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Personality Inventories: The Next Generation
In the last few years many industrial/organizational psychologists (I/O) and career development practitioners concur, there has been a resurgence of interest in use of personality assessment and a greater number of organizations turning to personality inventories to both develop and select employees. Across employment sectors, concerns about employee integrity have bred the development of honesty and integrity testing, one version of personality assessment. And the current corporate emphasis on teamwork, communication and cooperative problem solving paves the way for how personality affects people's ability to work together. For example, many organizations routinely use personality-based instruments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), as a tool for conducting team building and communications/interpersonal effectiveness training.
Over the last 25 years, a number of researchers have investigated the validity of personality measures for personnel selection purposes. The overall conclusion is that the validity of personality as a predictor of job performance is fairly low and probably not much better than the unstructured interview. In general, personality inventories are only modest predictors of diverse measures of job performance across all job families (e.g., managerial, sales, clerical/administrative). However, at the time these validity studies were done, no well-accepted model existed for classifying the diversity of personality traits related to human behavior. As such, it wasn't really possible to determine whether there were consistent and meaningful relationships between particular aspects of personality and performance in different occupations.
In the last 10 years, the views of many personality psychologists have converged regarding the concepts of personality. During the past decade, an impressive body of literature has accumulated which provides compelling evidence for a 5-factor model of personality across different theoretical frameworks and using different instruments. It should be pointed out that while there is general agreement among researchers concerning the number of personality factors, there is some disagreement about their precise meaning. The newer generation personality inventories are all based on this 5-factor concept (FFM) and commonly referred to as the "Big Five." A brief description and some examples of these next generation personality inventory measures are summarized below.
It is widely agreed that the first "Big Five" personality "factor" is generally known as "Extraversion." Traits associated with it include being assertive, sociable, expressive, gregarious, adventurous and reward-seeking. There is also general agreement about the second factor most frequently called "Emotional Stability." Common traits associated with it are being even-tempered, self-confident, calm, resilient, tolerant of stress, and well-adjusted. The third factor has generally been interpreted as "Agreeableness" or likeability. Common traits associated with this factor include being courteous, sympathetic, good natured, cooperative, forgiving, helpful, flexible, trusting and softhearted. The fourth factor has been most frequently called "Conscientiousness." Some researchers suggest that this factor reflects dependability, that is, being careful, thorough, responsible, hardworking, planned and organized. Others suggest that this factor also includes achievement orientation, efficiency, perseverance and a hard working orientation. The last factor is most frequently called "Openness to Experience" or "Intellect." Traits commonly associated with this dimension include being curious, perceptive, broad-minded, imaginative, creative, intelligent, artistically sensitive and cultured.
A large body of research now exists utilizing the FFM as a predictor of diverse work outcomes, including job performance. In recent meta-analytic studies, Conscientiousness shows the most consistent and robust associations with performance across all jobs and occupational settings. Emotional Stability has also consistently been found to be significantly correlated with overall performance across many, if not all jobs. These two FFM constructs can be considered as "universal" or generalizable predictors given their significant association with such a large number of jobs in diverse settings. The other three Big Five factors (Extraversion, Agreeableness and Openness to Experience) have been found to be almost as predictive as Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability for select occupations and performance outcomes. These three factors are considered as "contingent predictors" depending on the exact requirements of the job in question. Hogan and Holland (2003) demonstrated that when interacting and working collaboratively with others is required for successful job performance, Agreeableness was a significant predictor. When job performance depended on leading, influencing and getting ahead of others (e.g., sales and managerial positions), Extraversion was a significant predictor. Research by Barrick et al. (2001) and George & Zhou (2001) have demonstrated that Openness to Experience emerges as an important predictor of performance in positions that require creative and artistic tasks and activities. As such, a growing literature is clearly establishing that these "Big Five" models have numerous implications for the practice of organizational psychology, especially in the areas of executive coaching, career development, personnel selection and promotion, training and development and talent management. These FFM traits can be valid predictors of job success and performance when the job demands fit the behavioral tendencies associated with the traits based on a systematic analysis of the position in question.
Three relatively newer "Big Five" personality inventories that appear to be promising based on their empirical development and recent use include FACET5 (Buckley, 1984), the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI; Hogan, 1985) and the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO; Costa, P. and McRae, R., 1989). Practitioners for both individual counseling and organizational interventions are increasingly utilizing these newer generation FFM personality inventories for diverse interventions.
Ordering and relevant technical information about the Facet 5 is available at Envisia Learning, the Hogan Personality Inventory is available from Hogan Assessment Systems and the NEO from Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR)
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