Personality Assessment

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Personality Assessment

• Aimee Conrad
• Mike Conrad
• Zino Egweh
• Brandee Hall
• Stephanie Melton

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Personality Assessment

• Personality assessment is one of the most complex
  and rapidly changing topics in the field.
• A survey published in 2005 by the Society of
  Human Resource Management indicated that 30
  percent of American companies used personality
  tests to screen job applicants.

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What is Personality

• Personality refers to the unique set of
  characteristics that define an individual and
  determine that persons pattern of interaction
  with the environment.
• Characteristics are usually interpreted to
  include what people habitually want, say, do, or
  believe, and these attributes are combined
  distinctly in each person.

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Personality Traits

• Traits are used to explain the consistency of one
  individuals behavior over a variety of
  situations
• The use of personality data in selection
  requires, first, the specification of job tasks
  and, second, the identification of traits that
  are linked to these tasks.

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Personality Traits and Situations

• Situations are powerful to the degree that they
  lead individuals to interpret particular events
  in the same way, create uniform expectancies
  regarding the appropriate behavior, provide
  adequate incentives for the performance of that
  behavior, and require skills that everyone
  possesses roughly to the same extent.
• In a powerful situation, individual behavior is
  more attributable to the situation than to
  individual traits.
• A weak situations is not uniformly interpreted,
  does not generate uniform expectations concerning
  desired behavior, does not offer sufficient
  incentives for one type of behavior, and is one
  in which a variety of skills may produce
  acceptable behaviors.
• In a weak situation, traits would be important
  explanations of behavior. In these situations,
  the individual is uncertain about appropriate
  behavior and therefore interprets the situation
  and acts in accordance with his or her own
  personality traits.

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Use of Personality in Selection

• There is a growing agreement among researchers
  that personality can be grouped into five broad
  dimensions called the Big Five
  conscientiousness, emotional stability,
  agreeableness, extraversion and openness to
  experience.
• Managers view relevant personality traits as
  being nearly as important as general mental
  ability.
• There is little or no adverse impact, as mean
  scores are quite comparable across racial or
  ethnic groups or between men and women.
• For a job in a powerful work situation,
  personality traits may not be an important
  dimension for selection purposes.
• Personality data drawn from powerful testing
  situations would not seem to yield accurate
  personality information about the applicant.

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• The three most commonly used methods of
  personality measurement methods are inventories,
  judgments, and behavioral observation.

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The Big 5

• Extraversion includes traits such as sociable,
  gregarious, assertive, talkative and active
• Stability such as being calm, unemotional,
  secure, confident, and not very easily upset
• Agreeableness such as being courteous,
  flexible, trusting, good natured, cooperative,
  forgiving, soft-hearted and tolerant
• Conscientiousness responsible, organized,
  dependable, willing to achieve, and persevering
• Openness imaginative, cultured, curious,
  intelligent, artistically sensitive, original and
  broad minded

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Validity of Self-Report Inventories

• Two of the five traits are universal or
  generalizable predictors (conscientiousness and
  emotional stability), the other three traits were
  found to be contingent predictors, predicting
  success in only a few jobs or specific criteria.
  The authors expected emotional stability,
  conscientiousness, and agreeableness to be
  important predictors of the getting along with
  others criterion which was supported by their
  research. The finding that agreeableness matters
  for one criterion, while extraversion matters for
  the other shows niche predictors work best when
  they are carefully matched to relevant criteria
  or situations.

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Faking in Self- Report Inventories

• Do candidates intentionally alter responses to
  increase the likelihood of receiving a job offer?
• Best to approach the test as if they are.
• Distortion does not significantly alter validity,
  but some honest applicants may be harmed.
• Include a warning that faking may be detected or
  use statistical techniques.

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Alternate Self- Report Questionnaires(Inventories
that focus on only one measure)

• 1) Core Self Evaluation- Candidates who are
  confident, feel good about themselves, and can
  control their anxiety, tend to be happier, see
  their work as more interesting, and are more
  productive at work.

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Emotional Intelligence Test
2) Emotional Intelligence

• EI measures the candidates self- awareness and
  self regulation, as well as social awareness and
  relationship management.
• Not currently at an adequate level of
  understanding to use for a selection tool.

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3) Proactive Personality

• Reflects a dispositional approach toward taking
  initiative at work and effecting environmental
  changes.
• Action- oriented trait.
• Overall, self- reports may introduce irrelevant
  effects that reduce the correlation between trait
  scores and measure of job satisfaction.

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Projective Techniques

• Require verbal responses that are scored
  to obtain measures of personality
  characteristics.
• Intentionally ambiguous.

