Should personality tests be used in personnel recruitment and selection?

This essay title asks you to think about test validity and reliability, the possibility of faking responses,
whether personality tests predict job performance, and whether it’s fair for employers to ditch efforts
to train employees in favour of screening out unsuitable applicants.

(2000-2500 Words)

ESSAY PLAN
● INTRO (200-250 words)
○ personality tests- what are they?
○ Use for testing for recruitment and selection
○ Types of personality tests commonly used
● PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT MODELS (250)
■ 5-factor model
●
● RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY (800-1000)
● The effectiveness of personality tests in personnel selection scenarios can be evaluated
as a mechanism of the test’s reliability and validity.
● The reliability of a personality assessment is a reflection of the assessment’s
construction and ability to reduce random error (Hoyle, Harris & Judd, 2002).

● Whilst reliability is required as a pre-requisite for validity, generally literature regarding

the effective use of personality assessment for personnel selection is concerned with
issues of validity. Especially salient are issues of ‘faking’, the measurement validity of
criterion-related variables and the validity of personality assessment as a predictor of job
performance.

● ETHICS & DISCRIMINATION (500)

● IMPLICATIONS ON BUSINESSES?
○ implications of skimping on employee training in lieu of personality tests
● CONCLUSION (250)
○ Main argument?
○ Main points?
○ Direction of future research
■ alternatives to the self-report personality measures
● (1: 692)Forced choice, conditional reasoning: although issues of
time, effort, cost, security
○ ‘Take home’ message
 INTRODUCTION- PERSONALITY TESTING FOR RECRUITMENT AND
SELECTION

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(1) ● Mode: Self-report personality tests in recruitment selection

COMMONLY USED MODELS FOR PERSONALITY TESTING IN

EMPLOYMENT SITUATIONS

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(8) Norman’s “Big Five” 5 Factor Model (Norman, 1963)

● (8, 10) Generally researchers agree that there are 5 robust factors of
personality which serve as meaningful taxonomy for classifying
personality attributes
● (8) Important implications for personnel psychology as it illustrates
that personality consists of five relatively independent dimensions,
providing meaningful taxonomy for studying individual differences.
Such an orderly classification scheme is essential for the
communication and accumulation of empirical findings, especially in
the areas of personnel selection, performance appraisal, and training
and development.
● (8)Extroversion
○ modelled on Eysenck’s Extraversion/Intraversion
○ aka. Surgency
○ traits associated: being sociable, gregarious, assertive,
talkative and active
○ components of ambition and sociability
○ (8) found to be a valid predictor across all critereon for
occupations in management and sales.
● (8) Emotional Stability
○ AKA. Stability,, Emotionality, Neuroticism
○ Traits associated: anxiousness, depression, anger,
embarassment, worry, insecurity
○ (8) results suggested that individuals who exhibit low
emotional atability (worrying, anxious, nervous, emotional ,
high-strung) are actually better performers in the professional
dimension!
● (8) Agreeableness
○ AKA. Likability, friendliness, social conformity, compliance vs.
hostile non-compliance, or love.
○ Traits associated: courteousness, flexibility, trusting, good-
natured, cooperative, forgiving, soft-hearted, tolerant.
 ● Conscientiousness
○ AKA conscience, conformity, dependability, ‘will to achieve, or
will.
○ some disagreement to the essence of this dimension →
disparity in labelling
○ traits associated: dependability, careful, thorough, responsible,
organized, planful, (and also volitional aspects of)
hardworking, achievement-oriented, persevering.
○ (8, 3) Found to be a consistently valid predictor for all
occupational groups studied (professionals, police, managers,
sales, skilledsemi-skilled) and criterion levels (job proficiency,
training proficiency, personnel data)
■ (8) Also for vocational achievement (Takemoto, 1979)
● Culture
○ AKA. intellect/intelligence, openness to experience, culture
○ traits associated: imaginative, cultured, curious, original,
broad-minded, intelligent, artistically sensitive
○ more highly correlated with measures of cognitive ability, so it
is possible that ‘openness to experience’ is actually measuring
an ability to learn as well as a motivation to learn.
● Relatively robust across different theoretical frameworks, using
different instruments, in different cultures, with a variety of samples,
over ratings obtained from different sources, etc.
● relatively independent of measures of cognitive ability
● (10) Yet, the theoretical discussion about the number of underlying
basic personality dimensions remains open
● criticisms:
○ imprecise specification of dimensions
○ more than five dimensions are needed to encompass
personality-- namely splitting of ‘extraversion’ into ‘sociability
and ambition’

