Personality Testing in the Workplace

Critically evaluate the use of personality assessment in work settings. What are the important professional issues?

Abstract

Prior to the 1980’s experimental evidence indicated that personality traits were not linked to job performance. More recent research suggests that these findings were down to methodological inconsistencies and personality assessments can predict job satisfaction and performance in various domains. This has led to a surge in the use of such assessments in work settings, most notably in selection and recruitment procedures. Several factors are thought to mediate the ability of personality assessments to accurately predict job-success. The main issues professionals should be aware of are test-selection, self-rating, faking and the interaction of personality with other factors. Theoretical debates are not of great importance to most HR practitioners. By briefly reviewing each of these issues and discussing their impact on HR professionals, this paper evaluates the effectiveness and usefulness of personality tests in the workplace.

Keywords: Personality, Assessment, Personnel selection, Professional issues, Recruitment.

Introduction

Personality measures are frequently used by organisations for both recruitment and development purposes. SHL delivered 2 million online assessments in 2007/2008 (SHL facts, 2009) and according to Faulder (2005) all of the top 100 companies in Great Britain use personality tests as part of their recruitment procedure.

The prevalence of personality assessment usage is thought to stem from various meta-analyses in the 1990’s which demonstrated their high predictability and validity in selection procedures (Rothstein and Goffin, 2006). Prior to this there was little or no evidence of a relationship between personality factors and job performance. In their highly influential review Guion and Gottier (1965) suggested that personality measures were neither good nor practical for recruitment purposes. Their conclusions are thought to differ from the more recent evidence for various methodological reasons. For example, these early studies had no set criteria for which traits should be measured, nor did they use any classification system to reduce the numerous different personality traits to a manageable amount (Barrick et al., 2001).

Since the broad acceptance of the Big 5 - or some variant of such - as the dominant model of personality traits (i.e., Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience), these issues have been resolved (Mount and Barrick, 1995). Recent research has shown correlations between personality traits and many different aspects of job performance including job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002), organisational commitment (Erdheim et al., 2006) and psychological contract breach (Orvis et al., 2008). With such wide-ranging areas of potential application it is no wonder that personality assessment has become a well-used selection tool. However, some theorists suggest that many human resource (HR) professionals do not welcome the tests nor understand how to select the appropriate measure for their organisation (Rothstein and Goffin, 2001). Using the wrong measure can severely reduce the predictive value of personality assessment in the workplace, resulting in large monetary outgoings and little return in terms of job performance. In order to balance this equation, and for personality tests to be effective in the work setting, it is important for HR practitioners to choose a suitable assessment.

Test selection

Considering that it is only necessary to be taught about one instrument to become a trained professional it is not surprising that HR professionals, some of whom are untrained, have problems with test selection. Added to this is the fact that there are almost no thorough comparisons of the different tests on which to base the decision of what measure to use (Goldberg, in press). Goldberg (in press) offers what appears to be the first comparative research in this area, suggesting that the sixteen personality factor questionnaire (16PF) is the leading inventory at present. Still, this research is not occupation specific and as such has only limited applicability for HR professionals.

It is important to note at this point that job analysis should be conducted prior to test selection in order to choose the most related scale, as specific traits predict job performance better than general traits (Tett et al., 1991). In other words, assessments will be more useful if they are tailored to, or at least closely related to, the job in question.

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One other key finding of Goldberg is that shortened versions of personality assessments – which are often popular with HR practitioners because of the substantial time and financial costs of longer inventories – are less useful as predictors of overall job performance. Clearly, this should be considered by professionals when choosing they are deciding what test to use. There are a few other issues which should be considered prior to using one of the numerous personality assessments available, not least the possibility that a personality test, per se, might not be the most effective tool to use in all cases.

For example, Holland’s Vocational Types theory – and Self Directed Search (SDS) test – was the subject of much analysis in the 1970s and was generally offered both qualitative and quantitative support (e.g., Edwards & Whitney, 1972 and Eggenberger & Herman, 1972). Recently, it has been suggested that vocational types are better predictors of person-job fit than personality factors (Ehrhart & Makransky, 2007). It follows that if the HR professional is searching for a recruitment method (as opposed to a development tool) they should consider the methods besides personality assessment in order to choose the most suitable for their particular task.

Interactions

In practice many professionals do use multiple assessment methods to select employees. This helps to control for the various mediators and moderators affecting the predictive validity of personality traits.

General mental ability (GMA) is viewed by most recruiters as very important in selection processes and as such is commonly measured alongside personality (Dunn et al., 1995). Interests are also thought to interact with personality factors to predict job performance (Rothstein and Goffin, 2006) and, similar to intelligence testing, it is possible and indeed useful to test simultaneously.

It is not clear whether this broad testing method stems from a detailed knowledge of the interactions between personality and performance - for example, the moderating effect of autonomy on the predictive validity of Conscientiousness and Extraversion for manager job performance (Barrick and Mount, 1993) - or whether it is simply protocol in many organisations. Whichever, it does help to increase the usefulness of personality assessment in work settings.

Generally speaking, most HR professionals use multiple assessment techniques for recruitment, particularly for higher-level jobs. From this perspective the main factors interacting with personality are assessed concurrently, providing that a personality test has been selected. However, it is important to have an understanding of the specific mediating effects of, for example, goal setting behaviours between conscientiousness and job performance (Barrick et al.,1993), so that suitable items and assessments can be included for each specific job.

Self-rating

Of the many different personality assessments currently on the market the majority are self report measures, often based on the Big 5 trait theory. The most commonly used tests include the well-known Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ), the NEO Personality Inventory - Revised (NEO-PI-R) and the Myers Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI). The self-report nature of these personality tests is one issue which may cause problems and should be considered prior to usage.

