EFFECTS OF AUDIO AND VIDEO QUALITY ON PERCEIVED HIREABILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

The influence of the quality of video and audio during video calls on social judgments is steadily gaining importance in times of advancing digitalization. In this context, we analyzed social judgments such as perceived hireability and perceived self-confidence, which are known to be influenced by processing fluency, defined as the subjective experience of ease in processing information. Building on previous research on audio quality, the present study investigated how audio and video quality, operationalized as audiovisual fluency across three levels, influences judgment formation. Participants viewed AI-generated job application videos and evaluated the avatars with regard to their likelihood of being hired and their perceived self-confidence. The assumption that high audiovisual fluency would be associated with more positive evaluations of the avatars was confirmed. The better the audio and video quality, the more frequently avatars were judged as hirable and the higher the ratings of perceived self-confidence. A significant difference was found between low and medium quality, but not between medium and high quality. No interaction between audio and video quality was observed. These results replicate earlier findings that fluency in the auditory domain affects social judgements and extend them by showing that a similar effect can be observed in the visual domain.