Political affiliation and employment screening decisions: The role of similarity and identification processes

Abstract

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Applied Psychology on Sep 17 2020 (see record 2020-70155-001 ). In the article “Political Affiliation and Employment Screening Decisions: The Role of Similarity and Identification Processes,” by Philip L. Roth, Jason B. Thatcher, Philip Bobko, Kevin D. Matthews, Jill E. Ellingson, and Caren B. Goldberg (Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 105, No.5, pp. 472– 486. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000422), Kevin Matthews gathered data and administered study materials, not Philip Bobko.] Recent research in political science, along with theory in applied psychology, has suggested that political affiliation may be associated with substantial levels of affect and, thus, might influence employment decision-makers. We designed 2 experiments using social media screening tasks to examine the effects of political affiliation similarity on ratings of hireability. Our findings in both studies suggest that the identification (capturing positive affect) and disidentification (capturing negative affect) of a decision-maker with a job applicant’s political affiliation were important variables that influenced perceived similarity. Consistent with the similarity-attraction paradigm, perceived similarity was related to liking and, in turn, liking was related to expected levels of applicant task and organizational citizenship behavior performance. Further, in both studies, political affiliation related variables influenced hireability decisions over and above job-relevant individuating information. Future research should continue to examine political affiliation similarity, particularly in light of its frequent availability to decision-makers (e.g., via social media websites). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)