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Why Personality Measures Have Limited Applicability in Personnel Selection
Kevin R. Murphy
Jessica L. Dzieweczynski
Pennsylvania State University
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Abstract
Despite recent enthusiasm for the use of personality inventories in personnel
selection, many of the problems cited in Guion and Gottiers (1965) review have yet to be
resolved. Personality validities are still low, tests are still poorly chosen, and links
between personality and jobs are poorly understood. Personality measures are unlikely to
achieve the degree of acceptance given to cognitive tests because of differences in the
domains, differences in the tests, and differences in the environments in which cognitive
tests vs. personality inventories are developed.
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Why Personality Measures Have Limited Applicability in Personnel Selection
The use of personality inventories in making high-stakes decisions about
individuals (e.g., personnel selection) has long been controversial. In the 1950’s, the use
of personality inventories in organizations was becoming more common (Kanfer,
Ackerman, Murtha & Goff, 1995), but by the 1960’s, psychologists had become
skeptical about the potential application of personality measures in work settings. In their
highly influential review, Guion and Gottier (1965) concluded that “…it is difficult … to
advocate, with a clear conscience, the use of personality measures in most situations as a
basis for making employment decisions about people” (p. 160). The authors of this
review pointed to shortcomings in the underlying theories linking personality
characteristics to jobs, in the quality of the measures, and most important, in the
consistency and strength of the relationships between personality characteristics and
work-related outcomes. Their findings and conclusions were so compelling that
industrial and organizational psychologists virtually abandoned personality research for
the next 35 years.
Three developments in the 1990s led to more optimism about the relevance of
personality. First, the growing acceptance of the five-factor model as a comprehensive
taxonomy of normal personality seemed to resolve Guion and Gottier’s concerns about
the inconsistency and incompatability of various models of personality (Kanfer et al.,
1995; Digman, 1990, reviews research on the big five model). Second, several metaanalyses [notably Barrick and Mount (1991) and Tett, Jackson and Rothstein (1991)]
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suggested that there might be consistent (albeit small) correlations between personality
and job performance. Third, there have been positive developments in the measurement
of personality, most notably the emergence of scales and measures that provide better
measures of the big five (Goldberg, 1992; Kanfer et al., 1995).
Recent reviews paint a very different picture from Guion and Gottier (1965). For
example, Kanfer, Ackerman, Murtha and Goff (1995) noted, “From a practical
standpoint, recent findings…suggest that the controversy over whether personality tests
can be useful for prediction of employee performance is no longer pertinent” (p. 597).
The use of personality inventories in organizational settings seems to be growing
(Rothstein & Goffin, 2000), and personality has become one of the most active areas of
research in personnel psychology.
The use of personality inventories in personnel selection is still somewhat
controversial. In particular, there is a large and active literature dealing with the
possibility that individuals describe their personalities in socially desirable ways when
they believe that a particular inventory might be used to make important decisions.
Research on faking in personality measurement has convincingly shown that examinees
can inflate scores on personality inventories, and that faking could affect both the validity
of personality measures and the decisions based on these measures (Rosse, Stecher,
Miller & Levin, 1998; Scarpello, Ledvinka, & Bergmann, 1995; Schmit & Ryan, 1993).
Other studies suggest that faking might not have much influence on test validity, and that
it might be possible to develop test formats that discourage faking (Ellingson, Smith &
Sackett, 2001; Hough, Eaton, Dunnette, Kamp, & McCloy, 1991; Ones, Viswesvaran &
Reiss, 1996; Zickar & Robie, 1999). What is notable in this literature is that discussion
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about the use of personality measures in personnel selection seems to have shifted from
basic objections to the relevance of personality measures in predicting job performance to
consideration of practical constraints that might stand in the way of most effectively
using personality measures in organizations.
What Has Changed?