• Validity of projective techniques
• Often have low reliability
• Scores of personality characteristics are related
  to the volume of information given
• Complexity of responses makes scoring difficult
• Few HR specialists are trained to use these
  techniques

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Miner Sentence Completion Scale

• Assess the motives that are characteristically
  manifested at work and in the managerial role.
• Authority Figures (My family doctor)
• Competitive Games (When playing cards, I)
• Competitive Situations (Final examinations)
• Assertive Role (Wearing a necktie)
• Imposing Wishes (When one of my staff asks for
  advice)
• Standing Out from the Group (Making
  introductions)
• Routine Administrative Functions (Dictating
  letters)
• Acceptable levels of reliability and evidence of
  construct and criterion-related validity.

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The Interview in Personality Measurement

• One of the many purposes on an interview is to
  estimate personality characteristics.
• The results from a meta-analysis show that traits
  are evaluated the most in employment interviews.
• Conscientiousness is measured more than any other
  personality trait.
• Evidence suggests a moderate relationship between
  interviewer ratings of applicant personality and
  performance.

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What Might Affect Validity of Interviewer Ratings
of Personality?

• Fundamental Attribution Error tendency to
  attribute others behavior to personality rather
  than situational causes.

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How to Increase Assessment of Job Candidates
Personality

• Unstructured interviews use open ended questions
  that allow personality to be expressed.
• However, structured interviews have higher
  predictive validity.

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The Appropriate Use of the Interview

• Limit scope of interview to those identified
  through job analysis as relevant to the job.
• Concentrate on job candidates previous behavior
  that demonstrates a particular personality trait.

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Behavioral Assessment in Personality Measurement

• Trained individuals make judgments on personality
  based on actual behavior.

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Methods of Behavioral Assessment

• Creating situations that are similar to what
  applicants would required to do on the job.
• Used for internal promotion consideration.
• Supervisors record job related behavior
• Critical-Incidents Technique where supervisor
  notes extremely good or bad situations of work
  performance

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Limitations of Behavioral Assessment

• Situation can affect outcome.
• Situations should represent actual job
  conditions.
• Lack of definition of desired behavior may leave
  room for misinterpretation.
• Job related behavior should be defined clearly to
  ensure ease of identification.
• Judges are people too.
• Judges should be trained to ensure uniformity and
  recognize underlying assumptions.

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Recommendations

• Define Personality Traits in Terms of Job
  Behaviors
• Lack of definition takes one of two forms.
• Little attention is paid to the specific traits
  being measured
• Very generalized statements to describe
  personality traits
• Personality characteristics should be thought of
  as another type of KSA.
• There seem to be two ways that job analysis
  information could supply information to generate
  adequate definitions.
• Task approach yield information about job tasks,
  interaction patterns among the incumbent and
  others, working conditions, equipment used, and
  work patterns.
• Job analysis methods Position Analysis
  Questionnaire (PAQ) or Personality-Related
  Position Requirements Form (PPRF)
• The Appropriateness of the Selection Instrument
• Only use tests with enough developmental
  information available to show that the instrument
  measures broadly defined personality traits.
• Can respondents learn correct responses to the
  instrument?

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• The Nature of Job Performance
• Personality is a dispositional predictor of
  motivation, personality matters at work, even in
  technical or highly structured jobs.
• Other jobs rely less on specific knowledge or
  predetermined procedures and have a acceptable
  ways for producing desired performance. It is
  for these jobs that personality is even more
  clearly related to job performance.

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• Legal Issues in the Use of Personality Tests
• Two major legal issues accompany the use of
  personality tests.
• ADA
• It is not clear whether a personality test should
  or should not be included in such examination.
• All tests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis,
  which includes such questions as (a) Is the test
  administered by a health care professional? (b)
  Are the results interpreted by a health care
  professional? and (c) Is the designed to reveal
  an impairment of physical or mental health?
• If the test focuses on general traits such as
  responsiveness to supervision and loyalty, it is
  not a medical examination.
• If the test does focus on these general traits,
  it should not make disability-related inquiries
  such as whether an individual has sought mental
  health services.
• Privacy Rights
• Reveals an individuals inner thoughts and
  feelings.
• Several states have constitutional privacy
  protection acts or recognize a statutory right to
  privacy.
• To date, litigation about privacy has occurred in
  reference to questions that dealt with an
  applicants sexual inclinations or religious
  views.

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• Use in Small Businesses
• Recent study found that managers of small
  businesses were concerned more with personality
  characteristics such as honesty, integrity, and
  interest in the job than with an applicants
  ability.
• Selection should focus on relevant KSAs and work
  to incorporate data about personality.
• Should strive to use training-and-experience
  evaluation forms, situational interviews, job
  knowledge tests, and work sample and trainability
  tests to measure the employee characteristics
  necessary for actually performing the tasks of
  the job.
• Should also consider using a personality test
  focused on the universal predictors
  (conscientiousness and emotional stability), as
  these personality traits will be relevant in all
  of their jobs.