Why do job applicants behave the way they do?

Truth, lies and rolling dice. Not a Vegas weekend, but new research looking at applicant self-presentation: how individuals use behaviours to give a favourable account of themselves in job selection situations. We might call it faking, but are applicants just doing what recruiters expect of them?

The researchers, Anne Jansen and colleagues, drew on 53 recruiters (HR professionals)  from a range of Swiss companies, and two  adult student groups representing applicants (416 Masters students, replicated with 88 vocational apprentices). Both recruiters and applicants were presented with a set of self-presentation behaviours, such as "When applying for the job, I praised the organization" or "When applying for the job, I claimed to have experience that I didn’t actually have".

Recruiters were asked how appropriate the behaviours were, and agreement between their responses was high, strongly sharing expectations for half of the behaviours, and moderate agreement for virtually all the remaining. Collectively, they saw some behaviours, such as describing skills or knowledge, as appropriate and uncontroversial, with others definitely inappropriate, such as fabricating details, and still others, strategic ploys such as de-emphasising negative attributes, fell in between. This shared set of norms is what the research team expected, creating a job selection 'situational script' that recruiters expect to be followed. Did the applicants do so?

Enter the dice. Afraid of being tarred a faker, people are reluctant to admit to self-presentation, even for supposedly confidential, anonymous research. To address this, the applicants gave responses using the randomised response technique, which asked them only to reply truthfully to an item if they rolled a three or greater on a playing die - otherwise, they must respond affirmatively, regardless of the truth. This makes individual profiles impossible to identify whilst the aggregate data remains analysable, by looking at how responses differ from the base rate.

Jansen's team examined this data using correlation to compare frequency of applicant behaviour to recruiter judgement of that behaviour; they found high correlations at well above .8 (.9 in the larger Masters sample). The frequency of a self-presentation behaviour was strongly related to whether it was something that recruiters saw as acceptable.

The authors see this as the inevitable outcome of a 'strong situation', with right or wrong ways to behave - the shared attitude of the recruiters - where applicants are just trying to follow that script and do what they are 'supposed to', as learned from advice, previous experience, websites, or tacit feedback from the recruiter. Jansen and her colleagues conclude that common reactions to self-presentation behaviours, such as  moral condemnation or celebration as a social skill (not dissimilar to the concept of 'ability to identify criteria'), may be attempts to conjure individual qualities from what is mainly a situational phenomena. Conversely, it seems to me that, as understanding an individual's qualities is so useful in job selection, we would do well to experiment with meeting candidates in weaker, ambiguous situations with no right way to behave, to let them slide off-script and see the real them.

Jansen, A., König, C., Stadelmann, E., & Kleinmann, M. (2012). Applicants’ Self-Presentational Behavior Journal of Personnel Psychology, 11 (2), 77-85 DOI: 10.1027/1866-5888/a000046

How can photography help us to understand organisations?

"The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book." - Fathers and Sons by Ivan S. Turgenev, 1862.

As textual as humans have become, it's hard to deny the power pictures have to convey and enhance meaning. 20th century researchers recognised how images can be a tool for understanding, but the study of work and organisations has been slower to get in on the act. A paper from the University of Tennessee explores the possibilities of organisational research using one type of image, the photograph, and considers how to help our shots hit the target.

Authors Joshua Ray and Anne Smith outline the core benefits of photos, rich representations that offer others a 'glimpse of reality' captured mechanically in a way that bypasses memory recall bias and other forms of distortion. Photos can present the same environment at different times, allowing contrast that reveals subtle changes that might not otherwise be apparent. And the fun, familiar act of taking a photograph is something that members of the organisation can do themselves placing them 'into the research limelight'. Such participant-led research generally requires clear direction as to what constitutes a good use of their shots, and will mean they are generally absent from their own photos; however, it does broaden the voices heard in the research, offering a true organisational eye. Other options include the researcher taking all photos - offering more control at the expense of losing the insider perspective - or a hybrid approach, such as teaming the researcher with organisational members who can act as spotters, pointing out key environmental features.

The act of taking the photographs needn't be the end of the research process. Ray and Smith recount how the research philosophy has migrated to photo elicitation, where the photo acts as an object for discussion for organisational members. The text from these interviews or focus groups can be analysed using established methods such as content analysis. When using photo elicitation it is better that members themselves select the photos to discuss rather than providing them with the 'most important' images as determined by the researcher.

