Personality Types and Applicant Reactions in Real-life Selection

The study aimed to determine if an applicant's personality type is associated with his/her reactions (fairness perceptions, face validity perceptions, and predictive validity perceptions) to the selection process. The participants (N = 258) were real-life applicants for admission to a vocational school. A person-centered approach was applied to find subgroups with similar personality profiles. Latent profile analysis found four personality types: Resilient (45%), Overcontrolled (13%), Undercontrolled (10%), and Bohemian (32%). The Resilient and Bohemian personality types had more favorable perceptions of test fairness than the Overcontrolled type. Personality type did not affect face validi…

Egoistic and moralistic bias in real-life inventory responses

Response-faking tendencies can be divided into moralistic and egoistic bias according to the contents of the issue faked (Paulhus & John, 1998). Our hypothesis was that in a work-related selection context faking would occur on the egoistic sub-scales, as these are related to competence and talent, which are issues relevant in selection. To minimize the amount of conscious faking, half of 466 real-life applicants were warned about the presence of a socially desirable responding sub-scale in the Personality Research Form (PRF). Half of the respondents (control group) received standard instructions. Of all the PRF sub-scales, only the ones measuring either egoistic or moralistic traits were st…

Applicant reactions and faking in real-life personnel selection

Honkaniemi, L., Tolvanen, A. & Feldt, T. (2011). Applicant reactions and faking in real-life personnel selection. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 376–381. Faking may affect hiring decisions in personnel selection. All the antecedents of faking are still not known. The present study investigates the association between applicants’ reactions about the selection procedure and their tendency to fake. The subjects (N = 180) were real-life applicants for a fire and rescue personnel school. After completing the selection process, the applicants filled out a questionnaire about their test reactions (Chan, Schmitt, Sacco & DeSohon, 1998b) and a faking scale, the Balanced Inventory of Desirabl…

Applicants in a real-life selection context : their personality types, reactions to the process, and faking