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Narrow reasoning about the use of broad personality measures for personnel selection
Author(s) -
Paun Sampo V.,
Rothstein Mitchell G.,
Jackson Douglas N.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of organizational behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.938
H-Index - 177
eISSN - 1099-1379
pISSN - 0894-3796
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1379(199905)20:3<389::aid-job917>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - psychology , personality , personnel selection , selection (genetic algorithm) , social psychology , homogeneous , empirical research , job performance , applied psychology , job satisfaction , artificial intelligence , computer science , statistics , physics , mathematics , thermodynamics
Ones and Viswesvaran (1996) have argued for the use of broad bandwidth, rather than narrow bandwidth, personality predictors in personnel selection research when overall job performance is the criterion of interest. We take the opposite position in this article—that homogeneous measures of unidimensional personality traits are always to be preferred as predictors of work (and other) criteria. We maintain that the use of multiple unidimensional predictors provides important advantages over the use of multidimensional aggregates of those predictors. These advantages pertain to both (a) empirical accuracy in predicting job performance, and (b) psychological meaningfulness in explaining work behavior. Our conclusions are supported by Ones and Viswesvaran's own data. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.