Question

Summarize the conclusions and arguments below made regarding the use of personality testing in selection. What are the primary problems with (or concerns about) using personality measures that these authors point out?

(a) Faking on self-report personality tests should be expected, and it probably cannot be avoided, although there is some disagreement among the authors on the extent to which faking is problematic.

(b) Faking or the ability to fake may not always be bad. In fact, it may be job-related or at least socially adaptive in some situations.

(c) Corrections for faking do not appear to improve validity. However, the use of bogus items may be a potentially useful way of identifying fakers.

(d) We must not forget that 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.

(e) Due to the low validity and content of some items, many published self-report personality tests should probably not be used for personnel selection. Some are better than others, of course, and when those better personality tests are combined with cognitive ability tests, in many cases validity is likely to be greater than when either is used separately.

(f)Ifpersonalitytestsareused,customizedpersonalitymeasuresthatare clearly job-related in face valid ways might be more easily explained to both candidates and organizations.

(g) Future research might focus on areas of the criterion domain that are likely to be more predictable by personality measures.

(h)Personalityconstructscertainlyhavevalueinunderstandingworkbe- havior, but future research should focus on finding alternatives to self- report personality measures. There is some disagreement among the authors in terms of the future potential of the alternative approaches to personality assessment currently being pursued

Answer 1

The above statements present the conclusions drawn from the research regarding the number of several potential fallacies and problems that are associated with the current use of personality as an indicator of job performance. The problems being, for example, faking on self subjected personality tests can never be avoided completely & is not the main issue perhaps is not the issue, in fact, the main issue at hand is the very low-validity of these personality tests for actually predicting the overall job performance. One more issue pointed out with the personality measurement was the usage of the already published 'self-report' personality tests(PTs) in the overall context of the selection. One more problem highlighted is that the personality tests though can be used as an indicator or the basis for employee selection, however, some research should be done in order to look for other substitutes that are more appropriate and valid in place of the self-administered or the self -reported personality tests which are subjected to many fallacies and problems.

So overall the primary problems with using personality measures that these authors point out are :

• Faking on these self-administered personality tests cannot be avoided.
• The low validity i.e the quality or the tendency of being a quality of being a logically appropriate measure of these self-reported personality tests being used for predicting job performance.
• Creating or using the substitutes for self-reported personlity test should be done for using it as a basis for employee selction.