Skip to content

Research article

Unconscious Personnel Selection

Claude Messner; Michaela Wänke; Christian Weibel

Social Cognition • 2011

audience: factory-internalaudience: velaPeople Analyticsbridge (3)processed in meta-factory

Abstract

Based on Unconscious Thought Theory, our study shows that unconscious information processing can improve the quality of personnel selection. Unconscious information processing led to objectively better decisions than conscious processing, even though two cues that often bias personnel selection were present. whereas many studies show that attractive and male job applicants are preferred, we found no gender or attractiveness bias under unconscious decision making. in contrast, conscious decision making reflected a gender bias and some evidence also points to an attractiveness bias.

Available formats

research_article

File instances

1

Extracted by meta-factory

Models (1)

  • Unconscious Thought Theory

    evidence: Medium

    Decision Making • Decision Quality

    Primary factors

    Unconscious Information ProcessingConscious Information ProcessingStereotypesHeuristic Cues

    Field domains

    PsychologyOrganizational Behavior

Constructs (4)

  • Unconscious Information Processing

    DMJ_001

    A process where information is processed outside of conscious awareness, allowing for greater capacity and more adequate weighting of complex information.

    Domains

    Decision-Making & Judgment

    Linked models

    Unconscious Thought Theory

    Unconscious processing is less limited by working memory capacity and helps differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information.

  • Conscious Information Processing

    DMJ_002

    A process where information is processed with focused awareness, often limited by working memory capacity, leading to reliance on heuristics in complex decision-making.

    Domains

    Decision-Making & Judgment

    Conscious processing can lead to suboptimal decisions due to capacity constraints and reliance on stereotypes.

  • Gender Bias in Personnel Decisions

    DEI_001

    A bias in hiring decisions that favors male over female applicants, often due to stereotypes associating men with managerial success.

    Domains

    DEIDecision-Making & Judgment

    Gender bias is influenced by stereotypes such as 'think-manager-think-male'.

  • Beauty Bias in Personnel Decisions

    DEI_002

    A bias in hiring decisions where attractive job applicants are favored over less attractive ones, regardless of actual qualifications.

    Domains

    DEIDecision-Making & Judgment

    Beauty bias is based on the 'what is beautiful is good' heuristic.

Related

Source profile (V0). This page is a thin scaffold over the factory_documents registry; richer treatment lands once the source is ingested into Vela's editorial corpus.