Category Archives: *Human Performance
How Should I Measure That?
Topic: Selection, Assessment
Publication: Human Performance (2009)
Article: Not much more than g? An examination of the impact of intelligence on NFL performance
Authors: B.D. Lyons, B.J. Hoffman, & J.W. Michel
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin, M.A.
In most work, intelligence is a key a predictor of job performance. But what about when your job involves physically assaulting your opponent and not letting him say “uncle” until you have successfully moved a pigskin 100 yards into his end zone? For a football player, does intelligence predict performance? Do you, as an owner of a National Football team, select the genius in the tweed jacket with an Ivy League smile?
In investigating the relationship between intelligence and performance, Lyons, Hoffman, and Michel examined the general mental ability and performance of 762 football players drafted during the 2002, 2003, and 2004 NFL Drafts. Since there are relatively few kickers and punters, they were excluded. Cognitive ability was evaluated using the Wonderlic a performance was assessed three ways: future NFL performance, including position specific criterion such as total tackles and touchdowns over a three-year period; draft position, referring to when the player was selected by a professional team in the NFL Draft; and number of games started. Shockingly enough, cognitive ability did not relate to performance.
So, general mental ability does not appear to predict performance of professional players. That’s not to say that intelligence is not related to the performance of professional football players. (Confused yet?) Rather, this study shows that intelligence as measured by the Wonderlic does not relate to football performance. It is possible that intelligence as measured by another instrument could show a relationship to athletic performance. As a take home message, be thoughtful in selecting the tool that you use to measure something. The Wonderlic may be a helpful measure of intelligence in business settings, but its use in alternative contexts such as the world of the NFL may not be as valid.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Waging WARS on Workplace Arrogance
Topic: Performance, Personality, Self Efficacy
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Acting superior but actually inferior?: Correlates and consequences of workplace arrogance
Authors: R.E. Johnson, S.B. Silverman, A. Shyamsunder, H-Y Swee, O.B. Rodopman, E. Cho, and J. Bauer
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger
It’s probably safe to say that we’ve all had to work with an arrogant coworker or supervisor at one time in our careers. It’s also probably safe to say that these run-ins have been unpleasant and disruptive to our work. Yet, while we arm-chair our theories about the effects of arrogance in the workplace, very little research is available to confirm (or disconfirm) our assumptions and anecdotal evidence. That is, surprisingly little is known about the consequences of workplace arrogance and its relationship with job performance.
In an effort to facilitate research on workplace arrogance, Johnson et al. (2010) created a scale to measure workplace arrogance (the Workplace Arrogance Scale) with a conveniently clever acronym: WARS. The authors conducted 4 independent studies to validate their newly created scale and explore the consequences of workplace arrogance. According to the authors, arrogant employees have exaggerated perceptions of their self-importance and superiority. At work, arrogant employees may manifest these inflated self-perceptions by discounting others’ ideas/contributions, belittling coworkers, asserting control even in situations beyond their area of expertise, etc.
Johnson et al.’s findings point to a fascinating trend: while arrogant employees engage in behaviors that exude superiority, they actually appear to be less intelligent and receive lower performance ratings than employees who are less arrogant.
To Give Is To Get In Work Teams
Topic: Goals, Performance, Teams
Publication: Human Performance
Article: What you do for your team comesback to you: A cross-level investigation of individual goal specification,team-goal clarity, and individual performance
Authors: S. Sonnentag and J. Volmer
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger
Much of today’s work is done by workteams. Even if an employee’s work is self-contained, it is often combined with the work of other team members. Cleary then, individual performance is vital for determining the team’s level of overall performance. But how do employees’ inputs into the team impact their own performance?
A study by Sonnentag and Volmer (2010) suggests that the level of involvement employees have in the development and specification of their work team’s goals has important implications for their own individual performance.
Involvement in specifying the work team’s goals can include verbally contributing one’s own ideas, expanding on the ideas of others, or suggesting the prioritization of some goals over others. In their study, Sonnentag and Volmer specifically focused on whether employees were verbal in contributing to the team’s goals during scheduled team meetings.
The authors studied 31 software design teams (groups of 4-6 computer science students working on large projects throughout the course of a semester) whose projects were designed to reflect professional software design projects. According to the authors, employees who actively involve themselves in the specification of their team’s goals, gain a better understanding of those
goals and are better able to focus on their vital aspects. This then allows them to boost their performance and contribution to the team.
While their results suggest that verbal participation in goal specification is beneficial to an individual’s own performance, Sonnentag and Volmer found that this was particularly so when the team’s goals are not well defined. That is, clear team goals are goals that are well defined and team members are able to build a shared understanding of them. When team goals were very clear, even team members who were not actively engaged in developing the team’s goals were able to gain an understanding of the goals and perform at a high level. When team goals were not clear, however, participation in the specification of team goals had big payoffs in terms in individual performance.