The attitudes of industrial and organizational psychologists toward the relevance
of personality inventories for personnel selection have changed dramatically since the
days of Guion and Gottier (1965). What is remarkable, however, is that empirical
support for the use of personality measures in organizational settings has changed very
little since this early review. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, one major concern was that the
validity of personality inventories as predictors of job performance and other
organizationally-relevant criteria seemed generally low. An examination of the current
literature suggests that this concern is still a legitimate one. Barrick, Mount and Judge
(2001) reviewed an extensive body of literature examining the relationship between
personality measures and job performance. The mean observed personality-performance
correlation was .06 or lower for four of the big five dimensions (Extraversion, Emotional
Stability, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience). The highest mean validity
(Conscientiousness) was .12; even after highly generous corrections for range restriction
and unreliability, the estimated population validity for four of the big five factors was
smaller than .20 (Murphy & DeShon, 2000, critique some of the corrections used in this
review).
All in all, the correlations between measures of the big five personality
dimensions and job performance are generally quite close to zero. It is true that current
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methods of meta-analysis allow researchers to estimate and potentially correct for the
effects of sampling error on the variability of validities across studies; modern metaanalyses are much less likely to conclude that validities are inconsistent from study to
study than was the case in 1965. Nevertheless, the finding that the variance in the
validity of personality measures is small is not a great comfort if the mean is also near
zero; in this instance, a small variance in validities means that personality inventories
almost always turn out to be fairly poor predictors of performance.
The apparent inconsistency of findings in early studies of the personality-job
performance relationship was an important part of Guion and Gottier’s (1965) pessimism
regarding the relevance of personality measures in selection. It is now clear that some of
this inconsistency can be traced to characteristics of the studies reviewed by Guion and
Gottier (e.g., small samples, unreliable tests) rather than the tests themselves. Some of
the inconsistency can probably also be traced to the use of a wide array of personality
measures, seldom chosen on the basis of a careful analysis of the job. As better measures
of the big five have emerged, it seems likely that psychologists will do a better job
choosing measures (although there is little evidence to date that this has happened; Ryan
& Sackett, 1998). Nevertheless, there are many reasons to believe that Guion and
Gottier’s pessimistic conclusions about the validity and utility of personality measures in
organizations are still relevant.
Reasons for Concern
There are three reasons why the use of personality inventories in personnel
selection is likely to be problematic. First, theories linking personality constructs and job
performance are often vague and unconvincing. In particular there are few theories that
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do a good job laying out the expected functional relationships between personality
characteristics and job performance. Second, little is known about how to match
personality constructs and jobs. Job analysis has, to a large extent, focused on
determining abilities and skills that are necessary for successful job performance, and it is
not clear whether these same job analytic methods can be applied to determine which
personality attributes make a difference in performing one’s job. Third, our most
successful applications of personality-related measures to date have involved measures of
poorly defined constructs, such as integrity (Murphy, 2000); valid measures of the big
five have not shown comparable levels of validity. While the personality measures used
in organizations should be better now than 40 years ago, there is not much evidence that
they are better.
Weak theories linking personality and performance. There is some empirical
evidence linking scores on some personality inventories to job performance, but we know
of no clear and convincing theory that lays out which personality dimensions should or
should not be relevant for predicting performance in particular jobs. There have been
studies suggesting that personality measures might be relevant for predicting contextual
performance rather than task performance (Kanfer et al., 1995; Murphy & Shiarella,
1997); but these aspects of performance are not job-specific, and judging from the
relatively low levels of validity observed in the literature, they are only weakly linked to
personality.
One particularly difficult issue in understanding the potential relevance of
personality for predicting performance is the general failure to articulate functional
relationships between personality attributes and performance. As we will note in a later
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section, scores on ability tests are usually monotonically related to performance (Coward
& Sackett, 1990); the higher one’s level of cognitive ability, the higher the level of
performance expected in most jobs. Measures of personality are unlikely to show this
same monotonicity.