Other approaches directly analyse aspects of the photo, such as layout, the elements included in the image, or broader themes across images. Ray and Smith describe work by a team led by Alan Felstead of Cardiff University, who analysed photos of home offices and found they corroborated a pre-existing model of types of home office, but also demanded it be refined to account for photos that defied the existing typology. Hybrid approaches also exist that meld text and image into a 'visual script', all fair game for analysis.

Photography raises unique ethical issues. It is intrusive and more difficult to anonymise; consent issues abound, such as accidentally catching people in shot; visible branding and logos may require certain permissions. Researchers need also be aware that some may be sceptical of camera-led research, which may need to be justified to avoid harming its face validity with stakeholders. Nevertheless, photographic research could shed light on issues as various as whether managers and leadership are in sync with what features of the work world are strategic priorities, or how organisational members frame their identity. The authors conclude that 'the time is ripe for researchers to consider the use of photographs in organizational research'.

Ray, J., & Smith, A. (2011). Using Photographs to Research Organizations: Evidence, Considerations, and Application in a Field Study Organizational Research Methods, 15 (2), 288-315 DOI: 10.1177/1094428111431110

Training is more effective for those in their chosen job

Why do some get more out of training than others? One major factor is motivation, leading to such outcomes as greater skill acquisition, higher post-training confidence, and stronger intentions to apply the learning in the workplace. Trainers and researchers now understand ways to act on this, enhancing motivation by giving participants more control over the procedures of training and a choice in whether to participate in the first place. What else could help? Many models suggest that intrinsic motivation is facilitated by autonomy: the sense that you've chosen to be where you are, or do what you are doing. A recent study provides evidence that having a job that you chose to be in is linked, through motivation, to positive training outcomes.

John Patrick and his team from Cardiff University recruited as study participants 232 military instructors from across the British armed forces, themselves about to receive training on how to be a more effective instructor. For 161 participants, instructor was their job of choice, whereas the 72 remaining participants had this job assigned to them. Prior to training, they completed a questionnaire identifying their motivation for the course; after training they indicated their intention to apply the learning in the workplace. On both occasions (pre- and post-training) the instructors also provided ratings of self-efficacy - their confidence in their ability to carry out their instructor duties - and completed items testing their knowledge of the topic areas covered by the training.

Patrick's team built and tested a model wherein being in one's chosen job would cascade through pre-training attitude into post-training outcomes. They found that being in a job of choice was associated with higher pre-training motivation, which had the post-training benefits of greater knowledge acquisition and greater intention to apply the learning in the workplace. Being in a job of choice was directly associated with intention to apply learning, regardless of motivation. Although post-training self-efficacy was also higher for this group, this is less remarkable as the mechanism was unrelated to motivation, but simply that these individuals tended to have higher self-efficacy from the beginning.

The authors conclude that "it is important, whenever possible, to grant employees their choice of job when being moved within an organization" - not just for the sake of long-term aspirations, or their immediate performance, but in terms of their capacity and willingness to improve over time.

Patrick, J., Smy, V., Tombs, M., & Shelton, K. (2012). Being in one's chosen job determines pre-training attitudes and training outcomes Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (2), 245-257 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2011.02027.x

How do people perceive dominant behaviour by black female leaders?

For women in managerial positions, taking behaviours that are too overtly dominant or coloured with emotions can incur penalties: their leadership skills may be questioned and expressing anger frequently may lead them to lower status and salaries. Black leaders walk a similar line, with male black CEOs benefiting from having non-threatening, 'babyfaced' features where white leaders with more rugged features thrive. You could expect black women who are dominant and agentic to be especially penalised, subject to some kind of 'double jeopardy'. But the truth seems to be much more interesting.

In a US study led by Robert Livingston together with Ashleigh Shelby Rosette and Ella Washington, 84 non-black participants were asked to evaluate fictional leaders. Participants were assigned to conditions which changed just a few elements of the information they received: the skin colour (white/black) and gender of the leader, and glossing a directive or collaborative approach over an account of how they dealt with a poorly performing employee - for instance, whether they 'demanded' or 'encouraged' an improvement in performance. The directive approach suggested personal dominance which might turn participants against a leader. To measure this, participants responded to questions on leader effectiveness, gathered into an overall score, and rated whether the treatment of the employee owed more to the situation or to the leader's personality: an attribution to personality suggests poor judgment and inability to control themselves.

