IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/jskd00/v5y2013i3p1-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Professional Online Profiles: The Impact of Personalization and Visual Gender Cues on Online Impression Formation

Author

Listed:
  • P. Saskia Bayerl

    (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands)

  • Monique Janneck

    (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Luebeck University of Applied Sciences, Luebeck, Germany)

Abstract

Online profiles are becoming increasingly important in work contexts from recruiting to termination decisions. The authors conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of profile layout on professional impression formation. Presence or absence of photos had no impact on overall rating or likability, but interacted with profile gender. Male profiles were rated best with photo, female profiles without photo (Study 1, n=264). Placeholders providing only gender cues led to similarly low ratings for male and female profiles (Study 2, n=202). The authors’ findings indicate that visual gender cues have a considerable biasing effect for online impression formation, particularly for women. This study extends our understanding of the gendered nature of professional online settings with implications for HR professionals and organizations as well as users managing their attractiveness on the job markets.

Suggested Citation

  • P. Saskia Bayerl & Monique Janneck, 2013. "Professional Online Profiles: The Impact of Personalization and Visual Gender Cues on Online Impression Formation," International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development (IJSKD), IGI Global, vol. 5(3), pages 1-16, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:jskd00:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:1-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/ijskd.2013070101
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:jskd00:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:1-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.