RELIABILITY & VALIDITY

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RELIABILITY
■ are these kinds of tests even accurate?
■ stability of personality over time
■ possibility of faking responses
● Even if it’s not malevolent faking, it’ll still impact
 test results, right?
Reliability:
1 (verbatim) (Definition) The extent to which a measure is free from random error.
Tendencies to make random errors and simple mistakes create unreliability
[Consistency of measurement]
● Improving Reliability
○ freedom from distractions
○ misunderstandings

Are Personality Tests even accurate?

● (8) Overall validity of personality as a predictor of job performance is
quite low
● (2) argues that personality variables that are measured by self-
reports, have substantial validity, though for job performance across
different jobs, only the personality variable on conscientiousness
proves prediictive.

● Faking
(Definition):
○ Author refutes premise that “so-called faking is related to the
underlying conscientiousness or integrity of the person” but
rather
○ Guion (1965) identified “attitudinal variables that may
systematically influence scores” that “render personality
measures meaningless” (p. 357)
○ 3 aspects (ala Paul Ekman (2001)):
■ First, the individual taking the personality test has
sufficient self-insight to accurately describe him or
herself on an item.
● Guion (1965): “those who are honest but lack
self-insight”
■ Second, the individual taking the test understands the
question and interprets it as the author of the test
intended.
● (1)Author: Those who do not understand the
question or define it in a manner that differs
from the intent of the author of the test.
■ Third, the individual taking the test willfully and
consciously deviates from the truth in the answer to the
question so as to create a desired impression.
● Guion (1965): “those who desire to present an
 idealized concept of self”
● (1)Author would hypothesize that outright lying
is a small and insignificant part of a much larger
problem.
○ people can and apparently do fake their responses on
personality tests
○ (2) Concludes that “The Impact of Response Distortion
[Faking] Among Job Applicants Is Overrated”
○ there is evidence that faking can distort the rank order of
applicants in the decision process
○ almost half the studies where criterion-related validity was
studied found some effect of faking on criterion-related va-
lidity
○ there has been substantial research devoted to techniques for
detecting and mitigating faking, but no techniques appear to
solve the problem adequately.
○ Why try to detect faking anyway! Who says faking is a bad
thing anyway?
■ people who give responses that are not socially
adaptive in a high stakes situation where they know
what they are supposed to do. People who do not
know when they should give honest answers and when
they should fake might lack a skill of adaptation to a
social world.
■ many social desirability scales are actually positive
attributes,
■ (2) agrees that Social desirability, self-deceptive
enhancement, and impression management scales do
not appear to be useful in predicting job performance
or its facets.
○ (2) Concludes that “The Impact of Response Distortion
[Faking] Among Job Applicants Is Overrated”
○ Remember that faking only makes a difference when
measures are valid in the first place → Good Segway!

VALIDITY
(Definition) Validity is the extent to which a measure reflects only the desires
construct without contamination from other systematically varying constructs.

Personality tests have very low validity for predicting overall job performance.
Some of the highest reported validities in the literature are potentially inflated
due to extensive corrections or methodological weaknesses.
■ What part of the job specifically are they related to?/
 Does personality even matter in these areas?
● are they relevant to job performance? fitting in
socially in the workplace?
■ Does the effectiveness differ for different
environments? Job roles?

● So, are personality tests valid measurements of job performance?