The data showed that white males received similar attributions of behaviour whether they were collaborative or directive. In line with previous work,  when they were dominant female leaders' decisions were attributed more to their personality, as were those of the black bosses. But there was a significant interaction between race and gender: black women leaders escaped the penalties, receiving similar attributions to the white male in both conditions. The same story was found for leader effectiveness: black or female bosses were penalised for agentic behaviour, but black and female bosses were not.

What's going on? Livingston's team believed that black women are receiving a perverse benefit from a particularly marginalised position. Their reading is that women are expected to conform to proscribed gender roles centring around soft emotions and minimal agency. Similarly, black 'others' may represent an out-group threat that is validated by expressions of dominance. Under this account, however, the prototypical idea of being 'black' evokes a black man, and 'woman' a white woman, at least in American society. As a consequence, black women are to some degree an anomaly - neither the classic black threat nor the threat to the established gender status quo – and so escape the associated penalties due to a kind of stereotype invisibility.

Livingston's team emphasise that this study does not suggest that black women escape prejudice in the workplace. There are many ways you can be differentially judged, for instance, evaluation and attribution of failures (on which we've written before). But this study suggests that when it comes to showing what you feel and getting things done, black women don't suffer a backlash when, as white males are able to, they get things done in an agentic fashion.

Livingston, R., Rosette, A., & Washington, E. (2012). Can an Agentic Black Woman Get Ahead? The Impact of Race and Interpersonal Dominance on Perceptions of Female Leaders Psychological Science, 23 (4), 354-358 DOI: 10.1177/0956797611428079

What makes a maverick?

Who are the mavericks who take the path less travelled and bring organisations along in their wake?  We can point to individuals, such as the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, but there has been little empirical work to establish the personal profile that predicts maverickism.

Enter Elliroma Gardiner and Chris J. Jackson, who gathered data online from 458 full-time workers within a range of sectors, seeking to map a range of personal variables onto their measure of maverickism. This measure captured the tendency to behave in disruptive, bold, risk-taking ways to achieve goals. It was also constructed to capture only functional maverickism, on the basis that when these behaviours lead to failures rather than successes the instigator is labelled a misfit or deviant, not a maverick; a typical item was "I have a knack for getting things right when least expected."

What predicted maverickism? After accounting for the predictive power of maleness - associated with maverickism - the  regression analysis revealed what was contributed by personality. More extraverted participants tended to be mavericks, reflecting the energetic, sociable side needed to push new ideas. Mavericks were also open to experience, the personality trait that reflects willingness to try new things and act against the status quo. Those with high maverickism tended to be lower in agreeableness, which the investigators had predicted: you may need some social skills to be a maverick, but you also need to be comfortable with people resenting your approach and with upsetting people.

Gardiner and Jackson found two other measures mattered after personality was taken into account. One came from a computer task of risky behaviour, where participants gained in-game money by inflating balloons bigger - but lost cash when they burst. In a condition where balloons became very sensitive in a second stage, raising the risks markedly, those who finished with more ruptured rubber had higher maverickism scores. The final measure was of laterality: the degree to which we rely on one side of our body over another. Participants with a stronger left-ear preference were more likely to report maverick behaviour... if they also scored low in the personality variable of neuroticism. Why? Left body laterality implies right brain laterality, and some lines of evidence suggest this is associated with creativity. Creative ideas can make a good maverick - but not if we're too anxious to act on them, as high neuroticism would imply.

The research suggests that maverick behaviour originates from individuals who are extraverted, curious, tough toward others, and fairly inured to punishing risk. The data also suggests that a combo of an emotionally stable personality with a creative capacity facilitates maverickism, although we might want to see this measured directly using measures of creativity.  I'm left fascinated by what differentiates the maverick from the workplace deviant. It could be about picking the right risks, but note that our functional mavericks stuck to their bold (but non-optimal) balloon strategy even in the face of feedback (bursts) that led others to cool off.   Are the mavericks just the lucky ones?

Gardiner, E., & Jackson, C. (2011). Workplace mavericks: How personality and risk-taking propensity predicts maverickism British Journal of Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02090.x

Depression and burnout: vicious cycles and the saving grace of exercise

A rise in levels of depression contributes to subsequent increases in work burnout, and burnout to later depression, according to new research. However, physical exercise can mitigate and even prevent this vicious cycle.

