The influence of age and trait attributions on recruitment selection

The role of interpersonal attraction into the recruitment selection is gaining research attention. Early work in the domain of the influence of attraction in organisations suggested that men are given more resources, such as higher salaries and promotions. However, recent research has found women have an automatic in-group bias. It was suggested that female interviewers are more likely to hire another female. In contrast, male interviewers were found to be equally as likely to hire men as women. To resolve these two conflicting findings a behavioural experiment was set up looking at gender, attractiveness and recruitment selection. Forty participants, twenty male and twenty female, of varying ages (18-65) were recruited through age stratified sampling. Participants took on the role of manager of a medium sized company and were shown twenty photographs of faces previously rated for attractiveness. On initial viewing participants were asked to decide whether they would firstly hire the person and secondly give as many reasons for their decision. Findings from this research show that in all age groups male and female participants gave females (especially attractive females) more jobs, except in the case of the 18-21 year old females who gave attractive males more jobs. On examining the reasons behind the participant’s decisions, it was evident that if you appeared confident, friendly, youthful and attractive you were 46% more likely to receive the job. However, if you were perceived to be untrustworthy, lazy, arrogant and unintelligent you were 49% more likely not to receive the job. These findings shed light on the various processes that may underpin human resource decisions in an organisational setting.

The effect of age, gender and driver status on pedestrians' intentions to cross the road in risky situations

The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has been used successfully in the past to account for pedestrians' intentions to cross the road in risky situations. However, accident statistics show age and gender differences in the likelihood of adult pedestrian accidents. This study extends earlier work by examining the relative importance of the model components as predictors of intention to cross for four different adult age groups, men, women, drivers and nondrivers. The groups did not differ in the extent to which they differentiated between two situations of varying perceived risk. The model fit was good, but accounted for less of the variance in intention for the youngest group (17-24) than for other age groups. Differences between the age groups in intention to cross seemed to be due to differences in perceived value of crossing rather than differences in perceived risk. Women were less likely to intend to cross than men and perceived more risk, and there were important age, gender and driver status differences in the importance of the TPB variables as predictors of intention. A key implication of these findings is that road safety interventions need to be designed differently for different groups. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.