Utility of using Personality Test- Big Five in Selection Process: A Short Article with Research Evidences

Utility of using Personality Test- Big Five in Selection Process: A Short Article with Research Evidences.

What is Personality?

Personality refers to the set of certain characteristics and practices of relatively stable patterns of behavior of an individual in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment.

(APA) defines Personality as the enduring characteristics and behavior that comprise a person's unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns.

People come from different backgrounds; they have different attitudes, values and norms. These people, in fact, have different cultural heritages. Their own cultural beliefs will definitely be reflected in their behaviors. ?These differences result in different personalities that determine their actions and behaviors and may affect the leader -follower interaction. These differences are deeply reflected in people’s distinctive patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. It derives from a mix of innate dispositions and inclinations along with environmental factors and experiences.

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Can the differences in personality immensely affect leadership effectiveness?

Can the differences in personality immensely affect the job performance?

And if so, can personality tests such as MBTI and Big Five Factors predict the job performance of employees?

The pertinent question here is, “Can personality tests add any utility in the selection process of companies?

(Let’s find out the answers of all these questions in this article).

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Trait Based Measurement of Personality:

Trait theories suggest that individual personalities are composed of broad dispositions. And that the personalities can be studied by dividing it into different traits.

A trait is a personality characteristic; a building block of someone’s personality, a trait can be defined as a relatively stable characteristic that causes individuals to behave in certain way. A trait should meet 3 criteria:

-???????It must be consistent, suppose someone is honest, honesty is his trait only if he is consistently honest in different situations, honest at home, honest in money matters and honest in relationships etc.

-???????A trait should be stable; traits are stable in the personality of people overtime. The traits are not changeable, for example, at an age of 30 if someone is talkative and extroverted, they will be talkative and extroverted at an age of 40.

-???????The traits are varying from person to person. One person may be talkative at the same time another person might not be so talkative. So there should be an identifiable variation. Which means that traits are not those qualities that every person has in common. ??

Trait psychologist Gordon Allport created a list of around 18000 words that can define a personality trait, and then he filtered the list to about 4500 traits.

Big Five or Five Factor Model:

?Raymond Cattell further eliminated and removed uncommon traits from the list of Gordon Allport and he combined the words or traits with similar meanings. With this technique, Raymond Cattell reduced down the list of traits to 171 traits.

?Obviously, such a huge number of personality traits is practically unusable, so further reduction analysis found five core personality traits. Called the Five-Factor Model (FFM), or in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management, the “Big Five,” these traits have held up as accounting for personality in many analyses over the years and even across cultures.

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The Big Five traits are:

• Openness to experience (includes aspects such as intellectual curiosity and creative imagination): This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight. People who are high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests. They are curious about the world and other people and eager to learn new things and enjoy new experiences. Individuals who are high in this trait tend to be more adventurous and?creative. People low in this trait are often much more traditional and may struggle with abstract thinking.

- Openness is a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, open to emotion, sensitive to beauty and willing to try new things.

- They tend to be, when compared to closed people, more creative and more aware of their feelings. They are also more likely to hold unconventional beliefs.

- Sample items

• I have excellent ideas.
• I am quick to understand things.
• I use difficult words.
• I am full of ideas.

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• Conscientiousness (organization, productiveness, responsibility): Standard features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, good impulse control, and goal-directed behaviors. Highly conscientious people tend to be organized and mindful of details. They plan, think about how their behavior affects others, and are mindful of deadlines.

- Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement against measures or outside expectations. It is related to the way in which people control, regulate, and direct their impulses. High scores on conscientiousness indicate a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behavior.

- The average level of conscientiousness rises among young adults and then declines among older adults.

- Sample items

• I am always prepared.
• I pay attention to details.
• I get chores done right away.
• I like order.
• I follow a schedule.
• I am exacting in my work

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• Extroversion (sociability, assertiveness; its opposite is Introversion): Extraversion or extroversion is characterized by excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness. People who are?high in extraversion?are outgoing and tend to gain energy in social situations. Being around other people helps them feel energized and excited. People who are?low in extraversion?(or introverted) tend to be more reserved and have less energy to expend in social settings. Social events can feel draining and introverts often require a period of solitude and quiet to "recharge."