Figure 1 illustrates the hypothesized relationship between Agreeableness and
performance in a wide range of managerial and supervisory jobs. It is reasonable to
believe that highly disagreeable supervisors are often ineffective and that as
Agreeableness increases from very low to at least moderately high, effectiveness tends to
increase. However, part of a supervisor’s job is to deliver bad news and critical feedback,
and a supervisor who is too high on Agreeableness is likely to fail. Similar figures might
be drawn for Conscientiousness (e.g., a manager who is very high on conscientiousness
might not have a realistic idea of when it is better to do things “by the book” vs. showing
flexibility in applying rules and regulations; Murphy & Cleveland, 1995; Murphy, 1996,
discusses the possibility that personality-performance relationships will resemble inverted
U functions).
Personality-performance relationships are not only likely to be complex, they are
also likely to vary across jobs, organizations, and settings. A frequently discussed
moderator of the personality-job performance relationship is the "situation" in which
performance takes place (Barrick & Mount, 1993; Chatman, 1989; Davis-Blake &
Pfeffer, 1989; Hough & Schneider, 1996; Weiss & Adler, 1984). In particular,
personality-performance relationships are likely to be moderated by situational strength
(Mischel, 1977). When the situation gives strong cues about desirable behaviors,
individual personalities are likely to be less important in explaining behavior in
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organizations than when the situation gives fewer cues about how one should behave
(Beaty, Cleveland & Murphy, 2001).
Tett, Jackson, Rothstein & Reddon (1999) note that even the sign of the
correlation between personality measures and job performance might vary from one
situation to another (particularly in situations where the value associated with different
aspects of job performance vary across settings). They note that bidirectional correlations
have been found in several studies and reviews (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Day &
Silverman, 1989; Tett, Jackson, Rothstein & Reddon, 1994), and they suggest that the
relationship between personality charactersitics and job performance is likely to be
moderated by factors such as the specific tasks that make up a job, charactersitics of the
work group and the culture of the organization. This bidirectionality is problematic for
methodologies such as traditional meta-analysis, where the personality-performance
relationship will be underestimated if the sign of the correlation between personality and
performance varies from study to study.
Difficulty in matching personality attributes to jobs. Personnel psychologists
have developed a number of methods for analyzing work and determining the attributes,
knowledge and experience necessary for performing well in various jobs. Early job
analytic methods focused on developing standardized descriptions of work, but the
development of structured questionnaires and inventories for analyzing jobs (e.g., the
Position Analysis Questionnaire; McCormick, Jeanneret & Mecham, 1972) led to an
increased emphasis on determining the abilities and skills necessary to perform well in
particular jobs. O*NET represents the most ambitious effort to analyze jobs and job
requirements; the O*NET project involves developing a national database that includes
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analyses of virtually every type of job in the current economy (Jeanneret & Strong, 2003;
Peterson et al., 2001). O*NET includes descriptions of each job and analyses of the
knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform the job, as well as the interests, work
values and work needs (i.e., motivational factors – extent to which the job provides
autonomy, achievement, responsibility, etc.) that are linked to or satisfied by the job.
Some of the work styles included in O*NET includes seven higher order personalityrelated constructs (e.g., Adjustment, Conscientiousness, Interpersonal Orientation) appear
to be linked to personality constructs, but there is no clear and consistent linkage to the
big five personality constructs in O*NET.
There have been numerous attempts to develop systematic methods for
determining the personality attributes that contribute to performance in different jobs
(Costa, McCrae & Kay, 1995; Gottfredson & Holland, 1994; Raymark, Schmit, & Guion,
1997; Suemer, Suemer, Demirutku & Cifci, 2001). Tett and Burnett (2003) have
suggested particularly sophisticated methods of developing personality-oriented job
analyses, but their own model of the way personality influences work performance
highlights some of the difficulties in linking personality with performance. They propose
an interactionist model, in which situational factors operating at the task, social and
organizational level can enhance or inhibit the influence of specific personality traits on
performance. One implication of this model is that it might not be the job itself that
determines whether or when specific traits are relevant, but rather a broad network of
factors outside of the job. Thus, an analysis of the job itself might not be sufficient for
determining the potential relevance of personality for predicting performance; it might
also be necessary to analyze the context within which the job is embedded.