○ (1, 8) validity of personality tests is typically quite low, however
personality tests could potentially add a small amount of
incremental validity to a battery of cognitive tests. Make sure
they do not replace the cognitive tests or get an inordinate
amount of weight in the composite score or hiring decision
because this would drastically reduce the overall validity.
○ (2) “there is considerable evidence that both general cogni-
tive ability and broad personality traits (e.g.,
Conscientiousness) are rele- vant to predicting success in a
wide array of jobs”
○ (5) Type A behavior pattern has been linked to performance
effectiveness (in university research settings) and to
unfavorable health outcomes
○ (2) regardless of the occupation or job under consideration,
ability tests best predict overall job performance
○ (2) When the screening [for varied occupations], there seem to
be no personality traits (apart from conscientiousness) that
predict overall job performance with consistent validity across
different jobs.
○ [2, 3] When job screening IS specific, different sets of
personality variables provide the most validity in predicting job
performance.
■ [Basically, for different types of jobs, different
personality combinations are optimal. Testing should
account for this, and be specific]
○ (5) individuals who display high levels of the Type A behavior
pattern tend to perform better at work, both with respect to
quantity and quality of performance
● What part of the job specifically are they related to?
○ Difficulty in distinguishing “team performance” from “task
performance” in many research context i.e. contextual vs. task
performance
○ (4)With the effects of cognitive ability controlled, however,
personality predictors were associated with proficiency on
conducting routine job tasks, on managing and training unit
 personnel, on administration and accounting procedures, on
overall effectiveness, on ratings of promotability and on self-
reported job satisfaction.
○ (4) personality and vocational interest measures can be valid
predictors of managerial performance and may have
considerable potential for the selection of first-line managers.
This is especially true since personality and interest measures
predict criterion variance not accounted for by cognitive ability.

● Criterion-related validity
○ (1,8 ) main problem of personality tests is “personality
measures as predictors of job performance is often
disappointingly low”
○ suggests that personality tests only account for 15% of
variance in performance; 85% of variance is unaccounted for
○ Integrity tests in the 1980s were plagued by an overestimation
of the criterion-related validity due to methodological
weaknesses
○ (2) argues that criterion-related validities of self-report
personality measures are substantial. The Big Five personality
variables as a set predict important organizational behaviors
including job performance to a moderate to strong effect size
(.2 - .5)
○ faking is not a big problem with respect to criterion-related
validity of personality tests/ seems clear is that faking does not
distort the criterion-related validities of these tests.
■ for faking to really affect the validity, given how low the
correlations are to begin with, it would have to cause
radical changes in rank orders.
■ self-monitoring is probably a good thing in most social
contexts, suggesting that whatever contributes to
faking may also contribute to job performance—
especially when one employs a supervisory rating as
the criterion
■ Finally, whatever construct drives faking, it is probably
correlated with conscientiousness, emotional stability,
and agreeableness, and thus is probably redundant
with much of what is driving the personality scores to
begin with
■ [Making corrections for faking] will not have an impact
on criterion-related validity and will not have an impact
on standardized outcome performance in most
 instances.
● if we are interested in improving validity alone,
then the use of “faking” scales is not going to
have more than minimal effects in all situations
that represent reasonable estimates of the
correlations among the variables involved and
the situations in which tests are used.
○ On the flip side, (2) indicates that “there is useful criterion-
related validity for self-report personality measures when the
stakes involve getting a job”
● Are measures valid in the first place?
If personality tests are used,customized personality measures that are
clearly job-related in face valid ways might be more easily explained
to both candidates and organizations.
○ In contrast with Cognitive ability measures, personality tests
are not very effective at predicting training performance.
○ “when we go to use personality tests, we do not correct scores
[ for range restriction, criterion unreliability, predictor
unreliability, which reflect relationships between constructs.]
We use the observed scores and reliability and validity
information for observed scores should be considered when
examining the impact of faking.”
○ because a test must be used as it is in a practical scenario(i.e.,
with a given level of reliability), any correction for test
unreliability (in academia) will overestimate the operational
validity of the test
■ E.g. corrections for “construct invalidity” (i.e., the fact
that many of the personality mea- sures coded as a
particular personality dimension are poor measures of
the underlying construct).
○ Self-reported admissions of wrongdoing measures are
correlated more to test–retest reliability estimates than
criterion-related validity coefficients.
○ There is no coherent theory about what these tests are
supposed to measure. Using meta-analysis to combine validity
estimates [doesn’t shed light on WHY or WHICH measures
work, only IF they do/don’t]
○

ETHICS AND DISCRIMINATION IN RECRUITMENT PERSONALITY

 TESTING

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● (6) Psychologists must be concerned with questions of fairness,

propriety, and individual rights as well as other ethical issues.
○ privacy
○ how should the information be retained?
○ non-trained psychologist access to psychological techniques
in making personnel decisions
○ conflicts between the rights of psychologists and those of the
individuals/organisations they serve
● (6) “Enforcement of ethical standards is difficult unless the
organisation promulgating the standards can influence the behaviour
of it’s members”

