The Advantage of Being Oneself: The Role of Self-verification in a Successful Job Search

Who hasn't heard the advice? Smile? Check. Firm handshake? Check. But not too firm? Check. Smart business suit, preferably in a boring color? Check. Clean Facebook/Twitter/Instagram page? Check. Check. Check. Acing a job interview can be difficult work. And even if you nail the interview, you may only be one of many. It is estimated that between 10 and 40 people will apply for any given job in the United States. How can you stand out amongst a stream of applicants who are all encouraged to act and look homogeneous? In this week's WAPPP Seminar, Dr. Celia Moore, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the London Business School shared two studies that can answer that question (in a somewhat unexpected way): Just be yourself! How exactly does a researcher reach that conclusion? How can she measure the degree to which people are being themselves in real life?


Dr. Moore uses a tool that measures people's tendency towards what is known as self-verification. It is an eight item questionnaire that gages the level of need a person has to express their true thoughts and feelings to others. It includes statements such as For me, it is better to be honest about myself when meeting new people even if it makes me appear less than ideal, or I'd be willing to take less pay in order to work with people who know who I am and what to expect from me, to which people record a level of agreement or disagreement. People who report a high level of agreement to this kind of statement are referred to as self-verifiers in Moore's research. They have a high need to express their true selves.  What does this look like? "We don't know how this trait manifests itself behaviorally," she explained, "it is a very intangible but predictive trait". And what does it predict exactly?


Dr. Moore: Knowing the 'right' answer to 250
interview questions may not help you all that much

Dr. Moore studied a graduating class of MBA students that was interviewing for jobs. She rated them on their level of self-verification and then observed whether or not they received a job offer. For those who were rated by interviewers as low or medium quality, the degree to which they self-verified hardly mattered (and even hurt a bit in the case of low quality applicants). In contrast, for highly qualified candidates, self-verification boosted their likelihood of receiving an offer from 51% to 69% (when all other factors, like race, gender, and experience, remained equal). She offered the example of Anne Hathaway's character in the movie The Devil Wears Prada: By being highly qualified for a job but still honest about her possibly undesirable traits, she was able to land the job she asked for.



Job Interview Dont's? Maybe they are Do's!

To hone in on the nuances of this effect, Dr. Moore conducted another study, this time about the entry process into two highly selective working groups. The first was the legal corps in a U.S. military branch, and the second was a program to place international school teachers in a U.S. district. Each field was highly gendered, with the military working team receiving a group of applicants that was two thirds male, while the teaching program received a cohort that was two thirds female. The results of the study suggest that gender and self-verification interact in very different ways for different groups.

Within the set of high quality applicants seeking the teaching job, the women who were self-verifiers increased their likelihood of being hired by 29 percentage points when compared to low self-verifying women, from 46% to 75%. Men, of whom there is a shortage in that field, went from 68% as low self-verifiers to 71% as high self-verifiers. Conversely, in the male dominated field, women were the "scare commodity", so their likelihood of being hired was high regardless of self-verification level, much like the men in teaching. In this case though, high self-verification slightly decreased their likelihood of getting hired, from 25% to 23%. In contrast, for men, who were facing a field of similar candidates, self-verification provided a significant boost, from 1% to 13%. So it seems that when you need to stand out among a group of people similar to you, self-verification is important.

Because this research "contradicts common aspirations about how to succeed in the job market", and explains the nuances about people in gender congruent and gender incongruent fields, it can be very valuable for both men and women. Related research shows that self-verifiers in the long run report higher job satisfaction, ability to function in a working group, and overall higher performance on the job. So Moore concludes the findings are pointing us in a very healthy direction: Be yourself and you will be better off!

Social Norms and Stereotypes: What Happens When Everyone's a Little Bit Sexist?

Upon seeing one of those “reuse your towel” cards in a hotel, have you ever wondered how many people were actually reusing their towels? An experimental study found that when the message was supplemented with information that “nearly 75 percent of hotel guests reuse their towels,” the guests receiving the message became more likely to reuse their towel than the guests who got the standard note. This is an example of the power of social norms – when the desired action is perceived as the norm, compliance increases. The same mechanism is at work in reverse for an undesirable behavior – people are less likely to litter when they perceive that only a few “anti-social types” litter.

Social norms are often more powerful than explicit messages. The signs in the Petrified Forest National Park used to read something like this: “Don’t take petrified wood, 14 tons a year are being stolen in small pieces.” That last part essentially signaled to the visitor: “everybody is doing it.” When that part was removed, compliance improved.

Now, let’s connect this information to racial and gender stereotyping and bias – generally, people view bias as undesirable and actively work against it. However, the 2000’s saw a growing body of research on unconscious biases. The notion that most people have unconscious stereotypes and biases captivated the popular press. The cover of the Washington Post Magazine on January 23, 2005 read: “Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are.” So, it’s like the song from Broadway musical Avenue Q, “Everyone's a Little Bit Racist.”
 
But what does that mean for social norms? Does knowing that everyone has unconscious biases make it seem permissible to let our own biases slide?

Those are the questions Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, set out to answer with her colleague Michelle Duguid, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Washington University in St. Louis Olin Business School. Thomas-Hunt and Duguid designed a series of creative experiments to test how messages of high and low prevalence of stereotyping affect behavior.
 
In one of the experiments, pairs of women and men were negotiating a car sale. All of the men were told to avoid thinking of others in a stereotypical manner. Some of the men were primed with a “high prevalence of stereotyping” message – they were not told what gender biases might be, just that an influential body of research finds that the majority of people do stereotype. Other men were primed with a “low prevalence” message – that very few people hold stereotypical misconceptions. Yet another set of men received a “high prevalence of counter stereotyping” message – that most people actively try to overcome biased misconceptions.

After the negotiation, the women, who did not know anything about these messages, were asked to rank their opponents' assertiveness. The researchers also compared negotiated price outcomes. The men who were told that most people stereotype, despite being cautioned not to do so themselves, consistently claimed more value in the negotiation and were ranked as more assertive by their female counterparts than were the men in both other groups. The division of value was more equitable in the pairs where men received “few people stereotype” and “most people work to avoid stereotyping.” The men were also perceived to be less assertive by their female counterparts. In other words, the men who perceived the social norm to be in line with stereotypes of women as weak negotiators were more likely to treat them as such, while the men who thought the social norm was to counter stereotypes treated their negotiating partners more equitably.

Thomas-Hunt’s and Duguid’s experiments point to the conclusion that it’s not enough to be aware that we have conscious and unconscious biases. We need social norms to counter these biases. We need a culture in which most people work hard not to stereotype. In companies, this could be a consistent internal message from the highest ranks, but in society it will take all of us holding each other accountable and working not to be even a little bit sexist.

Melissa Thomas-Hunt presented at a WAPPP Seminar titled, "Condoning Stereotyping: How Awareness of Stereotyping Prevalence Impacts Stereotype Expression in Negotiations and Beyond," on April 4, 2013.


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.