Category Archives: Personality Assessment

Using Facebook profiles to assess personality (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Personality Assessment, Selection
Publication: Journal of Applied Social Psychology (in press)
Article: Social networking websites, personality ratings, and the organizational context: More than meets the eye?
Authors: Kluemper, D. H., Rosen, P. A., & Mossholder, K. W.
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin

As Facebook becomes increasingly more popular, employers are starting to look at the profiles of applicants. Numerous pictures of drunken debauchery may be informative to employers, but can Facebook profiles be used to assess an applicant’s personality? A recent study by Donald Kluemper and his colleagues suggests that they can.

In this study, raters used 15 questions from the IPIP (International Personality Item Pool) to rate participants’ Facebook profiles for the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) in 2007 and 2008. According to the authors, many indicators of personality can be found on a person’s Facebook page. For example, the number of friends that a person has is related to extraversion, and someone high in conscientiousness may be more careful regarding the types of posts he writes or comments on. Someone high in agreeableness may be more trusting and therefore post more personal information.

The authors found that raters showed good agreement about the personality ratings, and that they were fairly consistent. Also, other-ratings (the ratings based on Facebook profiles) showed pretty good agreement (r = .23 – .44) with self-ratings, which is about what would be expected based on past research looking at the accuracy of ratings from friends and family. In other words, Facebook profiles seem to be a pretty good way of getting personality ratings. In addition, the Facebook ratings were more strongly related to job performance than were self-ratings. The authors also found that of the Big Five, agreeableness and conscientiousness were the most important predictors of hirability ratings, and those ratings in turn were related to actual job performance.

These findings are interesting, but what do they really mean? We now know that Facebook profiles can be used as a source of personality ratings. However, should we really use them that way? As you can imagine, there are many potential legal and ethical issues related to using Facebook profiles in selection. In addition, many users now make their profiles private and therefore inaccessible to employers. It appears that using Facebook profiles in personality assessment could be useful, but at this point there remain potential legal risks.

Kluemper, D. H., Rosen, P. A., & Mossholder, K. W. (in press). Social networking websites, personality ratings, and the organizational context: More than meets the eye? Journal of Applied Social Psychology. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00881.x

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

 

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Cheating on Unproctored Internet-Based Tests – is it a big deal?

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Topic:  Personality Assessment
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (MAR 2010)
Article: The magnitude and extent of cheating and response distortion effects on unproctored internet-based tests of cognitive ability and personality
Authors: W. Arthur, R.M. Glaze, A.J. Villado, and J.E. Taylor
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

The future of employment testing is upon us and many organizations have turned to unproctored internet-based testing in lieu of proctored paper-and-pencil testing.

Among its many advantages, internet-based testing is often faster, more efficient, and more convenient than proctored paper-and-pencil methods (e.g., can be scored immediately, distributed to geographically dispersed applicants).  One concern, however, is that unproctored internet-based testing allows for cheating or response distortion (i.e., faking).  But is this a realistic concern?  Is cheating really more prevalent in unproctored internet-based settings?

Arthur, Glaze, Villado, and Taylor (2010) recently explored this question using a speeded cognitive ability test and two different personality tests.  Although the authors note that the speeded nature of the cognitive ability test may have curtailed cheating in and of itself, the pattern of their results was very similar to the pattern observed in proctored, paper-and-pencil contexts.

Ultimately, although cheating/response distortion is well known to occur, Arthur and colleagues did not find that it is necessarily more common in unproctored internet-based testing situations. In concluding this review, it should be noted that the behavior of cheating or response distortion is very difficult to measure.  In fact, as Arthur et al. note, response distortion or cheating was not measured directly in their study.  Nevertheless, the results of this study suggest that response distortion/cheating is not necessarily more common in unproctored internet-based testing situations.

Arthur, W., Glaze, R.M., Villado, A.J., & Taylor, J.E. (2010). The magnitude and extent of cheating and response distortion effects on unproctored internet-based tests of cognitive ability and personality. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 18(1), 1-16.

What Makes a “Good Faker”? And Do We Want Them?

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Topic: Faking, Personality Assessment
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Individual differences in the ability to fake on personality measures.  
Author: P.H. Raymark, T.L. Tafero
Featured by: Benjamin Granger

When the cats away 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.

Stop Faking Before It Happens

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Topic: Assessment, Personality Assessment
Publication:  International Journal of Selection and Assessment 
Article: Comparing personality test formats and warnings: Effects on criterion-related validity and test-taker reactions
Authors:  P.D. Converse    
Reviewed by: Benjamin Granger

Testing Although
personality testing in employee selection settings is a common practice, it
hasn’t gone without critique.  The
reason for this is simple: personality tests can be faked.  (Let’s see, I really want this job so,
yea I’m conscientious and agreeable).  A quick glance at many of the commonly used personality test
items will corroborate this concern (e.g., “I am always prepared”, “I make
friends easily”).  Seriously, why
would a job applicant even consider disagreeing with such statements in a high
stakes situation? Despite the
obvious problem of faking, personality tests have been shown to predict
employee job performance.  Thus,
there is a major dilemma over what to do about personality testing in employee
selection settings.

In
general, most personality measures allow job applicants to read a series of
items and indicate the extent to which they agree/disagree with each statement.
 Due to the transparency of such
items, several methods are currently being investigated which aim to ameliorate
the faking issue.  Two of the most
promising methods include using (1) forced choice (FC) items (i.e., force
applicants to choose a personality trait characteristic of themselves over
another) and  (2) warnings to test
takers about faking (i.e., inform applicants of the consequences of faking).  Importantly, these two options effect
faking in different ways.  FC
methods reduce an applicant’s ability
to misrepresent him or herself while warnings effect an applicant’s motivation to fake his or her personality.
 And although both have been shown
to reduce faking, relatively little work has looked at these two methods
simultaneously. Until now!

In
an article published in the International
Journal of Selection and Assessment, Converse et al. (2008) were interested
in the combined effects of FC and warnings on two important outcomes: (1)
criterion-related validity (how well personality measures predict job
performance) and (2) test-taker reactions.

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