Kick robots away with heart and head: how and when AI interviews undermine organizational attraction

Artificial intelligence (AI) interviews have been entering hiring practices widely and leading valid arguments. This research sheds light on the dark side of AI interviews from a more human-centric perspective. Combining social information processing theory with the dual-process model, we investigate how and when AI interviews restrain organizational attraction. We examine our model by conducting a laboratory experiment using FaceReader 8.0 and a scenario experiment. The results indicate that AI interviews will inhibit organizational attraction via job seekers’ emotional pathway (i.e., negative emotion) and cognitive pathway (i.e., organizational trust). Furthermore, our results show that job seekers’ prior AI experience can buffer the effects of AI interviews on their negative emotion and organizational trust. Their experience can also weaken the indirect effect of AI interviews on organizational attraction through the emotional pathway. Our findings provide theoretical and practical implications for scholars and managers in HRM.