Chapter 9: Faking and Job Performance: A Multifaceted Issue

One ongoing pursuit of our science has been to continuously improve the ability to select individuals who will adequately perform the tasks and duties associated with a given position, in addition to displaying a temperament that is consistent with the effective performance of these duties. The goal of prediction typically leads to the use of psychological tests that allow us to infer the presence of certain skills, abilities, or traits that are related to the successful performance of a given job. Although cognitive ability is one of the most consistent predictors of performance across a variety of jobs (Schmidt & Hunter, 1981, 1998), psychologists have searched for useful individual difference variables that may explain variance in job performance beyond that which is explained by cognitive ability. Measures of personality have been a logical next step in this quest for incremental predictive ability, and are widely supported predictors of job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). The accuracy and usefulness of these measures however, may be somewhat dependent on the honesty of an applicant’s responses.