Task 8 - Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff - Personality and Job Performance PDF

Task 8 - Sorting the wheat from the chaff Personality and job performance - Ashton chapter How to assess job performance? Job performance can be measured with objective measures of productivity (e.g. number of customers served by a cashier, dollar value of hou...

Task 8 - Sorting the wheat from the chaff Personality and job performance - Ashton chapter How to assess job performance? Job performance can be measured with objective measures of productivity (e.g. number of customers served by a cashier, dollar value of houses sold by a real estate agent etc.). Counterproductive actions can also be counted (e.g. lateness, days absent, rule violations etc.) However, such measures are not easily applied to some jobs and they may fail to capture important aspects of job performance. Job performance can also be measured by obtaining supervisors' or coworkers' evaluations. This method is highly applicable across jobs, but it is subjective. The studies of the relations between personality and job performance have shown little difference between the results obtained on the basis of objective or subjective measures, or have shown some tendency for the subjective ratings to be more easily predicted. The role of conscientiousness The most consistent finding is that conscientiousness is positively correlated with overall job performance across a variety of occupations. However, the strength of the relations between Conscientiousness and job performance is rather modest, typically about.20, even when corrections are made for the less-than-perfect reliability of job performance measures. Some other dimensions of personality are related to performance in some particular categories of occupations or in some aspects of any given job. Agreeableness shows modest positive correlations with performance in customer service jobs, and Extraversion and Emotional Stability both show modest positive correlations with performance in sales and managerial jobs Agreeableness is related to getting along with coworkers, Extraversion is related to showing leadership on the job, and Emotional Stability is related to better management of job stress People higher in conscientiousness and emotional stability tend to have slightly higher incomes and also slightly better job satisfaction (correlates were about 0.10). Counterproductive behavior at work: a person-by-situation interaction Honesty-Humility is related to how much counterproductive behavior people engage in at work. However, this only applies in work environments with a lot of organizational politics (e.g. where employees can get ahead just by agreeing with the boss or by having the right network of allies. In such environments, people with low Honesty-Humility feel tempted to commit counterproductive behaviors, but the ones high in Honesty- Humility remain not tempted. Integrity tests Integrity tests - self-report questionnaires that are intended to assess a potential/current employee's level of honesty and dependability, and thus to predict his/her tendency to refrain from counterproductive behavior and his/her likely level of job performance. Overt integrity tests - ask the job applicant to indicate whether he or she has committed various dishonest acts, such as stealing from previous employers, shoplifting, and various other criminal activities and counterproductive workplace behaviors. In addition, overt integrity tests often ask the respondent to indicate his or her attitudes and opinions about such acts. Personality-based integrity tests - more similar to typical self-report personality inventories, but the respondents may not know that the employer is attempting to assess integrity. Higher scores on integrity tests are modestly related to better job performance, with a correlation of about.15. Integrity test scores are negatively related to counterproductive behavior, but more strongly to self-reported counterproductivity (r = −.40) than to employer records of counterproductivity (r = −.15). Both measures are imperfect: employer records presumably miss many incidents of counterproductivity, but, on the other hand, an applicant who exaggerates his or her integrity will likely also downplay his or her counterproductive behavior. Integrity tests could be of at least some modest value to employers in selecting employees who will perform well on the job and refrain from counterproductive behavior. The problem of faking Study: the self-report personality scores of a group of current employees was compared to a group of job applicants. The employees knew that their responses were obtained only for research purposes and would remain anonymous. The job applications knew that their responses could be used by the employer to decide which applicants to hire. Across a variety of socially desirable characteristics, the self-report scores of the job applicants were, on average, nearly 1 standard deviation unit higher than were the self-report scores of the current employees. This suggests a fairly strong degree of faking among the applicants Despite this faking, however, the fact that integrity tests and personality inventories have some validity in predicting job performance suggests that the differences among people in their scores are still somewhat meaningful and give a somewhat accurate reflection of their relative levels of integrity & related traits. Several methods for reducing/detecting faking by job applications are currently used/investigated (e.g. faking scales). However, highly virtuous people may also obtain high scores on faking scales. Study: participants get "accidentally" overpaid at the end of a study. Participants with higher scores on the faking scale & the integrity scale were actually more likely to pay back the extra money. Personality Page 1  actually more likely to pay back the extra money. Other methods to reduce faking include limiting participants' time, using items that require indicating which of several equally desirable statements describes the person, non-self-report methods, etc. Personality ratings from coworkers or supervisors can be at least as valid in predicting job performance as are personality self-ratings on the same characteristics. Personality Assessment: Overview - Furnham article The essential methods Self-report Faking can occur due to impression management (consciously leaving out information or adding untrue information, as well as giving answers that are not strictly