i.e., negatively biased). Since interest was in the individual decision maker, both group and individual participant analyses were conducted. The group analyses indicated fair judgments in intelligence and negatively biased judgments in attraction and suitability for appointment. However, the individual analyses showed equal distribution of fair and biased judgments in intelligence, attraction, and suitability for appointment. Moreover, there was an equal distribution of positively and negatively biased participants. The contributions, implications, and limitations of the present study are discussed.