Measuring Behavior 2005: Schwab and Henry

Smiling behavior in employment interviews - searching for T-patterns in FACS-data with Theme

F. Schwab and D. Henry

Media- and Organizational Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

Studying behavioral aspects in employment interviews, studies often address smiling behavior because of its relevance and multi-functionality in interaction regulation. A lot of research reports a positive correlation between smiling behavior and a positive impression of the job applicant resp. his selection for the job. However, most of the studies lack an ecologically valid setting (pre-set content, pre-set nonverbal behavior with extreme instructions ‘as much as possible’ vs. ‘never’). The aim of the study was to develop an ecologically valid setting and to use an objective and precise methodology to report facial behavior.

We used a round robin design where each interviewer talks - in turn - to all applicants and all applicants meet all interviewers. This produces different behavior samples of one person in different dyads. No guidelines for content or nonverbal behavior were given. Students of business studies were chosen as interviewers (n=5) while psychology students (n=7) act as applicants (35 dyads). Nonverbal smiling behavior was coded with EmFACS.

First results show that subjects produced a large amount of smiling behavior. Smiling behavior varies between different dyads. Adjustment processes of the nonverbal behavior seem to take place within the different dyads. Contradicting to previous studies we found a negative correlation between smiling of the applicants and the chance to get selected for the job. An analysis with Theme™ (PatternVision Ltd, Iceland) to examine the effects of different smiling t-patterns is in progress.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.