Ethical Standards
● (6) “Psychologists who are members of APA or who are licensed by a
state to practice psychology are expected to abide by the standards
and principles for ethical practice set forth by APA, regional
professional organizations, and/or state statutes.
○ However, non-psychologists involved in evaluation are not
formally responsible for adhering to these standards.”
● (6) “Psychologists will not condone practices that... result in illegal or
otherwise unjustifiable discrimination on the basis of race, age, sex,
religion, or national origin in hiring, promotion or training” (APA’s
Ethical Standards of Psychologists 1977)
● (6) “Principles include guarding against invasion of privacy,
guaranteeing confidentiality, obtaining employees' and applicants'
informed consent before evaluation, respecting employees' right to
know, imposing time limitations on data, minimizing false positive and
false negative decisions, and treating employees with respect and
consideration

Privacy/ Disclosure
● (6) The potential for conflict among the professional's obligations to
the employer, the profession, and employees is perhaps most likely in
the area of confidentiality
● (6) Guion (1965) responds to these arguments by stating, "It is a clear
invasion of privacy to ask an applicant to reveal details of thought or
emotion that are not relevant, to performance on the job for which he
is considered" (p. 376). -
● (6) Ewing (1977) recommends that employees or applicants not be
required or pressured to take a personality test or any other
examination, for that matter, which constitutes, in their opinion, an
invasion of privacy, regardless of the test's validity.
● (6) People do not necessarily have a right to test results if these
results do not affect them in any way and they have not been
promised access to the scores
 ○ [1971 Case re: “confidentiality of test results and the rights of
interested parties to know whether fair practices prevailed in a
situation”.
A Labor Union requested a company supply scores of all
applicants for a particular job, regardless of the consent of
individual employees.
The US Supreme Court ruled to recognise the right of the test
user to maintain the security of the test”

Fairness
● (6) Fairness relates to the absence of discrimination on the basis of
race, sex, national origin, or other characteristics not related to the
job.

Gender Differences and Discrimination

● (3) [Certain types of personality tests can lead to adverse gender
impact on scores and therefore employment.]
○ (3)when a facet-level personality measure is reflective of
agency or communion, its use in a selection context may lead
to adverse impact. However, the adverse impact can be
reduced by combining that trait with other, non agency- related
or non-communion-related, traits. Indeed, the use of the FFM
may be one way to mitigate the potential for differential hiring
rates by gender in a selection context.
● (3) Because male/female mean differences in facet-level traits appear
to be prevalent, many test publishers have gender-specific norms to
score personality measures. However, gender-specific norms are
generally not used when using personality measures to make
employment-related decisions

Process
● (6)How employees or applicants are treated when they are evaluated
can influence the results of the evaluation and their acceptance of the
ensuing decision.
Standard procedures should include personal and considerate
treatment, a clear explanation of the evaluation process, and direct
and honest answers to examinees' questions.

IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESSES

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● (4) need to consider performance from a multivariate perspective and

to evaluate carefully individual differences that predict proficiency in
each criterion domain.
 ● (7) the interview is highly vulnerable to legal attack and one can
expect more future litigation in this area
● To which areas of business/what jobs specifically do these
results refer to?

CONCLUSION/ NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

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(1) ● Evaluation of Personality testing: a personality inventory in selection

[is not] a normal extension of everyday life but rather a bizarre
circumstance that resembles in few ways the real world. In
responding to items applicants may lie about themselves but many
others respond as best they can in an attempt to cope with what is
essentially an unrealistic self-report task.
● [Research personality tests are very different to selection process
personality tests]. Develop personality tests that are clearly job
related and that avoid questions that are ambiguous (at best) or
embarrassing (at worst). I would not label the scales so clearly in a
selection context.
● alternatives to the self-report personality measures
○ (1: 692)Forced choice, conditional reasoning: although issues
of time, effort, cost, security
○ simple measures of general cognitive ability are thought to
account for about 20–25% of the variance in job performance.
Higher figures for more complex jobs (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998
cited by (1)
●

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induced faking is associated with a reduction in criterion-related validity

citing that these occurrences can affect criterion-related validity to the effect of approximately
50% (2007). Conversely,

Barrick & Mount: at personality tests have useful levels of criterion- validity even when used in
true personnel selection contexts where motivated distortion is very likely to have occurr