- Extraversion is characterized by breadth of activities (as opposed to depth), from external activity/situations, and energy creation from external means. The trait is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Extraverts enjoy interacting with people, and are often perceived as full of energy. They tend to be enthusiastic, action-oriented individuals.

- They possess high group visibility, like to talk, and assert themselves. Introverts have lower social engagement and energy levels than extraverts. They tend to seem quiet, low-key, deliberate, and less involved in the social world. Their lack of social involvement should not be interpreted as shyness or depression; instead they are more independent of their social world than extraverts. Introverts need less stimulation than extraverts and more time alone. This does not mean that they are unfriendly or antisocial; rather, they are reserved in social situations.

- Sample items in the Questionnaire:

• I am the life of the party.
• I don't mind being the center of attention.
• I feel comfortable around people.
• I start conversations.
• I talk to a lot of different people at parties

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• Agreeableness (compassion, respectfulness, trust in others): This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust,?altruism, kindness, affection, and other?prosocial behavior. People who are high in agreeableness tend to be more cooperative while those low in this trait tend to be more competitive and sometimes even manipulative.

- The agreeableness trait reflects individual differences in general concern for social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, kind, generous, trusting and trustworthy, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with others. Agreeable people also have an optimistic view of human nature.

- Disagreeable individuals place self-interest above getting along with others. They are generally unconcerned with others' well-being, and are less likely to extend themselves for other people. Sometimes their skepticism about others' motives causes them to be suspicious, unfriendly, and uncooperative.

- Because agreeableness is a social trait, research has shown that one's agreeableness positively correlates with the quality of relationships with one's team members. Agreeableness also positively predicts transformational leadership skills.

- In a study conducted among participants in leadership positions in a variety of professions, individuals were asked to take a personality test and have two evaluations completed by directly supervised subordinates. Leaders with high levels of agreeableness were more likely to be considered transformational rather than transactional.

- Sample items

• I am interested in people.
• I sympathize with others' feelings.
• I have a soft heart.
• I take time out for others.
• I feel others' emotions.
• I make people feel at ease.

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• Neuroticism (tendencies toward anxiety and depression): Neuroticism is a trait characterized by sadness, moodiness, and emotional instability. Individuals who are high in this trait tend to experience mood swings, anxiety, irritability, and sadness. Those low in this trait tend to be more stable and emotionally?resilient.

- Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression.

- It is sometimes called emotional instability, or is reversed and referred to as emotional stability.

- Neuroticism is interlinked with low tolerance for stress or aversive stimuli.

- Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress. They are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Their negative emotional reactions tend to persist for unusually long periods of time, which means they are often in a bad mood. For instance, neuroticism is connected to a pessimistic approach toward work, confidence that work impedes personal relationships, and apparent anxiety linked with work. Furthermore, those who score high on neuroticism may display more skin-conductance reactivity than those who score low on neuroticism.

- Sample items

• I get irritated easily.
• I get stressed out easily.
• I get upset easily.
• I have frequent mood swings

Often abbreviated as “OCEAN”.

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Big Five and Job Performance:

?There is now considerable agreement on what are the core personality trait predispositions, but there is also accumulated research that these five can best predict performance in the workplace.

The Big Five have also been extended through meta-analytic studies to also demonstrate a positive relationship with performance motivation (goal setting, expectancy, and self-efficacy) and job satisfaction. Although the five traits are largely independent factors of a personality, like primary colors, they can be mixed in countless proportions and with other characteristics to yield a unique personality whole. However, also like colors, one may dominate in describing an individual’s personality.

?The following sections examine the research to date on the relationships of the various Big Five traits to dimensions of performance in organizations.