This study shows us that team members who are more actively involved in helping to determine the team’s goals and objectives not only help the team, but also reap the rewards of increased individual performance. Managers should train and encourage their employees to actively participate in the development of team goals during team meetings. Sonnentag and Volmer’s findings further suggest that such involvement is particularly important when team goals are not well specified, such as in the early stages of a team project.
Sonnentag, S. & Volmer, J. (2010). What you do for your team comes back to you: A cross-level investigation of individual goal specification, team-goal clarity, and individual performance. Human Performance, 23(2), 116-130.
When Performance Goals are a Must
Topic: Feedback, Goals, Performance
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Achievement goals, feedback, and task performance
Authors: A.M. Cianci, J.M. Schaubroeck, and G.A. McGill
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger
Although performance feedback is vital to effective job performance, employees can react
differently to the same feedback. For example, while some employees give up in the face of negative feedback about their performance, others persevere and actually improve their performance over time. Alternatively, when presented with positive feedback, some employees coast while others maintain their high levels of performance. Cianci et al. recently showed that the type of goals that are set for employees help explain how they react to positive and negative performance feedback.
In general, Cianci et al. found that those who were assigned a learning goal for a complex computerized task (“your goal…is to learn how to approach this kind of task as well as possible”) outperformed both those who were assigned a performance goal (“your goal…is to perform as well as possible, achieving the highest score possible”) and those assigned no goal at all. What’s interesting is that following positive performance feedback, those assigned performance goals boosted their performance while negative feedback was detrimental to future performance on the task. The opposite trend was apparent for those assigned learning goals (i.e., negative feedback was beneficial and positive feedback was detrimental to performance).
Cianci and colleagues also investigated how peoples’ beliefs about their ability impact how they respond to performance and learning goals. More specifically, the authors discussed two overarching beliefs about one’s ability: (1) ability is fixed and CANNOT be improved over time and (2) ability is incremental and CAN increase over time. They found that the latter view was generally beneficial to performance, especially for those assigned performance goals.
In general, Cianci et al.’s findings suggest that assigning learning goals to employees leads to superior performance. However, there are times in which it is beneficial or necessary to set performance goals. In these cases, managers should ensure that they include positive performance feedback (particularly if it must sandwich constructive feedback) throughout the project/assignment and encourage employees to view their abilities as improvable over time.
What Makes a “Good Faker”? And Do We Want Them?
Topic: Faking, Personality Assessment
Publication: Human PerformanceArticle: Individual differences in the ability to fake on personality measures.
Author: P.H. Raymark, T.L. Tafero
Featured by: Benjamin Granger
One common criticism of personality testing is its susceptibility to faking. Faking (i.e., response distortion) occurs when job applicants intentionally misrepresent themselves (e.g., respond in ways that present themselves as more attractive job candidates).
In a recent study, Raymark and Tafero (2009) investigated the role of several individual differences thought to explain why certain job applicants are more able to fake on personality measures than others. Specifically, the authors investigated:
(1) Openness to ideas (individuals high in openness are described as being curious, intelligent, and having a high need for cognition)
(2) Self-monitoring (the extent to which individuals actively monitor their self-presentation and behavior – social chameleons)
(3) Prior knowledge of the personality factors being measured
(4) Prior knowledge of the job an applicant is applying for
Raymark and Tafero utilized a sample of 342 students from a university in the U.S., roughly half of which were instructed to fake their personality in a generally “good” direction and the other half to fake “good” for a specific job – accountant. In addition to completing the personality test while faking, all participants were also instructed to complete the test by responding honestly at a different time during the study.
As expected, the results of the study suggest that certain individual differences are related to the ability to fake. While self-monitoring was not related to faking, individuals who reported being more open to ideas and having more prior knowledge of the personality characteristics being measured tended to have increased scores on the personality measure when to instructed to fake “good” in general. Moreover, openness to ideas predicted faking for the specific job (accountant).
BUT…It is unknown whether this type of faking is actually a “bad” thing (reduces the validity and usefulness of the personality tests) or “good” (actually relates to job performance). Now wait a second… How can faking be “good?”
Consider this: Although we may assume that faking is always a “bad” thing, it is plausible (and some have argued this) that the ability to fake personality tests is actually predictive of job performance. That is, perhaps it is beneficial from a performance point of view to have curious, intelligent and open applicants who are able to fake! So, which is it? According to Raymark and Tafero the answer is still up for debate.
Faded Feedback – Just a Fad?
Topic: Feedback, Training
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Faded versus increasing feedback, task variability trajectories, and transfer of training.
