PhD candidate from the University of Toronto, Joonkyung Kim, will be discussing her paper "Devil in the details: Asymmetry between presenters and evaluators."

 

When an agent has experience in multiple domains including the focal work domain which is relevant to the job position, another experience outside of the focal work domain can be described precisely or abstractly. Five studies show that there is a difference between those who evaluate work experience to hire (evaluator) and those who present work experience to be hired (presenter). Whereas presenters are indifferent between two descriptions, evaluators dislike the precise work description about another experience. The effect is explained by the fact that two roles differently infer the agent’s honesty from the precise description (Study 3). Reminding evaluators that the same experience can be put in different descriptions attenuated evaluators’ disliking for the precise description (Study 4). Taking the perspective of another role didn’t eliminate the effect (Study 5).