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-???????The Positive Impact of Conscientiousness

• There is general agreement that conscientiousness has the strongest positive correlation with job performance. As a meta-analysis concluded, “individuals who are dependable, persistent, goal directed, and organized tend to be higher performers on virtually any job; viewed negatively, those who are careless, irresponsible, low achievement striving and impulsive tend to be lower performers on virtually any job.”
• Conscientious employees set higher goals for themselves, have higher performance expectations, and respond well to job enrichment (take on more responsibility) and empowerment strategies of human resource management.
• As would be expected, research indicates that those who are conscientious are less likely to be absent from work.
• A study found in international human resource management that conscientiousness of expatriates related positively to the rating of their foreign assignment performance.
• There are also recent studies with nonsupporting and mixed results pointing to the complexity of this personality trait. For example, in a recent study conscientiousness was found not to be influential in determining managerial performance.
• Applied to peer evaluations, as hypothesized, a study found the raters’ conscientiousness was negatively related with the level of the rating. In other words, conscientious raters did not give inflated evaluations, but those with low conscientiousness did. Such multiplicative relationships with variables such as culture, ability, and job satisfaction indicate, like other psychological variables, that conscientiousness is complex and is certainly not the only answer for job performance.

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-???????The Impact of the Other Traits

• Although conscientiousness has been found to have the strongest consistent relationship with performance and thus has received the most research attention, the remaining four traits also have some interesting findings. For example, a large study including participants from several European countries, many occupational groups, and multiple methods of measuring performance found both conscientiousness and emotional stability related to all the measures and occupations.
• The absenteeism study found that conscientiousness had a desirable inverse relationship: but, undesirably, the higher the extroversion trait the more absent the employee tended to be.
• The other traits have a more selective but still logical impact. For example, those with high extroversion tend to be associated with management and sales success; those with high emotional stability tend to be more effective in stressful situations; those with high agreeableness tend to handle customer relations and conflict more effectively; and those open to experience tend to have job training proficiency and make better decisions in a training problem solving simulation.
• Another study found that those with a strategic management style were most characterized by conscientiousness and openness to experience, while those with a strong interpersonal management style were most characterized by extroversion and openness.
• Interestingly, with groups rather than individuals becoming more important in today’s workplace, the Big Five may also be predictive of team performance. A study found that the higher the average scores of team members on the traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, and emotional stability, the better their teams performed.
• A study conducted on “Leader’s Personality Traits and Employees Job Performance in Public Sector”, in Putrajaya, Malaysia concluded as

“Based on the analysis and findings discussed, it is confirmed that there are four variables of leaders’ personality traits that have significant and positive relationship with employee job performance. The four variables are extroversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and agreeableness and agreeableness has shown the highest significant correlation with employee job performance. Conversely, neuroticism found negatively related with employee job performance.”

In other words, depending on the situation, all the Big Five traits should be given attention in the study and application of organizational behavior.

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Conclusion and recommendations

In terms of performance, conscientiousness is above and beyond the strongest predictor across all job types. This makes sense because conscientious individuals are more driven, have a higher need for job achievement and are more detail oriented. The second strongest personality predictor is emotional stability (Opposite of Neuroticism). However, looking at the differences between job categories also tells us something important. For jobs with a stronger interpersonal component (such as sales, customer service, and managerial), extroversion, agreeableness, and openness become more desirable for predicting performance. This was not the case for skilled and semi-skilled workers. New research is examining how specific combinations of traits and facets (i.e., sub-traits for each of the Big-Five) can add even more predictive validity for specific job types. The important things to take away from this research are:

• Personality does contribute to performance but only at a moderate level (it is because of this that most psychologists recommend using personality tests as a supplement to other selection tools such as structured interviews and reference checks).
• Conscientiousness is the only Big-Five trait that predicts performance across all job-types and job-levels.
• Different combinations of personality traits are needed for jobs that have unique demands (such as customer service and managerial work).
• Use personality and cognitive ability tests for employee selection (combined they are very highly predictive of performance).

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References

1.?????Barrick, M., & Mount, M. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.

2.????Qui?ones, M., Ford, J., & Teachout, M. (1995). The relationship between work experience and job performance: A conceptual and meta-analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 48, 887-910.

?3.?????Hurtz, G., & Donovan, J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The big five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 869-879.

4.?????Judge, T. A., Bono, J. Y., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765–780.

5.?????Ones, D. S., Dilchert, S., Viswesvaran, C., & Judge, T. A. (2007). In support of personality assessment in organizational settings. Personnel Psychology, 60, 995-1027.

6.?????Nadiah Maisarah Abdul Ghani etal. (2016). Leader's Personality Traits and Employees Job Performance in Public Sector, Putrajaya. Procedia Economics and Finance, 37, 46-51.

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