Can I show my skills? Affective responses to artificial intelligence in the recruitment process

Companies increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic decision-making (ADM) for their recruitment and selection process for cost and efficiency reasons. However, there are concerns about the applicant’s affective response to AI systems in recruitment, and knowledge about the affective responses to the selection process is still limited, especially when AI supports different selection process stages (i.e., preselection, telephone interview, and video interview). Drawing on the affective response model, we propose that affective responses (i.e., opportunity to perform, emotional creepiness) mediate the relationships between an increasing AI-based selection process and organizational attractiveness. In particular, by using a scenario-based between-subject design with German employees (N = 160), we investigate whether and how AI-support during a complete recruitment process diminishes the opportunity to perform and increases emotional creepiness during the process. Moreover, we examine the influence of opportunity to perform and emotional creepiness on organizational attractiveness. We found that AI-support at later stages of the selection process (i.e., telephone and video interview) decreased the opportunity to perform and increased emotional creepiness. In turn, the opportunity to perform and emotional creepiness mediated the association of AI-support in telephone/video interviews on organizational attractiveness. However, we did not find negative affective responses to AI-support earlier stage of the selection process (i.e., during preselection). As we offer evidence for possible adverse reactions to the usage of AI in selection processes, this study provides important practical and theoretical implications.

Instructors’ Perspectives of Challenges and Barriers to Providing Effective Feedback

Instructor perspectives regarding the challenges they experience in enacting effective feedback processes have not been the focus in the literature on effective feedback processes. This study investigated the challenges that instructors experienced in providing effective feedback to students between January and April 2020, particularly considering campus closures and the shift to online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study consisted of six focus groups held between January and April 2020 with five instructors from different disciplines at the same institution with class sizes ranging from 14 to 82. Through a thematic analysis using a constant comparison method, it was found that the biggest challenges instructors experienced in providing effective feedback was their own workload, the disruption that student inaction on feedback brought to the feedback process, and how the instructors managed their own affective responses and mindsets towards feedback. These findings are discussed within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and based on these findings, recommendations for instructors include considering their own limitations when designing feedback processes and checking their beliefs about feedback with their students’ perspectives on feedback in order to align understanding.

A Comparative Study of Virtual Footwear Try-on Applications in Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual try-on technology (VTO) in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) has been developed for years to create novel shopping experiences for users by allowing them to virtually wear fashion products. Compared to garments or facial accessories, fewer studies have focused on virtual footwear try-on, regardless of user study or technical development. Thus, it is necessary to examine the effectiveness of existing VTO applications on the user's affective responses. In this study, we compared the user experience of three different footwear try-on methods (real, VR, and AR) with both physiological and psychological measures. Subjects conducted a try-on experiment on different pairs of sneakers. Each subject's gaze trajectory was recorded using an eye tracker and analyzed to show his/her visual attention in each method. Afterward, the subjects completed questionnaires to assess the sense of presence, usability, and the user experience score for the try-on processes, and subsequently attended a think-aloud procedure to express their thoughts. The analysis results of the collected data showed that the user experience produced by the VR and AR try-on is not comparable to that of the real environment. The results also revealed factors that negatively affect the quality of the user's interaction with the processes. These findings may provide insights into further improvements in VTO technology.

Laughter and Knowledge in Contemporary Poetry

Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural, scientific, and emotional. Laughter in the work of poets like Raymond McDaniel, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, Albert Goldbarth, Kim Rosenfield, Jamaal May, Patricia Lockwood, and Lucille Clifton prompts us to examine competing epistemologies. These poets examine how we exchange the material of laughter, and expose the ways that affective responses can determine what we think we know. They show how laughter can re-shape our sense of canons and render unfamiliar material accessible, expanding our literary knowledge and the sympathetic capacities that knowledge carries with it. They demonstrate how laughter breaks down categories like “science” and “literature,” expanding the kinds of knowledge that we value as “fact.” At the same time, they warn that laughter’s power to heal trauma or mediate other minds is limited, and that we should not trust humorous insights too far.

Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects

Objectives: The mainstream position on regret in psychological literature is that its necessary conditions are agency and responsibility, that is, to choose freely but badly. Without free choice, other emotions, such as disappointment, are deemed to be elicited when the outcome is worse than expected. In two experiments, we tested the opposite hypothesis that being forced by external circumstances to choose an option inconsistent with one’s own intentions is an important source of regret and a core component of its phenomenology, regardless of the positivity/negativity of the post-decision outcome. Along with regret, four post-decision emotions – anger toward oneself, disappointment, anger toward circumstances, and satisfaction – were investigated to examine their analogies and differences to regret with regard to antecedents, appraisals, and phenomenological aspects.Methods: Through the scenario methodology, we manipulated three variables: choice (free/forced), outcome (positive/negative), and time (short/long time after decision-making). Moreover, we investigated whether responsibility, decision justifiability, and some phenomenological aspects (self-attribution, other attribution, and contentment) mediated the effect exerted by choice, singularly or in interaction with outcome and time, on the five emotions. Each study was conducted with 336 participants, aged 18–60.Results: The results of both studies were similar and supported our hypothesis. In particular, regret elicited by forced choice was always high, regardless of the valence of outcome, whereas free choice elicited regret was high only with a negative outcome. Moreover, regret was unaffected by responsibility and decision justifiability, whereas it was affected by the three phenomenological dimensions.Conclusion: Our results suggest that (1) the prevailing theory of regret is too binding, since it posits as necessary some requirements which are not; (2) the antecedents and phenomenology of regret are broader than it is generally believed; (3) decision-making produces a complex emotional constellation, where the different emotions, singularly and/or in combination, constitute the affective responses to the different aspects of decision-making.

CAFÉ AS STUDENT’S INFORMAL LEARNING SPACE: A CASE STUDY IN BANDUNG, INDONESIA

For the past years, the café's functionality has shifted from serving light food or beverages to being used by students as an informal learning space (ILS). This paper discusses university student's motivation to study in a café and the desired café's characteristics as an ILS in Bandung, Indonesia. The research uses a quantitative method using a questionnaire to reveal the dimensions of students' internal motivation and spatial characteristics of the café and its effect on students' informal learning responses while in the café. Results found 6 (six) groups of student motivations and 7 (seven) characteristics of cafés as an ILS. Results uncover a positive relationship between utilitarian motivation and physical characteristics in the form of the availability and quality of café amenities on students' cognitive and affective responses. It is implied that students choose a café as an ILS because such informal space can provide satisfactory physical amenities so that their learning performance is expected to increase. Through this trend, universities and/or related stakeholders could use this opportunity to improve the well-being of the student.