Title

Reconsidering the use of personality tests in personnel selection contexts

Authors

Authors

F. P. Morgeson; M. A. Campion; R. L. Dipboye; J. R. Hollenbeck; K. Murphy;N. Schmitt

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Pers. Psychol.

Keywords

SOCIAL DESIRABILITY SCALE; CALIFORNIA PSYCHOLOGICAL INVENTORY; CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY; REAL-LIFE MOTIVATION; DETECTING FAKE-GOOD; JOB-PERFORMANCE; INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES; RESPONSE DISTORTION; IMPRESSION; MANAGEMENT; PREDICTIVE-VALIDITY; Psychology, Applied; Management

Abstract

Although long thought to be unrelated to job performance, research in the early 1990s provided evidence that personality can predict job performance. Accompanying this research was a resurgence of interest in the use of personality tests in high-stakes selection environments. Yet there are numerous potential problems associated with the current operational use of personality. As such, 5 former journal editors from Personnel Psychology and the Journal of Applied Psychology (2 primary outlets for such research), who have collectively reviewed over 7,000 manuscripts and who have no vested interest in personality testing, reconsider the research on the use of personality tests in environments where important selection decisions are made. Their comments are based on a panel discussion held at the 2004 SIOP conference. Collectively, they come to several conclusions. First, faking on self-report personality tests cannot be avoided and perhaps is not the issue; the issue is the very low validity of personality tests for predicting job performance. Second, as such, using published self-report personality tests in selection contexts should be reconsidered. Third, personality constructs may have value for employee selection, but future research should focus on finding alternatives to self-report personality measures.

Journal Title

Personnel Psychology

Volume

60

Issue/Number

3

Publication Date

1-1-2007

Document Type

Editorial Material

Language

English

First Page

683

Last Page

729

WOS Identifier

WOS:000249840900006

ISSN

0031-5826

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