Chapter 11: The Use of Warnings to Discourage Faking on Noncognitive Inventories

Research findings on the validity of personality measures in predicting job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991) have resulted in their increasing use in organizational settings. Of course, the use of personality measures for prediction ofjob-related criteria has not always received wide support. Challenges to the use of these tests, such as those voiced by Guion and Gottier (1965) and Mischel (1968), led to the unpopularity of these measures among researchers for an extended period of time.

One of the most controversial uses of noncognitive measures in the workplace today is in the selection of employees. There are many who question the utility and even ethics of using personality in a selection context (Campion, Dipboye, Hollenbeck, Murphy, Ryan, & Schmitt, 2004). As we will discuss, there are clearly concerns that must be considered in the use of such tests. However, it is our view that the use of measures that have been shown to have incremental validity for prediction of performance is justified when one considers the alternative. In other words, inclusion of a valid though less-than-perfect predictor is preferable to the limitation inherent in a smaller set of predictors. For example, the use of fewer predictors may have the drawback of reduced coverage of thejob performance criterion space. We and others (e.g., Borman, Penner, Allen, & Motowidlo, 2001; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Motowidlo & Van Scotter, 1994) have demonstrated that personality variables are better predictors of contextual or citizenship performance than task performance. On the other hand, general cognitive ability appears to be a better predictor of task performance compared to citizenship performance (Motowidlo, Borman, & Schmit, 1997). Thus, if we are interested in predicting citizenship performance as well as task performance, considering personality in the mix of predictors seems warranted.