“People higher on undesirable traits, such as psychopathy, were more likely to use deceptive IM. As these individuals are also more likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, IM use during the interview may be a threat to organizations.”
Impression management (IM), or a person's actions aimed at influencing the perceptions that others have of him/her, is a common occurrence in job interviews. Whether honest or deceptive, IM tactics can affect interviewers evaluations' of candidates and can be difficult to detect. This study is the first of its kind to explore the variability of different IM tactics across multiple job interviews. We found that certain individual differences, such as extraversion, are associated with honest IM, while others, such as competitive worldviews, are related to deceptive impression management. Additionally, impression management use varies as predicted by some personality measures, and the amount of variation depends on the specific tactic being used. Notably, we found that people who are higher on undesirable traits, such as psychopathy, are not only more likely to use deceptive IM, but are also more likely to vary its use across interviews. As these individuals are also more likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, this evidence suggests that deceptive IM during job interviews could be a threat to organizations.
Summary of Roulin, N., & Bourdage, J.S. (2017). Once an impression manager, always an impression manager? Antecedents of honest and deceptive impression management use and variability across multiple job interviews. Frontiers in Psychology (Organizational Psychology), 8 in Special Research Topic: Impression Management and Faking in Job Interviews
