Are traditional interviews more prone to effects of impression management than structured interviews?

Abstract

Research on whether interviewees can improve their interview ratings through impression management (IM) relative to an honest condition has focused on highly structured interviews whereas traditional interviews have received little attention. Thus, this study aimed to determine how prone traditional compared to highly structured interviews are to effects of IM. Therefore, we conducted simulated selection interviews using a 2 × 2 within-subjects design. All participants went through a condition in which they were asked to present themselves as honestly as possible and a condition in which they were instructed to act like an applicant. Additionally, each interview contained eight traditional and eight structured questions. The differences in the usage of self-reported honest and deceptive IM between the honest and applicant conditions were comparable for both interview types. Furthermore, interview ratings were better in the applicant condition compared to the honest condition, and importantly, this improvement was larger for the traditional interview part compared to the structured interview part. Even though the larger performance improvement was not reflected in self-reported honest and deceptive IM, our results suggest that it is easier for applicants to intentionally improve their performance ratings in traditional interviews. Additionally, performance improvements correlated positively with applicants' ability to identify criteria.