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Poor measures. Ryan and Sackett (1987, 1992, 1998) note that the personality
inventories most commonly used in organizational settings do not measure the big five
factors. The measures most often used in organizational settings include the MyersBriggs Type Inventory (MBTI), the MMPI (a measure most appropriate for assessing
psychopathology), Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), California
Personality Inventory (CPI), and Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey (GZTS).
The 16PF and the CPI are venerable and psychometrically-respectable inventories, but
neither measures personality dimensions that are known to be consistently related to job
performance or other organizational criteria. Similarly, the Guilford-Zimmerman
Temperament Survey has been used by personality researchers for decades, but its
relevance to organizational criteria is unclear. As noted above, the MMPI is not a
personality inventory per se, and while it is believed to be useful for selection in some
high-risk occupations (e.g., public safety), evidence for the predictive validity of this
inventory is weak.
The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory is a very popular measure (Edwards, Lanning,
& Hooker, 2002), and it is thought to be widely used in executive assessment; the Center
for Applications of Psychological Type claims that over 2,000,000 people a year take the
MBTI. The MBTI is reasonably reliable (Caparo & Caparo, 2002), but there is little
reason to believe that this test is useful in organizational settings. Assessments of the
construct validity and criterion-related validity of the MBTI have been disappointing at
best. It is not clear what this test measures, and evidence that the test predicts
organizationally-relevant criteria is virtually nonexistent (Gardner & Martinko, 1996;
McCrae & Costa, 1989; Saggino, Cooper & Kline, 2001).
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Integrity tests are not personality measures per se, although many of these tests
appear to tap major aspects of the big five. Of all of the personality-related measures
used in organizations, integrity tests probably show the strongest evidence of validity and
utility for personnel selection (Ones, Viswesvaran & Schmidt, 1993). However, as
Murphy (2000) has noted, integrity tests fill a niche that is familiar to applied
psychologists, but nevertheless profoundly embarrassing - i.e., they represent a class of
measures that seems to work well, without anyone knowing exactly why. Integrity tests
that show the most consistent evidence of predictive validity usually overlap with most if
not all of the big five personality factors (Wanek, Sackett & Ones, 2003), but since these
five factors are thought to represent independent facets of personality, it is hard to tell
what a composite of all of these factors might represent.
A Comparison with Ability Testing
There are some important controversies in the application of cognitive ability tests
in personnel selection (e.g., racial discrimination, banding, test fairness), but
nevertheless, cognitive ability tests are broadly accepted by personnel psychologists as
valid, accurate and relatively fair predictors of job performance (Murphy, Cronin & Tam,
2003). In analyzing current controversies over the use of personality tests in selection, it
is useful to ask why ability tests are so readily accepted and why personality measures are
viewed with so much concern in some quarters. Differences in acceptance of ability vs.
personality measures in selection are in part due to differences in the validity of these two
classes of tests. Ability tests are among the most valid predictors of performance
(Hough, Eaton, Dunnette, Kamp & McCloy, 1991; Hunter, 1986; Hunter & Hirsh, 1987;
Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Ree & Earles, 1992; Schmidt, Ones & Hunter, 1992; Schmidt &
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Hunter, 1998), whereas validity estimates for personality measures are often distressingly
close to zero (Barrick et al., 2001). In our view, there are three differences between
ability tests and personality measures that are even more fundamental to understanding
why it is relatively easy to predict performance with an ability test and relatively difficult
to predict performance with a personality inventory: (1) differences in the domains, (2)
differences in the tests, and (3) differences in levels of accountability.