Author: J.S. Goodman, R.E. Wood
Featured by: Benjamin Granger
In training situations, immediate, specific, and frequent feedback to the learner is often prescribed by the experts. However, there is evidence that this “high guidance” feedback may ultimately impair long-term transfer (the ability to transfer knowledge gained in training to the workplace) and individual performance on the job. One solution that has been presented in the literature to address this issue is known as faded feedback. Faded feedback involves high-level guidance at first, with a gradual reduction in feedback and guidance as trainees move through the training course.
However, as pointed out by Goodman and Wood (2009), there is very little empirical support for faded feedback (though it seems intuitively appealing). To test the effectiveness of fading feedback over the course of a training program, as well as a variant of faded feedback (e.g., gradually increasing feedback and guidance over time – opposite of faded feedback), Goodman and Wood had 125 undergraduate students complete an 18 trial training course.
Interestingly, despite the intuitive appeal of faded feedback, Goodman and Wood’s findings suggest that this feedback method did not lead to better learning or improved transfer of training relative to the reverse (gradually increasing feedback over the course of training).
Their results suggest that faded feedback led trainees to become “set in their ways.” In other words, when trainees receive high levels of feedback early on, they tend to continue to perform in ways consistent with the feedback throughout the training course (even after feedback is reduced). Ok, but isn’t this a good thing?
Not exactly. This may prevent trainees from exploring new ways of performing tasks/solving problems, which can ultimately lead to poor transfer of training. This was not the case for those trainees who received gradually increasing feedback, however. These trainees continued to explore new ways of performing tasks over the course of training.
Overall, Goodman and Wood’s findings remind us of the importance of considering feedback in training. Although feedback is a vital element of an effective training program, the new fad of fading feedback should be considered cautiously.
What to do about the Failure-Focused Employee
Topic: Job Performance, Motivation
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Failure avoidance motivation in a goal-setting situation.
Author: S.R. Heimerdinger, V.B. Hinsz
Featured by: Benjamin Granger
Although it is known that employees who set specific and difficult goals tend to outperform those who set broad and relatively easy goals, different employees have differing motivational mindsets when they set their goals. Some employees are motivated to learn and master skills. Others are motivated to demonstrate their competence to others. (“Those darn showoffs!”) Interestingly, though, some employees are motivated, not by accomplishments, but to simply avoid failing. In other words, when some employees set personal goals, they are focused on NOT FAILING as opposed to succeeding (e.g., “My goal is to NOT completely bomb this presentation!”).
This is known as failure avoidance motivation and despite being such an intriguing concept, it is somewhat unclear how it relates to performance. So the question is: Are employees who set failure avoidance goals good performers? Or are these failure avoidance goals detrimental to performance? Heimerdinger and Hinsz (2008) investigated how and why failure avoidance motivation relates to performance. The authors found that the motivation to avoid failure leads to a number of negative consequences.
Specifically, Heimerdinger and Hinsz found the individuals who are motivated to avoid failure tend to have less confidence in their ability (i.e., lower self-efficacy) and are also less likely to persist in the face of obstacles or difficulties (i.e., lower goal commitment). Most importantly, they tend to be poor performers.
The best performers in Heimerdinger and Hinsz’s study were those who set high goals for themselves and were highly committed to those goals. And none of these were attributes of individuals motivated to simply avoid failure.
Since many organizations utilize goal-setting strategies to improve their employees’ performance, these findings are noteworthy to say the least. They suggest that managers should identify employees motivated to avoid failure and help guide them through the goal-setting process. Specifically, managers can focus on increasing their self-efficacy and commitment to their goals. These simple steps may help turn a poor performer into a more productive and valued employees.
Heimerdinger, S.R., & Hinsz, V.B. (2008). Failure avoidance motivation in a goal-setting Situation. Human Performance, 21(4), 383-395.
Taking a Hard Line on Employee Lateness Can Pay Off!
Topic: Culture, Job Attitudes, Job Performance
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Employee lateness behavior: the role of lateness climate and individuals lateness attitude.
Blogger: Benjamin Granger
Many organizations go to great lengths to curtail employee lateness (showing up tardy for work) and for
good reason – it can cost organizations billions of dollars in productivity a year.
In order to better understand why lateness occurs, Elicker, Foust, O’Malley, and Levy (2008) investigated (1) organizations’ lateness climates and (2) employee attitudes about lateness as joint predictors of actually showing up late for work.
Elicker and colleagues collected lateness records from two organizations and found that employee
attitudes about lateness strongly predicted actual lateness behaviors when employees perceived their organization to be lenient (being late is NOT a big deal) about lateness. But, when employees perceived their organization’s lateness climate to be stringent (You better not be late to work!), employee attitudes about lateness did not predict lateness behaviors very well.
