Social Psychology of Education

, Volume 17, Issue 3, pp 401–417 | Cite as

In the eye of the examinee: likable examiners interfere with performance

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Abstract

We investigated effects of examiners’ ascribed likability and examiners’ gender on test performance during a standardized face-to-face testing situation assessing self-estimated and de facto verbal knowledge. One hundred fourteen nonpsychology students were individually tested by one of 22 examiners. A moderated regression analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction of test taker’s gender, examiner’s gender, and examiner’s likability on de facto knowledge: Men and women showed lower scores on de facto knowledge with a same-gender examiner rated as likable compared to their performance with a likable opposite-gender examiner or in interaction with a nonlikable examiner.

Keywords

Examiner effect Test administration effect Likability  Same-gender interaction Objectivity 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Division for Psychological Assessment, Department of PsychologyFree University BerlinBerlinGermany
  2. 2.Division for Psychological Assessment, Department of PsychologyUniversity of SalzburgSalzburgAustria

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