Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

1-2011

Abstract

There exists growing interest to assess applicants' emotional intelligence (EI) via self-report trait-based measures of EI as part of the selection process. However, some studies that experimentally manipulated applicant conditions have cautioned that in these conditions use of self-report measures for assessing EI might lead to considerably higher scores than current norm scores suggest. So far, no studies have scrutinized self-reported EI scores among a sample of actual job applicants. Therefore, this study compares the scores of actual applicants at a large ICT organization (n = 109) on a well-known self-report measure of EI to the scores of employees already working in the organization (n = 239). The current study is the first to show that applicants' scores on a self-report measure of EI during the selection process are indeed higher (d = 1.12) and have less variance (SD ratio = 0.86/1) than incumbents' scores. Finally, a meta-analytic combination of our results with those of earlier research showed that a score increase of about 1 SD in applicant conditions seems to be the rule, regardless of the type of setting, self-report EI measure, and within-versus between-subjects design employed.

Keywords

Score inflation, emotional intelligence, personnel selection, trait-based emotional intelligence self-report, applicants

Discipline

Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Journal of Personnel Psychology

Volume

10

Issue

2

First Page

89

Last Page

95

ISSN

1866-5888

Identifier

10.1027/1866-5888/a000036

Publisher

Hogrefe

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000036

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