Date of Award

3-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Shultz, Kenneth

Abstract

Social media (SM) permits the sharing of personal information online, which can lead to employers accessing personal, non-job-related information about applicants throughout the selection process. Limited prior research (Jeske & Shultz, in press; Stoughton et al., 2015) has found that, to varying degrees, applicants find this access of their personal information to be an invasion of their personal privacy. The aim of the present study was to replicate prior findings regarding invasion of privacy moderating the relationship between SM screening presence and procedural justice perceptions and to expand on prior research by exploring whether the stage at which this information was collected (pre- and post- conditional job offer) would mediate the relationship between SM screening and perceived invasion of privacy. A survey was administered electronically and participants (N = 210) were randomly assigned to one of four SM screening conditions: (a) SM screening absent, job offer absent, (b) SM screening absent, job offer present, (c) SM screening present, job offer absent, and (d) SM screening present, job offer present. One component of the hypothesized model was supported, that those in the SM screening groups reported higher levels of perceived invasion of privacy as compared to the no SM screening groups. No interaction effects were found between SM screening and stage in the selection process on either perceived invasion of privacy or procedural justice perceptions, indicating limited to no support for the proposed model. Thus, alternative, more robust contextual models for the examination of SM screening in the selection process were proposed for future research.

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