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Category: Project

Description: Research has demonstrated that job advertisement information influences whether agentic or communal job seekers choose to apply. However, applicant pools are also influenced by how information flows across networks. Yet, little is known about how this job posting information is shared via friend recommendations with either agentic- or communal-oriented individuals. Using an experimental design with job advertisements varying in gender wording (agentic vs. communal), pay basis (individual vs. team), and pay range (wide vs. narrow), study participants described the agentic and communal qualities of the person to whom they would recommend the job. Across undergraduate (N=439) and MTurk (N=280) samples, recommenders aligned the communal and agentic orientations of recommendees with the gender wording of the job advertisement [p<0.05]. For the undergraduate sample, recommenders tended to suggest more agentic individuals for jobs with individual-based pay systems [p<.05] and wide pay ranges [p<.10].