Content of recommendation letter highlights for 4 counterbalanced job applicants.

Note. The job applicant was described with one of four profiles of recommender highlights. These profiles were randomly-assigned across participants. Hiring evaluations were altered as a main effect of which profile was used to describe the job applicant, F(3, 1584) = 6.79, p = .0001, R2 = .013. But critically, the profile type never significantly interacted with the manipulated factors, as self-perceptions manipulations, the presence of equity norms, and the applicants’ age (all Fs ≤ 2.23). Nor did it interact significantly with the manipulated factors in predicting the perceived importance of the applicants’ age (all Fs ≤ 1.49) or the perceived importance of the applicants’ expertise (all Fs ≤ 1.85).