Overt Racism or Cultural Misunderstandings: An Examination in Employment Interviews

This study investigated how varying levels of eye contact influence the perceptions of Asian and Caucasian female job candidates. Participants watched one of four videotaped mock interviews, in which the interviewee was from one of two ethnic backgrounds (i.e., Asian or Caucasian) and engaged in either high or low levels of eye contact. Participants used an adaptation of the Big 5 personality inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) to rate the candidates and used a dichotomous scale to indicate whether or not they would hire them