Abstract

This study investigated the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on honest IM (self-promotion, honest ingratiation, honest defensive impression management) and deceptive IM (slight image creation, extensive image creation, deceptive ingratiation, image protection) in employment interview, and examined the mediating effect of sense of control. For this purpose, a survey was conducted on 235 university students with employment interview experiences. The results showed that subjective SES had a positive association with self-promotion and honest defensive IM of honest IM, and this relationship was mediated by sense of control. However, subjective SES was not associated with honest ingratiation of honest IM, nor with any tactic of deceptive IM. While objective SES was positively associated with sense of control, objective SES had no statistically significant relationship with honest and deceptive IM. The current study provided meaningful implication as it emphasized the role of SES in the employment interview by identifying behavioral differences among job applicants with varying SES, and providing basic explanation on the effect of SES by clarifying the role of sense of control.