Anita Ramgutty Wong, PhD.
As a member of a selection panel set up to find the right candidate for an extremely senior position, I had been excited to be part of the exercise itself per se, but also to bring to the table, as it were, my own knowledge and competence in that field as a consultant. I was to be disappointed from the very first screening meeting: we were to “go through” the resumés and motivation statements and arrive at a list of five candidates for the interview, without any set criteria or interviewing plan. I expressed my surprise, recommended a systematic process, requested we focus first on the qualities we were looking for. “We don’t do that here” was the curt reply from the chairperson. In my mind, I scratched my head: how on earth was the right candidate to be found amongst this set of perfect strangers?
That was a few years ago, but the unpleasant memory of that selection exercise has never quite faded. In the event, I recall clearly that judgements were made about the candidates’ dress, accent, handshake, length of CV, country of origin, likeability, and in the end the golden boy, the winner, was found, but, clever that he was, he dodged the bullet in time and we couldn’t even offer him the job !
Over the course of my career, I have been interviewed or interviewing others, and I have come across this tendency amongst hirers to leap to judgements about people’s competence by simply “sizing up” the person’s personality and/or behaviour at the interview. Making what we call “gut calls” like “I like him” or “he’s too arrogant” or “turning up late shows she’s unprofessional” or “great communicator!”, or “being extroverted like that is good.”
Of course, the particulars of a candidate’s personality and behaviour may or may not matter, and it is up to recruiters to make that call. Are certain personality traits truly bona fide qualifications? If yes, then these have to be specified, and the criteria for evaluating them determined, especially as jobs have vastly evolved since the days of drab office work where personality did not matter much. When you walk through a public-sector office, or a bank for that matter, you know how people are supposed to be and to act, but working in a technology-intense environment in which the organisation chart doesn’t exist? A different matter altogether. Not everyone has the disposition to work fluidly and flexibly a team, with no clear hierarchy or rules, therefore personality will matter a great deal in such a work environment, and the interviewers have to make it their business to find and evaluate candidates accordingly.
Behavioural studies have long demonstrated the power of first impressions, and suggested that we humans have a particular sort of pre-rational desire to make searching judgements about others, to pick up something basic about a person’s character, then reach a conclusion in a few seconds. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error –fixating on and supposing that certain personality traits or behaviours are stable over time and across contexts. Now, this could also come around the other way: we may think that people act because of their situation or context, while in fact it is due to their inherent, persistent, disposition.
As an interviewee for the positions I have been interested in myself, I know that I have made snap judgements about the individuals “on the other side” of the table, and, with hindsight, can see that I adapted my interview behaviour accordingly and very quickly. Ninety-nine percent of the time, once I had quasi-subconsciously made up my mind about the interviewer(s), I notched-up or down my own interview performance! Either, because I was impressed, I showed great enthusiasm or else I bored myself with average interview replies when I perceived that I didn’t click with them. But perhaps they had had a long day of interviews, were simply too exhausted to reach over to shake my hand? I may have passed up more than one career chance there…
As a teacher too, over time, I have learnt to become more guarded and try not to allow my first impressions or certain student behaviours to influence my judgements. In other words I try not to make Fundamental Attribution Errors about how I think my students will perform in tasks. Thus, extrovert students are not always the ones to turn in brilliant coursework, and chatty class reps have been known to be pretty unhelpful while I first thought they would be my informal assistants. And the fellow at the back, wearing a cap in class, lounging in his chair, actually wrote an impressive essay for the examination!
These days, structured competency interviews are more popular because, as a selection approach, they are known to be better predictors of future behaviour. For example, there are questions like : “describe a situation when your work was criticised. How did you handle the criticism?” Few candidates can fake their way through such questions. Other questions to get the candidate providing organic answers are those about personal weaknesses, or how they handle stressful situations. This is why I have been advocating the structured interview since many years. After all, we want our hiring decisions to have predictive validity, to give us reliable indications of how well the candidate will do at the job or in the company later. By treating every candidate in the same manner, applying the same criteria, by scripting the questions, and training the interviewers carefully, we arrive at logical, unbiased ratings for each candidate regarding specific information, not broad sizing-ups about likeability or affinity. Much of the industrial psychology literature, however, has shown that most interviewers prefer – but will not admit to it – viewing the interview as some kind of romantic rencontre, during which they are looking for “the one” with whom they have some affinity or chemistry, even if the two parties end up having nothing in common later on, leading to all manner of costly consequences for all parties.
Why do we make fundamental attribution errors?
As humans, we have the tendency to think the worst of people, often assuming the behaviour we see to be an inherent thing rather than something that could be driven by the situation in which the action occurred. We tend to make a fundamental attribution error because we try and explain the actions of others. We feel like we have to assign a reason for why something occurred, and the easiest reason, the one at hand, is the person’s disposition. After all, we can’t know what other situational or contextual effects may be at play. This is what is known as a dispositional attribution, where we try to explain an individual’s actions by their personality, beliefs, or opinions, in other words, something that is inherently characteristic of that person. However, there may be other explanations to, say, an inappropriate emotional outburst, such as the person’s environment, people, or perhaps their circumstances. An example may be of situations in which family members resort to violent behaviour due to chronic frustration at the workplace or stress caused by economic hardship. If we make hasty, wrong attributions, we may not realise the presence of stressors in the lives of those around us and fail to address the source of the problem in an understanding, compassionate manner. Indeed, what may be a situational attribute, we often blame as being a dispositional one. We may not know if someone whose actions we are judging may have just been fired, or lost a partner, or is dealing with trauma, or were diagnosed with a terrible disease, or attending divorce court, for example.
How to avoid Fundamental Attribution Error
In order to avoid either attributing a behaviour to personal disposition or a situational one hastily, it is first important to acknowledge that we make such errors. Once we understand that we are prone to them, we can be proactive when they occur. So, when we feel the anger bubbling when someone jumps the queue, or frustration when the boss reprimands us, we first consider the circumstances by which the situation may have unfolded. We don’t know what might be going on in their personal life or the circumstances they may be facing, so there may be more to the situation than it seems, and it’s not all that difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The simple decision of trying to understand that it may not necessarily be the individual’s personal disposition that caused her/his behaviour, can help us keep our cool as well as rationalise the situation, which represents a double benefit.
Finally, because we can’t take back our reaction once we have made the fundamental attribution error, and because often it is an emotional reaction because we got annoyed and took our anger out on that person, it usually makes matters even worse. The fundamental attribution error, when acknowledged by us as a human tendency, can serve to make better persons of us, as we start pausing and reflecting, understanding, or at the very least, assuming the best, not the worst every time.
So, just like the candidate who arrived late for the interview may have an unexpected family situation going on that day, similarly, the next time someone slices in front of you on the highway, before you conclude the driver is a Sovaz, try to catch yourself. Perhaps that action is actually attributable to the situation s/he is facing, not to the driver’s inherent character.
Behavioural studies have long demonstrated the power of first impressions, and suggested that we humans have a particular sort of
pre-rational desire to make searching judgements about others, to pick up something basic about a person’s character, then reach a conclusion in a few seconds.
