Denise Frauendorfer

Hire me: Computational Inference of Hirability in Employment Interviews Based on Nonverbal Behavior

Understanding the basis on which recruiters form hirability impressions for a job applicant is a key issue in organizational psychology and can be addressed as a social computing problem. We approach the problem from a face-to-face, nonverbal perspective where behavioral feature extraction and inference are automated. This paper presents a computational framework for the automatic prediction of hirability. To this end, we collected an audio-visual dataset of real job interviews where candidates were applying for a marketing job. We automatically extracted audio and visual behavioral cues related to both the applicant and the interviewer. We then evaluated several regression methods for the prediction of hirability scores and showed the feasibility of conducting such a task, with ridge regression explaining 36.2% of the variance. Feature groups were analyzed, and two main groups of behavioral cues were predictive of hirability: applicant audio features and interviewer visual cues, showing the predictive validity of cues related not only to the applicant, but also to the interviewer. As a last step, we analyzed the predictive validity of psychometric questionnaires often used in the personnel selection process, and found that these questionnaires were unable to predict hirability, suggesting that hirability impressions were formed based on the interaction during the interview rather than on questionnaire data.

Social Sensing for Psychology Automated Interpersonal Behavior Assessment

In this article, we show how the use of state-of-the-art methods in computer science based on machine perception and learning allows the unobtrusive capture and automated analysis of interpersonal behavior in real time (social sensing). Given the high ecological validity of the behavioral sensing, the ease of behavioral-cue extraction for large groups over long observation periods in the field, the possibility of investigating completely new research questions, and the ability to provide people with immediate feedback on behavior, social sensing will fundamentally impact psychology.

Training on the job: behavioral analysis of job interviews in hospitality

First impressions play a critical role in the hospitality industry and have been shown to be closely linked to the behavior of the person being judged.In this work, we implemented a behavioral training framework for hospitality students with the goal of improving the impressions that other people make about them. We outline the challenges associated with designing such a framework and embedding it in the everyday practice of a real hospitality school. We collected a dataset of 169 laboratory sessions where two role-plays were conducted, job interviews and reception desk scenarios, for a total of 338 interactions. For job interviews, we evaluated the relationship between automatically extracted nonverbal cues and various perceived social variables in a correlation analysis. Furthermore, our system automatically predicted first impressions from job interviews in a regression task, and was able to explain up to 32% of the variance, thus extending the results in existing literature, and showing gender differences, corroborating previous findings in psychology. This work constitutes a step towards applying social sensing technologies to the real world by designing and implementing a living lab for students of an international hospitality management school.

Reliability and Validity of Nonverbal Thin Slices in Social Interactions

Four studies investigated the reliability and validity of thin slices of nonverbal behavior from social interactions including (a) how well individual slices of a given behavior predict other slices in the same interaction; (b) how well a slice of a given behavior represents the entirety of that behavior within an interaction; (c) how long a slice is necessary to sufficiently represent the entirety of a behavior within an interaction; (d) which slices best capture the entirety of behavior, across different behaviors; and (e) which behaviors (of six measured behaviors) are best captured by slices. Notable findings included strong reliability and validity for thin slices of gaze and nods, and that a 1.5-min slice from the start of an interaction may adequately represent some behaviors. Results provide useful information to researchers making decisions about slice measurement of behavior.

How Do Different Ways of Measuring Individual Differences in Zero-Acquaintance Personality Judgment Accuracy Correlate With Each Other?: Approaches to Measuring Personality Judgment Accuracy

OBJECTIVE This research compares two different approaches that are commonly used to measure accuracy of personality judgment: the trait accuracy approach wherein participants discriminate among targets on a given trait, thus making intertarget comparisons, and the profile accuracy approach wherein participants discriminate between traits for a given target, thus making intratarget comparisons. We examined correlations between these methods as well as correlations among accuracies for judging specific traits. METHOD The present article documents relations among these approaches based on meta-analysis of five studies of zero-acquaintance impressions of the Big Five traits. RESULTS Trait accuracies correlated only weakly with overall and normative profile accuracy. Substantial convergence between the trait and profile accuracy methods was only found when an aggregate of all five trait accuracies was correlated with distinctive profile accuracy. Importantly, however, correlations between the trait and profile accuracy approaches were reduced to negligibility when statistical overlap was corrected by removing the respective trait from the profile correlations. Moreover, correlations of the separate trait accuracies with each other were very weak. CONCLUSIONS Different ways of measuring individual differences in personality judgment accuracy are not conceptually and empirically the same, but rather represent distinct abilities that rely on different judgment processes.

The Impact of Nonverbal Behavior in the Job Interview

In human resources, employee selection plays a major role. Given that an organization functions only with its members, the selection of a member who contributes the most and best to the productivity is aspired to (Guion & Highhouse, 2006). Thus, the selection has a powerful impact on the company’s outcome, going both ways: as much as a good selection can have a positive impact, a bad selection can have a negative impact on the company.