How to respond to inappropriate questions in job interviews: Personal and social consequences of truth-telling, deflection and confrontation

Abstract

Parents, especially mothers, and young women without children, face a subtle threat in job interviews: being asked inappropriate questions about parental status. In three vignette experiments (N = 760), we compared personal (perceived likability and likelihood of being hired) and social consequences (perceived chances that the interviewer will ask the inappropriate question again) of different response strategies. Results suggest that deflection (i.e., responding with another question) is a superior strategy at the personal level, as it increases the perceived chances to be hired in comparison to truth-telling (Study 1) and confrontation (Studies 1–3) without hurting likability (Study 1). Confrontation (i.e., saying that the question is inappropriate) is a superior strategy at the social level, decreasing the perceived probability that the interviewer will keep asking inappropriate questions in comparison to deflection (Studies 2 and 3) and truth-telling (Study 3). No gender differences were apparent. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.