So what does this mean for organizations? Elicker et al.’s findings suggest that although employee attitudes about lateness are important, the organization’s lateness policy has a substantial effect on actual lateness behaviors.
This knowledge places the onus not only on the employees, but also on the organizations themselves!
Clearly, some lateness is beyond employees’ control (e.g., car accident, traffic jam), but Elicker et
al.’s findings may encourage some employers to take a harder line on employee lateness (e.g., strictly monitor lateness, include it in performance reviews, ensure that company policy is in accord with lateness norms). According to Elicker et al.’s findings, this can make employee lateness much less frequent.
Is interrater correlation really a proper measurement of reliability?
Topic: Measurement, Research Methodology, Statistics
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Exploring the relationship between interrater correlations and validity of peer ratings
Blogger: Rob Stilson
Interrater reliability (still with me?, Ok good) is often used as the main reliability estimate for the correction of validity coefficients when the criterion is job performance. Issues arise with this practice when one considers that the errors present between raters may not be random, but due to bias, while agreement between raters may also stem from bias instead of actual consistency. In this study, the authors’ main goal was to explore the relationship between interrater correlations and validity and also to explore the relationship between the number of raters and validity.
In order to do this, the authors gathered information from 3072 Israeli policemen from 281 work teams who took part in peer rating. The average size of each of these work teams averaged about 12 people and ranged from 5 all the way to 33. The measure used was overall performance (on a 7-point Likert scale). The predictor employed in this study was the ICC (C,k) model, which is equivalent to Cronbach’s alpha. Measurement indices were computed on the team level as rating only took place within work teams.
The predicted variable for the study was the validity coefficient for each work team. This is the part of the study where you could really feel the sweat involved. Here the authors gathered information on
supervisor evaluations, absenteeism data, and discipline data collected over several years (for over 3000 policemen)! The authors then converted this information into z scores with higher scores indicating better performance.
Results showed a weak positive linear relationship between interrater correlations and the various validity indexes. This is not what you want to hear if you are doing peer rated performance evaluations. The authors’ stipulate that the correlation between raters is a conglomeration of factors
having different theoretical relationships with validity (i.e. bias and other idiosyncrasies).
Practical implications from the information gleaned here include the adjustment of validity due to attenuation. If the measurements used in the calculation included non random error estimates, the ensuing calculations will be off. A positive finding for the work world was validity in small units (less than 10 people) was about the same as those for larger units. The authors’ believe this finding may be due to observation opportunity level, which is seemingly greater in smaller work units.
Where leaving it to Beaver meets the bottom line
Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Job Performance
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Test of Motowidlo et al.’s (1997) theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance.
Blogger: James Grand
A helpful hand here or a thoughtful “hi-how-are-ya” might be more valuable than we think. Psychologists are starting to realize that such dispositional characteristics can be meaningful predictors of on-the-job performance. Nearly 10 years ago, Motowidlo, Borman and Schmit proposed that performance at work was more than just the number of pizzas one delivers in 30 minutes or less or any other similar indicators of taskwork proficiency.
There is also a contextual performance aspect to an individual’s job, which is broadly defined as work behaviors that maintain and promote the social, organizational and psychological environment in which employees perform the technical functions of
their job.
Thus for example, the number of policies an insurance salesperson racks up in given quarter might be considered their task performance; however, ratings of customer satisfaction, ability to deal with customer complaints and the number of days he/she covered for a sick co-worker might all be indicators
of the salesperson’s contextual performance. So why distinguish between these two areas of performance?
As a recent study by Bergman and colleagues demonstrates (2008, Human Performance, Vol. 21, Iss. 3), there are at least two reasons:
· Contextual performance is often strongly related to task performance. Employees who promote a healthy and productive organizational context tend to also be good workers in the traditional sense. Although not covered by Bergman et al., high contextual performers also tend to positively influence the task performance of others—in other words, not only is the task work of high contextual performers better, but the task work of their co-workers benefits as well.
· The predictors of contextual performance and task performance are not always the same. What makes people good at the technical parts of their job does not necessarily make them good at the contextual components. Oftentimes, things such as personality or other dispositional qualities are better predictors of who deals with the annoying customer better than typical predictors of task performance like cognitive ability or experience.
Certainly, one shouldn’t expect a group of nuns to outperform a pool of Ivy League business grads in the competitive world of corporate America. But as research like Bergman et al. shows, a good dose of wholesomeness might go a bit further than you’d think.
Bergman,
M. E., Donovan, M. A., Drasgow, F., Overton, R. C., & Henning, J. B. (2008). Test of Motowidlo et al.’s (1997) theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. Human Performance, 21(3), 227-253. Motowidlo, S. J., Borman,W. C., & Schmit, M. J. (1997). A theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. Human Performance, 10, 71–83.
