CATEGORY-BASED AND FEATURE-BASED COGNITIVE-PROCESSES - THE ROLE OF UNFAVORABLE INFORMATION

Recent research on selection decisions suggests that favorable feature s (e.g., attractive physical features or positively-evaluated personal ity traits) can enhance ratings of applicant suitability, but little r esearch has examined the impact of unfavorable features. Theories of p erson perception distinguish between two information processing strate gies: category-based and feature-based. We predicted that unfavorable features would influence selection decisions only when raters used fea ture-based processing strategies. Results suggest that applicant featu res' prototypicality and favorability can compensate for one another, with applicants' negative features resulting in a disadvantage only wh en the applicant is perceived as nonprototypical.