correct but create a good impression in the interviewer's mind) and self-deception (lack of self-awareness that leads to false answers) This has been attempted to be resolved using Lie Scales in the test, which measure response biases. Some false reports can also result from lack of self-insight, where people cannot say about themselves even if they wanted to. Attempts to resolve this include projective techniques and sentence completion tasks (e.g. a person completes the sentence "My greatest regret is…" and the assessor attempts to detect themes). However, such methods are expensive and unreliable. Observation data There are 2 main issues with observer data: how much the observer knows about the individual and to what extent they are willing to be honest. People may choose their favorite referees because they hope that they will be very positive. There is an etiquette with respect to what people write/rate on references. It is therefore rare to get very accurate/useful data on a person's weaknesses or challenges from references. Test performance A variety of tests of maximum/typical performance or behavioral test can be used. Physiological evidence For some jobs, employees have to go through a ‘medical checkup’ which they may have to do on a regular basis simply to keep their job. Sometimes these physical measures are thought to be able to detect whether a person is more likely to get a debilitating mental/physical disease. Their use is controversial. Personal history/biography People's personal history (e.g. where they were born & educated, family history, present family and address, social class of parents, academic performance etc.) is thought to be important. This area is called biodata and aims to determine the biographical markers of success in very particular jobs. A simple selection model The simplest selection model is to aim to select the good and reject the bad candidates. One problem is the assumption of linearity: that the more, the better (which is not true for some jobs, where you need an optimal amount). Another problem is to select out: to actively look for things that you do not want in the person being assessed. In this picture, B & C are errors. Recruiters are too concerned with getting A but not with D, while it is important to assess potential derailers, especially when the consequences of failure are higher. Assessment methods The interview The inter-rater reliability on structured job interviews is about r = 0.50. However, validity is lower: For structured interview it is r = 0.35 for 1-to-1 and board interviews, but for unstructured interview it is r = 0.11 for 1-to-1 and r = 0.21 for board interviews. Therefore, interviewers of the same person do not agree very much on their assessments and that these assessments are not very useful predicting success (or failure) on the job. Only planned, structured interviews offer good data to really be useful in assessment. Reasons why interviews are poor at predicting performance: Interviewers differ in insight, skills, preferences, motives, attention, and need for justification of their decisions. They also have their own implicit personality theories and are susceptible to forming a first impression and ignoring later data. Interviewees often try hard to manage a positive impression by self-promotion and self-enhancement. Reasons to reject have disproportionate weight compared to reasons to accept. Interviewers can be trained and multiple interviewers can be used in order to predict the reliability and validity of interviews. Personal references References are unreliable and have poor validity, due to several reasons: Personality Page 2 References are unreliable and have poor validity, due to several reasons: Leniency: most references are indiscriminately positive, because candidates choose people who are likely to be positive, and respondents have no motivation to tell the truth, especially because negative evaluations may lead to a libel suit. Idiosyncrasy: people use idiosyncratic language, examples and criteria to describe and evaluate others. Free-form references: reference writes are free to offer long/short, descriptive/evaluative, and relevant/irrelevant data. It is possible to improve the validity of the reference by explaining fully the purpose of the reference, using rating scales or a forces choice format. Peer references are the most useful, valid and reliable type of reference. Referees are best when they are chosen by the employer, and when they are asked specific questions, under guaranteed anonymity. Biodata Biodata has several advantages: objectivity, cost, verifiability/checkability, validity. Also, most people prefer and expect to be asked about their biographies rather than their personalities. It also has several issues: Homogeneity versus heterogeneity: if many biographical items are used in selection, the organization eventually becomes more homogeneous, which has both advantages & disadvantages. Cloning the past: in unstable environments, where requirements change, biodata is just cloning the past and that may not always be the best strategy. Faking: checking that a person has not faked can be difficult and expensive. Legal fairness: items such as age, sex, and marital status may in fact be challenged by the courts if such items are included in inventories. Minorities cannot easily be identified and treated fairly: biodata forms, especially when computer-scored, are completely blind to incidental items such as a person’s name, which might indicate ethnic background. Biodata does not travel well: the same criteria do not have the same predictability across jobs, organizations, countries or time. Establishing the criteria every time can lead to costs. Shrinkage over time: the validity of biodata shrinks over time, and periodic revalidation and reweighting may be necessary. Cognitive and mental ability tests A high IQ is generally necessary to perform well in highly complex professional jobs; it is a considerable advantage in moderately complex jobs (crafts, clerical, and police work); but it provides less advantage in settings that require only routine decision-making or simple problem solving (unskilled work). When individuals have already been selected for high (or low) intelligence – and so do not differ much in IQ – as in graduate school (or special education), other influences on performance loom larger in comparison. The single best predictor of success in complex, changing managerial jobs is intelligence. Brighter people learn faster; they