Shake and Fake: the Role of Interview Anxiety in Deceptive Impression Management

Deborah M Powell; Joshua S Bourdage; Silvia Bonaccio

doi:10.1007/s10869-020-09708-1

Shake and Fake: the Role of Interview Anxiety in Deceptive Impression Management

J Bus Psychol. 2021;36(5):829-840. doi: 10.1007/s10869-020-09708-1. Epub 2020 Aug 7.

Authors

Deborah M Powell¹, Joshua S Bourdage², Silvia Bonaccio³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1 Canada.
² Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.
³ Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.

Abstract

We investigated whether anxiety about self-presentation concerns during interviews (i.e., interview anxiety) is associated with applicants' use of deceptive impression management (IM) tactics. We examined the relationship between interview anxiety and deceptive IM, and we examined whether the personality traits of honesty-humility and extraversion would be indirectly related to deceptive IM through interview anxiety. Participants (N = 202) were recruited after an interview for a research assistant position. Interview anxiety scores were positively related to deceptive IM. Furthermore, there was evidence of a negative indirect effect of honesty-humility on deceptive IM, via overall interview anxiety. Also, extraversion was indirectly associated with deceptive IM through interview anxiety. Results suggest that deceptive IM can be used as a protective mechanism to maintain self-esteem or to avoid the loss of rewards. This paper is the first to examine the role of interview anxiety in interview faking.

Keywords: Employment interview; Extraversion; Honesty-humility; Impression management; Interview anxiety; Self-presentation.