Responding to personality tests in a selection context: The role of the ability to identify criteria and the ideal-employee factor

Author

Ute-Christine KELHE, Universitat Giessen
Martin KLEINMANN, University of Zurich
Thomas HARTSTEIN, Deka-Bank, Germany
Klaus G. MELCHERS, University of Zurich
Cornelius J. KONIG, Universitat des Saarlandes
Peter A. HESLIN, University of New South Wales
Filip LIEVENS, Singapore Management UniversityFollow

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

9-2012

Abstract

Personality assessments are often distorted during personnel selection, resulting in a common "ideal-employee factor" (IEF) underlying ratings of theoretically unrelated constructs. However, this seems not to affect the personality measures' criterion-related validity. The current study attempts to explain this set of findings by combining the literature on response distortion with the ones on cognitive schemata and on candidates' ability to identify criteria (ATIC). During a simulated selection process, 149 participants filled out Big Five personality measures and participated in several high- and low-fidelity work simulations to estimate their managerial performance. Structural equation modeling showed that the IEF presents an indicator of response distortion and that ATIC accounted for variance between the IEF and performance during the work simulations, even after controlling for self-monitoring and general mental ability.

Keywords

Personality, Big Five, ideal-employee factor, response distortion, faking, social desirability, ability to identify criteria, ATIC, cognitive schemata, personnel selection

Discipline

Human Resources Management | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Human Performance

Volume

25

Issue

4

First Page

273

Last Page

302

ISSN

0895-9285

Identifier

10.1080/08959285.2012.703733

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge): STM, Behavioural Science and Public Health Titles / Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Citation

KELHE, Ute-Christine; KLEINMANN, Martin; HARTSTEIN, Thomas; MELCHERS, Klaus G.; KONIG, Cornelius J.; HESLIN, Peter A.; and LIEVENS, Filip. Responding to personality tests in a selection context: The role of the ability to identify criteria and the ideal-employee factor. (2012). Human Performance. 25, (4), 273-302.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5611

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/08959285.2012.703733