have a greater store of knowledge; and they tend to be intellectually more self-confident. They analyze problems more efficiently and are less threatened by change. The relationship between mental ability and work performance is continuous and linear – the brighter someone is, the more likely their work performance is to be good. Research on mental ability and team (rather than individual) performance suggests the existence of more complex relationships: low scorers may hold the whole team back. Personality tests Big 5 Neuroticism and Conscientiousness are relevant to all jobs. Different jobs require different profiles but there are none where high neuroticism and low conscientiousness are an advantage. Successful managers have a clear profile: they tend to be low on neuroticism, low on agreeableness, average on openness, high on extraversion, and very high on conscientiousness. Advantages of Personality Tests in Personnel Selection: Validity depends on the test, criteria, and sample. Provide numeric information for easy comparison. Offer explicit and specific results on temperament and ability. Eliminate corruption and favoritism in selection. Considered scientific and empirically based. Disadvantages of Personality Tests in Personnel Selection: Tests can be faked, affecting selection outcomes. Reliability may be affected by temporary factors like test anxiety. Some tests lack robust proof of validity, especially in predicting specific behaviors. Limited ability to measure crucial organizational traits like trustworthiness. Requires literacy, familiarity with jargon, and time, leading to potential workforce issues. Bias and gender differences may exist in test outcomes. Interpretation requires skill, insight, and experience, which may not always be available. The Contributions of Personality to Organizational Behavior and Psychology: Findings, Criticisms, and Future Research Directions - Judge article Evidence of the relationship between personality traits and organizational behavior Personality Page 3 Job performance Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability (a bit less strongly) predict overall job performance across different jobs. The other Big 5 traits predict outcomes in certain conditions. Core self-evaluations (CSE) is a higher-order factor representing the fundamental evaluations people make about themselves. It consists of at least 4 specific traits: self-esteem, locus of control, emotional stability and generalized self-efficacy. CSE is comparable in predictive validity to conscientiousness in relation to job performance. Work motivation Neuroticism and conscientiousness, respectively, are strongly negatively and positively related with work motivation. Job attitudes Extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism are significant predictors of job satisfaction. Other related variables to job satisfaction are CSE & positive and negative effect. CSE is the strongest predictor. Leadership Trait theory of leadership - leadership depends on the personality of the leader. Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness and Emotional Stability are related to leader emergence & leader effectiveness. When individuals' perceptions of leader emergence & effectiveness are combined to create an overall leadership factor, the Big 5 explains almost 1/2 of the variance in leadership. Power, politics and influence Need for power is positively related to how often one employs influence tactics. Machiavellianism is positively related to flexible use of influence tactics. Extraversion, desire for control, and self-monitoring are positively related to both of these criteria. Conscientiousness, proactive personality and extraversion are significantly related to political skill. Extraversion is linked to usage of inspirational appeal and ingratiation tactics, while conscientious individuals are more likely to rely on rational appeals to influence their supervisors. Within social groups, high extraversion and low neuroticism are related to higher social status. Stress, coping and adaptability Neurotic individuals perceive greater amounts of stress regardless of actual workload. They also feel more threatened by stressful events and use maladaptive coping strategies in stressful situations. Extraverts tend to exhibit opposite patterns. Team effectiveness The mean of team members' conscientiousness and the lowest agreeableness of any team member best predict team effectiveness. In terms of openness, homogeneous groups tend to outperform heterogeneous groups. Deviance and counterproductive behavior Conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability are negatively related to counterproductive work behaviors. Agreeableness more strongly relates to interpersonal deviance, whereas conscientiousness more strongly relates to deviance direct toward the organization. Workplace accidents Except for extraversion, all other big 5 traits are strongly related to accidents, in particular high openness & neuroticism and low agreeableness & conscientiousness. With the exception of agreeableness, the variability in the correlations in a meta-analysis was quite high. Conflict and negotiation In distributive bargaining, extraversion and agreeableness are disadvantageous, probably because extraverts & agreeable people tend to be overly open and cooperative. Agreeable individuals are also likely to be more distressed by interpersonal conflict, but are less likely to engage in conflict in the first place. Personality Page 4  Agreeable individuals are also likely to be more distressed by interpersonal conflict, but are less likely to engage in conflict in the first place. When conflict does occur, agreeable individuals, along with extraverts, are more likely to employ an integrative strategy. Criticisms of personality assessment in organizational settings Meager validities Critics claim that many statistically significant relationships between personality and job performance are too low to be of much practical significance. The validity of the best predictor - conscientiousness - is 0.23, which is much lower than that of intelligence (r = 0.51). However, this is no reason to dismiss the effectiveness of personality research: When the multiple correlation of the Big 5, as a set, is computed, the predictive validity is between 0.40 and 0.50. There is no theoretical reason to assume that all big 5 traits should be related to performance across all occupations. Personality inventories can be 'faked' Studies on whether