Here's the how: Sharok Toker and Michal Biron assessed employed visitors to a medical centre on three occasions spanning on average 40 months. They ended up with 1,632 participants from a range of occupations with a mean age of 47, mainly (70%) male. At each time point participants recorded levels of burnout, in terms of fatigue, cognitive weariness ("I have difficulty concentrating") and emotional exhaustion, as well as completing the depression scale of a patient-oriented clinical instrument. Participants also reported the volume of strenuous exercise they conducted within a typical week in the last month.

The what is as described: an increase in burnout from time one to time two predicted an increase in depression from time two to time three, even controlling for time two depression (that is, depression at the time of the burnout uptick). The same effect was found for depression on subsequent burnout. Why? These concepts are understood as related but distinct, with burnout reflecting strain due to the quality of the social situation at work whereas depression is a global state that involves a range of symptoms and an intense experience of sadness or diminished pleasure. Both however make demands on psychological and energetic resources, and this study's results bear out its expectations that a drain on these resources from one origin - such as a harried workplace - can lay the groundwork for other problems.

How about physical exercise? Toker and Biron hypothesised several reasons why it might act as a bulwark against this spiral. Exercise activates systems that can have physical outcomes like improving sleep and even damping down the physical consequences of sustained stress. It can also produce psychological benefits such as better body image and mood states. Moreover, it can be a useful way to take our mind off things, distracting from specific concerns (such as work challenges) or global cognitions (negative thoughts). Toker and Biron found that the more exercise you do, the milder the effect of earlier burnout/depression upon the other variable at a later time point, to the point of obliterating the effect for high doses of exercise.  They conclude that, as well as considering the larger links between job burnout and global depression, employers should recognise the benefits of exercise “as an important means of preventing the build-up of work-related or general distress.”

Toker, S., & Biron, M. (2012). Job burnout and depression: Unraveling their temporal relationship and considering the role of physical activity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97 (3), 699-710 DOI: 10.1037/a0026914

Perfectionists worry away the benefits of a break from work

Go on, have a few days off. Take a week - you've certainly earned it! Clear your mind, take a break - things will tick over til you return...

Easier said than done, of course. But respites from work are valuable, replenishing resources and preventing negative loads (mental fatigue, adrenaline build-up) spiralling out of control. Sadly, the positive gloss of the holiday itself tends to slip quickly when we return to work - a 'fade-out effect' described well in this Psychologist article.  What makes you more likely to fall prey to the fade-out? The quest for perfection, new research suggests.

Researcher Paul Flaxman and colleagues canvassed academics before, during and on two occasions after an Easter break, measuring changes in well-being. The 77 participants also completed a tool that measures self-critical perfectionism; this form of perfectionism centres around high standards and doubting your actions are sufficient to reach them. As this attribute is triggered by achievement -related stressors, such as deadlines or presentations, the researchers suspected the holiday itself would likely be a genuine respite for all, but that those high in this attribute could quickly crash once they returned to work.

Pre-holiday, perfectionists were worse off in terms of well-being: more exhausted, anxious and fatigued than their colleagues. During the holiday, their wellbeing raised and fell in line with colleagues. Yet, at return to work, they quickly reported higher exhaustion, giving way to higher anxiety a few weeks later, with consistently higher fatigue across both time points. The finding accounted for differences in respite wellbeing, length of respite, and how much participants worked during the respite.

What's driving this? Participants reported on holiday cognitions, and it turns out that time spent ruminating about the correctness of past judgments and repeatedly worrying about future events led to more emotional exhaustion and anxiety on return to work. The effect that perfectionism has on the various wellbeing measures was partly due to the mediating influence of these 'perseverative cognitions', which explained at least a quarter and in one case (fatigue) two thirds of the effect. Why didn't these thoughts drag holiday wellbeing down, too? Flaxman's group conjecture that  these cognitions are functional in the short-term, staving off uncomfortable feelings (I should be doing something!) by rehearsing intentions in your head. However, by preventing psychological detachment from work, this strategy foregoes any chance to shake things off and lighten the load.

If you feel that the world might collapse if you took the invitation at the top of this piece, you might want to explore holiday activities that are extremely absorbing and take you well away from the work mentality; you might also want to switch off your work mobile.  The researchers also note that interventions such as CBT and mindfulness-based training may be effective in cushioning perfectionist beliefs from harming quality of life.

Flaxman PE, Ménard J, Bond FW, & Kinman G (2012). Academics' Experiences of a Respite From Work: Effects of Self-Critical Perfectionism and Perseverative Cognition on Postrespite Well-Being. The Journal of applied psychology PMID: 22545621