According to a study by Mount et al. (1994) the validity of self and external ratings of personality was approximately equal, but external ratings explained variance in job performance better than self-ratings. Judge et al. (1999) provide supporting evidence; external ratings of personality in childhood predict later occupational success. This suggests that the use of self-rating personality assessments might not be the optimum method for predicting job performance (Barrick et al., 2001). Most occupational personality measures are used for recruitment and it would probably be impractical to use an externally rated scale in this context, but where personality tests are used for career development purposes it might be useful to obtain external ratings. The current popularity of 360 degree appraisal methods (Luthens and Peterson, 2003) indicates that HR professionals are aware of the benefits of external ratings and are willing to use them for employee development. However, recent research into whether external ratings are superior has proved somewhat inconclusive (Hooft et al., 2006). It appears that further investigation is needed. Nevertheless a HR professional should be aware of the alternatives to a self-rating method as they may increase the usefulness of personality assessment in the workplace.

Faking

Aside from the issues mentioned above, the main drawback to self-rating is the social desirability effect. Individuals attempt to portray themselves in the way they assume the administrator will prefer, thus reducing the usefulness of personality scores (Rothstein and Goffin, 2006). This has become arguably the biggest and most long-standing issue for HR professionals with regards to personality testing and is possibly the main disadvantage of the method. Naturally, a large body of research has developed relating to faking and the social desirability effect.

Viswesvaran and Ones (1999) offer a meta-analysis on faking. They report that in applied and laboratory settings participants increase their scores for desirable traits and decrease their scores for undesirable traits when attempting to present themselves positively. More recently, Donovan et al. (2003) attempted to find the base rate of faked responses to personality inventory type items. This spanned a range of 15% to 62%, with the highest base rates on undesirable traits. In other words, individuals are more likely to decrease their scores on negative traits than to increase them on positive traits. Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, some individuals fake more than others. From a HR perspective this is clearly very undesirable, and due to its unpredictability, hard to control for.

Numerous studies have shown acceptable levels of criterion validity in personality tests, even when perceived motivation for faking is high (e.g., Hough, 1998). However, Mueller-Hanson et al. (2003) note that where personality testing is used as part of a selection procedure applicants who fake to the ideal are more likely to be hired. Based on this, they suggest that personality tests should be used to select-out applicants (i.e., identify those who are unsuitable) rather than select-in. In practice, selection-in use is more prevalent that select-out and subsequent evidence has indicated that the effectiveness of personality assessment for selection-in does not appear to be completely neutralised by faking, although it is decreased (Hogan, 2005). To ensure personality inventories are sufficiently effective for employee selection it is useful to identify or minimise opportunities to fake.

Controlling for faking

From these studies it can be seen that it is necessary for HR practitioners to be aware of, and to utilise, methods to decrease the effects of socially desirable responding as far as possible. To this enc, some commercial tests include items which have been shown to be sensitive to instructions to fake good (Viswesvaran & Ones, 1999). Scoring highly on these items indicates to the HR professional that the individual may be faking. There are some ethical questions concerning the responses taken by the practitioner when faced with this result. To exclude the applicant from the rest of the selection process implies that they have tried to cheat the test, when in fact they may have been honest. Paulhus et al. (2003) uses a typical SDR item to illustrate the point: it is impossible to tell whether an individual who denies ever swearing is being honest or not.

An alternative technique uses SDR scales to ‘correct’ for faking. This method, however, has in recent years been consistently shown not to improve validity. It is thought that scoring highly on SDR scales might not be due to faking but to actual personality differences (e.g., Ones and Viswesvaran, 1998). Hakstian and Ng (2005) and Paulhus (2002) propose new, relatively untested, methods for correcting for faking: employment-related motivation distortion (EMD) and a four-dimensional approach, respectively. Initial data suggests these techniques do show a limited ability to increase criterion validity, but HR professionals should monitor the emerging research to confirm whether subsequent evidence confirms this.

Forced choice testing is another method of controlling for faking. In theory, all choices presented have the same level of social desirability and thus SDR will not be an issue. Early forced choice personality tests were actually very susceptible to change when participants were asked to fake-good, but contemporary tests are more resistant to this effect (Martin et al., 2002), particularly when tailored to a specific job (Christiansen et al., 2005). In this case construct validity appears to increase, compared to traditional assessments. The long and costly development time involved with role-targeted forced choice tests is the main disadvantage for HR practitioners but there are some commercially available forced choice tests, the OPQ, for example.

A much simpler technique of controlling for faking is simply telling participants that a method of detection is in use. Applicants are thought to respond more honestly if they believe their answers can be verified (Donovan et al., 2003). With or without the more complex measures, HR professionals should definitely consider the use of this straightforward measure.

Summary

The main issues HR professionals should be aware of are test-selection, self-rating, faking and the interaction of personality with other factors. Once the suitable test has been selected, faking is possibly the most researched and important issue for practitioners, because it significantly affects the ability to confidently select applicants.

All of the issues mentioned are, of course, relative to context. The most suitable test to predict the job performance for a junior sales role, for example, would be very different from that to predict job performance in a senior executive role. If an incorrect or unsuitable test has been used it will probably not be useful for predicting job performance. Overall, though the use of personality assessments in the workplace is successful, subject to professionals being aware of the issues discussed in this paper. More research is needed into personality testing as a predictor job performance in order to further increase its usefulness in the workplace.

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Personality Testing in the Workplace

This is a preview of the whole essay

Ehrhart, K. H. & Makransky, G. (2007). Testing Vocational Interests and Personality as Predictors of Person-Vocation and Person-Job Fit. Journal of Career Assessment, 15(2), 206-226.

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