job applications do fake or whether faking impacts the validity of personality testing produce mixed results. Faking can be circumvented by using 2 broad approaches: Proactive methods - including procedures designed to decrease respondents' ability to fake (e.g. items with options that are equal in social desirability, warning respondents not to fake, or asking them to elaborate on their responses). Reactive methods - identifying & correcting problems associated with faking after it has occurred (e.g. including social desirability scales, exploring item response times). Both approaches have limited empirical success Non-self-report measures can also be used, but they also have their limitations (discussed in the other readings above). Faking Good and Personality Assessments of Job applicants - Fahey article Introduction Accuracy in personality measurement Organizations that use personality measures in the selection and assessment of managers, and which retain these employees, are likely to outperform their competitors who do not select on the basis of personality. However, these benefits only arise if the individual’s true score on a personality measure is accurately assessed, thus being indicative of ‘construct validity’. Some researchers maintain that faking good is a serious problem because of the resulting inaccuracy. On the other hand, other researchers argue that even if people fake good in self-report personality assessments, it doesn't have a meaningful impact. They cite studies that suggest that this faking doesn't affect the accuracy or validity of these assessments in relation to established criteria (criterion-related validity). The authors propose a nomological network for the various factors that affect a test taker's observed score on a personality measure. Meta-analysis: personality traits, when added to cognitive ability, significantly improved the predictability of overall assessment center ratings, especially in specific scenarios. An assessment center is a method often used in organizational settings to evaluate a range of skills of individuals. During an assessment center, participants are typically subjected to various exercises that mimic real workplace situations. These exercises are designed to assess skills such as problem-solving, communication, leadership, teamwork, etc. Socially desirable responding All of the Big Five dimensions of personality are prone to faking good among job applicants. Although most test takers’ scores are stable, fairly sizeable percentages of test takers display evidence of higher scores as job applicants, compared to their scores later on when they were job incumbents. Faking represents a response set that aims to portray the self in such a way as to achieve personal goals. Faking occurs when this response set is activated by situational demands & person characteristics. Personality Page 5 There are 2 psychological processes involved in faking good: moral hypocrisy and objective self-awareness. Moral hypocrisy Moral hypocrisy - when individuals promote or act in a way that appears morally good or right, not because they genuinely want to produce a good outcome or uphold moral values, but rather to create the image of being moral while still benefiting themselves. Moral disengagement - when individuals deliberately disconnect or detach themselves from self-censorship and moral constraints. Unlike moral hypocrisy, those who engage in moral disengagement may not necessarily be trying to appear moral while engaging in morally questionable behavior. The opportunity for moral hypocrisy is present in faking good situations - people who self-present essentially lie, which is immoral. If people are reminded of moral standards, making them more salient, before a test, it is likely that faking will reduce (there is empirical support for this). Objective self-awareness For objective self-awareness to occur, an individual’s attention has to be directed inward, and the individual's consciousness must then be focused on himself or herself. A combination of making moral standards salient together with heightened self-awareness can eliminate moral hypocrisy (there is empirical support for this). Duval and Wicklund's theory of self-awareness - focusing one's attention on the self induces a state of objective self-awareness and this leads to an awareness of the discrepancies between the ideal and actual self. An individual completing a self-report personality measure is focused on the self, by definition. Study: this focus on, and real time awareness of, the discrepancies between the actual and ideal self in a setting such as that of a high stakes selection situation was shown to be leading to a state of moral hypocrisy among participants in a low moral standards saliency context. Many everyday moral decisions occur in low-standard salience/ high-self-awareness situations. These include high stakes employee selection contexts. In such situations, people need to make a moral decision in contexts in which the relevant moral standards are not stated in advance, or others are not watching, or actions are not challenged, etc. Individuals who fake good, when completing self-report personality measures in high stakes selection situations, probably would feel that they acted morally if questioned after completing the questionnaire, even though they actually acted in a manner that served their self-interest. Therefore, to minimize moral hypocrisy in such situations, both high self-awareness and high moral salience need to be present. However, even with assessment conditions of high self-awareness and high moral salience, applicant faking good may still occur. For this reason the assessment procedures need to include a measure that is capable of detecting faking good. Typically, this is done through the use of impression management measures (lie scales). Lie and related scales Lie scales are social desirability scales as discussed in the other readings above. There are unidimensional lie scales (which assume that there is a single latent factor underlying the lie scale) and scales based on 2 dimensions (self- deception and impression management). This section does not add much more relevant information about lie scales than already summarized above. Item transparency in impression management measures The psychometric properties of lie scales are better if they are distributed across the main test, rather than presented as a group of consecutive items (in which case more faking occurs). Personality Page 6