Interpersonal influence and employee selection in two cultures

Abstract

Administered a rating scale containing 16 hypothetical descriptions of job applicants to 43 Americans working in Greece and 43 Greek employers in Athens. Results support the hypothesis that Greeks would give greater weight to recommendations by friends and relatives, while Americans would give greater weight to recommendations by neighbors and unknown persons in reaching an employee selection decision. Americans correctly perceived the above-mentioned Greek tendency, but underestimated the importance for the Greeks of interview impressions and objective evidence. Data support a cognitive consistency theory analysis in which the decisions of people who are different on some characteristics are incorrectly generalized so that they are different on all characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)