Domain differences. The key to understanding the structure of cognitive abilities is
the widely-replicated finding that scores on cognitively-demanding tasks exhibit positive
manifold (Ackerman & Humphreys, 1990; Allinger, 1988; Carroll, 1993; Eysenck, 1979;
Guttman & Levy, 1991; Humphreys, 1979; Jensen, 1980; Ree & Earles, 1991). That is,
scores on virtually any reliable measure that involves cognitive processing will be
positively correlated with scores on other cognitive measures. So, for example,
examinees who tend to do well on vocabulary items will also tend to do well on math,
paragraph comprehension, working memory and spatial relationship items. Most models
of the cognitive domain suggest a pattern of hirearchical relationships among abilities, in
which all cognitive abilities are related to a higher-order general factor (‘g’), and in
which various groups of abilities are all intercorrelated (Carroll, 1993; Vernon, 1960).
The structure of the cognitive ability domain has three important implications for
the development of cognitive ability tests. First, because all cognitive items are related to
and draw from the same general factor, the precise content of a cognitive ability test is
not highly important. Two cognitive tests that have virtually no content overlap (e.g., a
knowledge test vs. a nonverbal test of inductive reasoning) are likely to yield scores that
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are positively correlated. As a result, it is likely that different cognitive tests will yield
somewhat similar outcomes.
Second, as a result of the positive manifold of cognitive tests, it is relatively easy
to build reliable measures of cognitive ability. Positive manifold implies that most test
items will be positively correlated; if items are positively correlated, reliability theory
implies that it will be easy to achieve a high level of reliability even with a relatively
short test (Lord & Novick, 1968). Third, because most work tasks also involve active
information processing, it is virtually guaranteed that a relaible measure of cognitive
ability will be correlated with relaible measures of performance in the workplace.
In contrast, the structure of the domain of personality is is not one that simplifies
test construction or that guarantees validity in predicting performance and succcess on the
job. The big five factors are thought to be essentially orthogonal (Digman, 1990),
meaning that scores on one measure of personality might show no relationship with
scores on another personality measure. Because the five major facets of personality are
orthogonal, content matters very much in test construction. A personality inventory made
up of four items measuring Agreeableness, five measuring Conscientiousness, three
measuring Emotional Stability and two measuring Openness to Experience might be
virtually uninterpretable. It might also show very disappointing levels of reliability
(because of the low correlations among many of the items). Finally, a personality
inventory that measures the wrong dimensions of personality might show virtually no
validity as a predictor of performance. So, if a job requires high levels of Extroversion,
but the personality inventory used to select among applicants measures Agreeableness
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and Emotional Stability, you might (perhaps wrongly) conclude that personality tests
have no value as predictors in that job
Differences in tests. Cognitive ability tests typically ask you to do something (e.g.,
answer questions, solve problems), whereas personality inventories ask you to describe
yourself. Self-report methods have been the subject of a good deal of criticism (Dawes,
1994), and it is not at all clear whether people are able to provide useful and accurate
descriptions of their own personalities. Our concern here is not whether self-reports
provide adequate measures of personality; regardless of the resolution of this question, a
comparison of the measurement strategies in ability testing vs. personality measurement
would suggest that ability tests are likely to be more relevant in selection. The simplest
explanation for the superior performance of ability tests as predictors is that the task that
confronts test-takers is similar to the thing the test is designed to predict. To do well on a
test, one must solve problems, manipulate information, accomplish tasks, etc. Doing well
on the job requires many of the same behaviors – i.e., both tests and jobs revolve around
goal-directed activities, problem solving, and active information processing. In contrast,
there are substantial differences between the task one does when completing a personality
inventory (i.e., telling about yourself) and the tasks that one carries out in the workplace.
A second important difference between ability tests and personality inventories has
to do with the research traditions to which each type of measure is most closely linked.
