Men Don't Care While Women Find it Unfair: Exploring the Harmful Consequences of Illegal Interview Questions on Women's Reactions
type: CreativeWork
description: Although interviews are a widely used and popular selection technique, when they lack clear structure and a predetermined set of questions, bias can permeate the interview selection process. In particular, illegal interview questions (i.e., questions that cannot legally be asked, such as marital status or children) may be particularly threatening for female applicants. Justice and social identity theory were used to explain the applicant reactions to illegal interview questions in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four hypothetical interview conditions – a control of four low face-valid interview questions, four non-gender relevant illegal interview questions, or four gender-relevant illegal interview questions. There was a significant gender by condition interaction on all outcome measures. Illegal interview questions had a significant negative effect on women’s organizational reactions (job pursuit intentions, organizational attractiveness, belonging, trust & comfort) but not on men’s organizational reactions. In contrast both women and men had significantly lower procedural justice perceptions of the gender-relevant illegal interview condition compared to the two other conditions. However, women perceived the illegal interview questions (both the gender relevant and gender non-relevant questions) as lower in face validity (i.e., were less relevant to the job), whereas men perceived all the interview questions as equally face-valid. Thus, although men believed the illegal interview questions were low in procedural justice and unfair, men still perceived these questions as valid and job-relevant. Overall, an indirect effect of procedural justice perceptions on organizational reactions was significant for both men and women, indicating that lower procedural justice did have a significant negative effect on applicants’ organizational reactions. Taken together, the following study demonstrates that illegal interview questions (both those relate…
abstract: Although interviews are a widely used and popular selection technique, when they lack clear structure and a predetermined set of questions, bias can permeate the interview selection process. In particular, illegal interview questions (i.e., questions that cannot legally be asked, such as marital status or children) may be particularly threatening for female applicants. Justice and social identity theory were used to explain the applicant reactions to illegal interview questions in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four hypothetical interview conditions – a control of four low face-valid interview questions, four non-gender relevant illegal interview questions, or four gender-relevant illegal interview questions. There was a significant gender by condition interaction on all outcome measures. Illegal interview questions had a significant negative effect on women’s organizational reactions (job pursuit intentions, organizational attractiveness, belonging, trust & comfort) but not on men’s organizational reactions. In contrast both women and men had significantly lower procedural justice perceptions of the gender-relevant illegal interview condition compared to the two other conditions. However, women perceived the illegal interview questions (both the gender relevant and gender non-relevant questions) as lower in face validity (i.e., were less relevant to the job), whereas men perceived all the interview questions as equally face-valid. Thus, although men believed the illegal interview questions were low in procedural justice and unfair, men still perceived these questions as valid and job-relevant. Overall, an indirect effect of procedural justice perceptions on organizational reactions was significant for both men and women, indicating that lower procedural justice did have a significant negative effect on applicants’ organizational reactions. Taken together, the following study demonstrates that illegal interview questions (both those relate…
author: Beecham, Jasmine
language: en
keywords: interviews, interview, gender, illegal interview, interview questions, interview reactions, applicant reactions, gender differences, social identity threat, face validity, organizational reactions
date published: 2020-02
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:40:57Z
provider: IUPUI
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: IUPUI

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1805/22323

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7912/C2/1138