I'd like to see these studies and how, if at all, they relate to the technical interview process. I would strongly guess "not at all." Technical interviews are

I'd like to see these studies and how, if at all, they relate to the technical interview process. I would strongly guess "not at all." Technical interviews are in fact technical. There is zero technical evaluation that happens in the first 10 seconds. As for your specific points: 1. Yes, in fact, how you answer the technical questions will very likely be the deciding factor. That almost always was when I was doing technical interviews and on Google's hiring committee. 2. First impressions really don't matter that much for a technical interview... unless you're talking about the first 5 - 10 minutes of the technical portion. 3. For technical interviews, looking nervous doesn't really get people rejected -- at least not at companies like Google and Facebook. It could, however, make an interviewer more forgiving. 4. When candidates get rejected for coding roles companies like Google and Facebook, it's almost always due to their interview performance. It would be very unusual to get rejected because someone else outperformed you. They don't evaluate interviews that way. 5. Absolutely do not call off an interview part way through because you assume that the person is going to reject you. You don't know that at all. People's perception of their performance during a technical interview has no correlation with how they actually did. If you call off the interview because you assume you're doing poorly, this might just be your best interview. Also, a single anecdote does not confirm a theory. It can align with a theory.