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IN SUPPORT OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT IN ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS
Author(s) -
ONES DENIZ S.,
DILCHERT STEPHAN,
VISWESVARAN CHOCKALINGAM,
JUDGE TIMOTHY A.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00099.x
Subject(s) - psychology , incremental validity , personality , personnel selection , job performance , social psychology , personality assessment inventory , core self evaluations , big five personality traits , conscientiousness , facet (psychology) , alternative five model of personality , criterion validity , big five personality traits and culture , applied psychology , psychometrics , job design , test validity , job satisfaction , clinical psychology , construct validity , extraversion and introversion , management , economics
Personality constructs have been demonstrated to be useful for explaining and predicting attitudes, behaviors, performance, and outcomes in organizational settings. Many professionally developed measures of personality constructs display useful levels of criterion‐related validity for job performance and its facets. In this response to Morgeson et al. (2007), we comprehensively summarize previously published meta‐analyses on (a) the optimal and unit‐weighted multiple correlations between the Big Five personality dimensions and behaviors in organizations, including job performance; (b) generalizable bivariate relationships of Conscientiousness and its facets (e.g., achievement orientation, dependability, cautiousness) with job performance constructs; (c) the validity of compound personality measures; and (d) the incremental validity of personality measures over cognitive ability. Hundreds of primary studies and dozens of meta‐analyses conducted and published since the mid 1980s indicate strong support for using personality measures in staffing decisions. Moreover, there is little evidence that response distortion among job applicants ruins the psychometric properties, including criterion‐related validity, of personality measures. We also provide a brief evaluation of the merits of alternatives that have been offered in place of traditional self‐report personality measures for organizational decision making. Given the cumulative data, writing off the whole domain of individual differences in personality or all self‐report measures of personality from personnel selection and organizational decision making is counterproductive for the science and practice of I‐O psychology.