A talk with Simonne Mastrella, author of the research paper Acting Anxious: The Impact of Candidates’ Anxious Nonverbal Behavior on Interview Performance Ratings. Topics discussed include: the design of the study; her findings; whether results differed by gender or by the nature of the job; how perceptions of anxiety and “warmth” are related; and the challenges of using actors to act out behaviors for a study.
Episode links:
The following information about related research is from Simonne:
This study looked at all the studies that measured interview anxiety and interview anxiety and found that, combined, more anxious interviewees tend to perform worse than less anxious interviewees: Meta-analysis of the relation between interview anxiety and interview performance.
The following studies compared interview anxiety with how people performed on the job and found no relation (so, more anxious interviewees were not necessarily worse performers than less anxious interviewees).
The role of negative evaluation in interview anxiety and social-evaluative workplace anxiety.