Perceived Approbation in Short,Medium,and Long Letters of Recommendation

Abstract

Mehrabian (1965) and Wiens, et al. (1969) found that subjects wrote longer letters of recommendation when the letter was for someone they liked rather than disliked. These results led Wiens, et al. to suggest that communication channels may provide a useful nonreactive measure of attitudes and motivations. The present research replicated the above encoding studies with a series of decoding experiments in which subjects rated short, medium-length, and long letters of recommendation written in English, German, or with deleted text. Short letters were evaluated as being least favorable toward the job applicant and long letters were evaluated as being most favorable toward the job applicant. It was concluded that attitudes attributed to length of letter are consistent with attitudes influencing length of letter. Subjects' limited awareness of the influence of length of letter on their evaluations was related to Nisbett and Wilson's (1977) argument about the weakness of introspection. Suggestions were made for future research.