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Retesting personality in employee selection: implications of the context, sample, and setting
Courtney L Holladay1, Emily David, Stefanie K Johnson
1MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas, USA. CLHolladay@mdanderson.org
Psychological Reports
|July 10, 2013
Summary
Job applicants receiving negative feedback on personality assessments are more likely to fake responses on retesting. Those without feedback or motivation showed minimal changes, impacting hiring decisions.
Area of Science:
- Industrial-Organizational Psychology
- Human Resources Management
Background:
- Personality assessments are widely used in employee selection.
- Unproctored online assessments raise concerns about response validity.
- Understanding applicant response changes is crucial for fair hiring.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine how job applicants alter their responses on a second administration of an unproctored personality assessment.
- To investigate the role of feedback as a motivator for response changes.
Main Methods:
- Actual job applicants completed a personality assessment twice.
- Participants were assigned to different feedback conditions (negative feedback, no feedback).
- Response changes between the two administrations were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Applicants receiving negative feedback (low scores) were significantly more likely to engage in faking strategies during the second assessment.
- Negative feedback predicted the largest score changes between test administrations.
- Individuals without feedback or experimental motivation to fake exhibited less response alteration.
Conclusions:
- Feedback, particularly negative feedback, is a significant motivator for applicants to change their responses on personality assessments.
- Hiring practices should consider the potential for response manipulation when using unproctored assessments.
- Further research is needed to develop methods for detecting or mitigating faking in selection procedures.
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