Ability tests are strongly tied to the psychometric tradition, in which the principal focus is
on measuring differences between people (the term “differential psychology” was once
used to describe the field of applied psychological testing; Anastasi, 1958; Minton &
Schneider, 1980). In contrast, personality inventories are more closely tied to the clinical
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tradition, in which the focus is on understanding the individual rather than on comparing
individuals. Both approaches have their advantages, but on the whole, the strong
psychometric roots of ability testing seem to provide a better fit to selection than is
provided by the clinical appraoch. In selection, the task is to compare individuals, not to
reach an in-depth understanding of each person, and on the whole, psychometricallyoriented tests have performed better in selection (where the test development philosophy
matches the demands of the task) that have clinically-oriented tests
Differences in accountability. Cognitive ability tests are often held up to strict
scrutiny by potential users and by the a variety of stakeholders, for two reasons. First,
ability tests are often used to make high-stakes decisions (e.g., academic admissions,
personnel selection), and examinees are likely to challenge decisions they regard as
unfair or unfounded. Second, the use of cognitive ability tests in making high-stakes
decisions often contributes to racial and ethnic differences in outcomes such as the
likelihood of being selected, of passing a certification exam, etc. (Gottfredson, 1986,
1988). Cognitive ability tests are therefore often at the heart of employment
discrimination lawsuits, disputes over academic admissions, controversies over the
assessment of students, etc., and in the legal arena these tests are subject to very exacting
scrutiny. In employment discrimination litigation, test developers and test users often
carry the burden of demonstrating that the ability tests they use are in fact valid and job
related. As a result, ability test publishers and test users have a strong incentive to pay
careful attention to validity evidence and to the psychometric sophistication of their tests.
Personality inventories are sometimes challenged , but only rarely on the basis of
their reliability or validity; invasions of privacy are more likely grounds for complaints
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(e.g., Soroka v. Dayton-Hudson; see Merenda, 1995). Except in unusual cirtumstances,
these measures are rarely used to make high-stakes decisions, and in contexts where they
are used in this way, they are much less likely than ability tests to lead to racial or ethnic
differences in selection, passing rate, etc. (Murphy, 1996). As a result, there are fewer
incentives for psychometric sophistication in personality testing than in ability testing.
The developers and users of personality inventories are not likely to be held to the same
standard of psychometric accountability that is expected for a cognitive ability test.
Summary
Personality inventories are unlikely to achieve the level of validity and acceptance
in personnel selection achieved by cognitive ability tests. The problem is not necessarily
in the tests themselves, but rather in the nature of the domains of personality and ability,
the measurement strategies that underlie these two classes of measures, and the levels of
accountability that go with personality testing vs. ability testing.
Cognitive abilities are positively intercorrelated, which implies that even a poorly
designed ability test (e.g., one that measures verbal ability, but is used for selection in a
job where spatial abilities are most crucial) is likely to show some validity. The same
abilities that allow some people to do well on the test are likely to contribute to them
doing well on the job. There is no comparable general factor in personality (Murphy,
2000), and a personality inventory that does a great job measuring personality dimensions
that are not important in a particular job will have little or no validity or utility as a
selection device. It is easier to develop a psychometrically sound ability test than to
develop a comparably sound personality inventory, and there are more incentives to focus
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on valid measures when developing ability tests than when developing personality
inventories.
In the wake of Guion and Gottier’s (1965) review, personnel psychologists
became deeply skeptical about the potential contribution of personality inventories to
personnel selection. In the last 40 years, the atitudes of personnel psychologists have
changed, but few of the problems that contributed to Guion and Gottier’s (1965)
pessimism have been resolved. Validities are still generally small and unstable
(sometimes even changing signs as one moves from one situation to another), tests are
still selected with little regard for their validity, and theories linking personality and
performance are still poorly specified. Despite the enthusiasm for personality research
that resulted from Barrick and Mount (1991) and subsequent reviews, there are still
compelling reasons for caution when using personality inventories in personnel selection.
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Figure 1
Hypothesized Relationship Between Agreeableness and Performance in Supervisory Jobs
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
Probability of success
given level of
Agre eableness
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Very
Low
Low Ave rage High
Very
High