A common assertion in the job choice literature is that a job attribute (e.g., starting salary) will influence choice more when it has a wide range of values than when it has a narrow range of values. The authors suggest that this conclusion tells only part of the story concerning how attribute range influences job choice, and they show how the stage of choice determines the direction of range effects.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Beach, L. R.
(1993). Broadening the definition of decision making: The role of prechoice screening of options. Psychological Science, 4, 215-220.
2.
Breaugh, J. A.
(1992). Recruitment: Science and practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
3.
Dipboye, R. L.
, Smith, C. S., & Howell, W. C. (1994). Understanding industrial and organizational psychology: An integrated approach. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
4.
Ford, J. K.
, Schmitt, N., Schechtman, S. L., Hults, B. M., & Doherty, M. L. (1989). Process tracing methods: Contributions, problems, and neglected research questions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 43, 75-117.
5.
Gaugler, B. B.
, & Rudolph, A. S. (1992). The influence of assessee performance variation on assessors’ judgments. Personnel Psychology, 45, 77-98.
6.
Goldstein, W. M.
(1990). Judgments of relative importance in decision making: Global and local interpretations of subjective weight. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47, 313-336.
7.
Gravetter, F.
, & Lockhead, G. R. (1973). Critical range as a frame of reference for stimulus judgment. Psychological Review, 80, 203-216.
8.
Harn, T. J.
(1987). The effect of range of job attributes on their importance in job choice decisions. Dissertation Abstracts International, 48, 2484-2484.
9.
Helson, H.
(1964). Adaptation-level theory. New York: Harper & Row.
10.
Highhouse, S.
(1996). Context-dependent selection: The effects of decoy and phantom job candidates. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 68-76.
11.
Highhouse, S.
, & Gallo, A. (1997). Order effects in personnel decision making. Human Performance, 10, 31-46.
12.
Highhouse, S.
, & Johnson, M. (1996). Gain/loss asymmetry and riskless choice: Loss aversion in choices among job finalists. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 68, 225-233.
13.
Huber, J. J.
, Payne, W., & Puto, C. (1982). Adding asymmetrically dominated alternatives: Violations of regularity and the similarity hypothesis. Journal of Consumer Research, 9, 90-98.
14.
Judge, T. A.
, & Bretz, R. D. (1992). Effects of work values on job choice decisions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 261-271.
15.
Leventhal, L.
, & Huynh, C. (1996). Directional decisions for two-tailed tests: Power, error rates, and sample size. Psychological Methods, 1, 278-292.
16.
Mellers, B. A.
, & Cooke, A.D.J. (1994). Trade-offs depend on attribute range. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1055-1067.
17.
Mellers, B. A.
, & Cooke, A.D.J. (1996). The role of task and context in preference measurement. Psychological Science, 7, 76-82.
18.
Murphy, K. R.
, Thornton, G. C., & Reynolds, D. H. (1990). College students’ attitudes toward employee drug testing programs. Personnel Psychology, 43, 615-631.
19.
Osborn, D. P.
(1990). A reexamination of the organizational choice process. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 36, 45-60.
20.
Parducci, A.
(1965). Category judgment: A range-frequency model. Psychological Review, 72, 407-418.
21.
Parducci, A.
(1968). The relativism of absolute judgment. Scientific American, 219, 84-90.
22.
Payne, J. W.
, Bettman, J. R., & Johnson, E. J. (1993). The adaptive decision maker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Poulton, E. C.
(1968). The new psychophysics: Six models for magnitude estimation. Psychological Bulletin, 69, 1-19.
24.
Reynolds, L. G.
(1951). The structure of labor markets. New York: Harper and Brothers.
25.
Rottenberg, S.
(1956). On choice in labor markets. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 9, 183-199.
26.
Rynes, S. L.
(1991). Recruitment, job choice, and post-hire consequences: A call for new research directions. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial & organizational psychology (Vol. 2, issue 2, pp. 399-444). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists.
27.
Rynes, S. L.
, Schwab, D. P., & Heneman, H. G. (1983). The role of pay and market pay variability in job application decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 31, 353-364.
28.
Shepperd, J. A.
, Ouellette, J. A., & Fernandez, J. K. (1996). Abandoning unrealistic optimism: Performance estimates and the temporal proximity of self-relevant feedback. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 844-855.
29.
Shuh, A.
(1978). Contrast effects in the interview. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 11, 195-196.
30.
Smither, R. D.
(1994). The psychology of work and human performance (2nd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.
31.
Turban, D. B.
, & Keon, T. L. (1993). Organizational attractiveness: An interactionist perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 184-193.
32.
Tversky, A.
, & Griffin, D. (1997). Endowment and contrast in judgments of well-being. In W. M. Goldstein & R. M. Hogarth (Eds.), Research on judgment and decision making: Currents, connections, and controversies (pp. 411-428). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
33.
Tversky, A.
, & Kahneman, D. (1991). Loss aversion in riskless choice: A reference-dependent model. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 1039-1061.
34.
Wedell, D. H.
, & Parducci, A. (1988). The category effect in social judgment: Experimental ratings of happiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 341-356.
