Less Evaluative Measures of Personality in Job Applicant Contexts: The Effect on Socially Desirable Responding and Criterion Validity

Researchers have long sought to mitigate the detrimental effects of socially desirable responding on personality assessments in high-stakes contexts. This study investigated the effect of reducing the social desirability of personality items on response distortion and criterion validity in a job applicant context. Using a 2 × 2 repeated measures design, participants (n = 584) completed standard (International Personality Item Pool) and less evaluative (Less Evaluative Five Factor Inventory) measures of Big Five personality in a low-stakes context and then several weeks later in a simulated job applicant context. Self-report criteria with objective answers, including university grades, were also obtained. In general, the less evaluative measure showed less response distortion than the standard measure on some metrics, but not on others. Declines in criterion validity in the applicant context were smaller for the less evaluative measure. In the applicant context, however, validities were similar across the two measures. Correlations across contexts for corresponding traits (e.g., low-stakes extraversion with high-stakes extraversion) were also similar for both measures. In summary, reducing socially desirable item content might slightly reduce the substantive content required to predict criteria in low-stakes contexts, but this effect appears to be partly offset by reduced response distortion for less evaluative measures in applicant contexts.

Assessing Validity and Bias of Within-Person Variability in Affect and Personality

Within-person variability in affect (e.g., Neuroticism) and personality have been linked to well-being. These are measured either by asking people to report how variable they are or to give multiple reports on the construct and calculating a within-person standard deviation adjusted for confounding by the person-level mean. The two measures are weakly correlated with one another and the links of variability with well-being depend on which measure researchers use. Recent research suggests that people's repeated ratings may be biased by response styles. In a 7-day study (N = 399) with up to five measurements per day, we confirmed that the measures of variability lacked sufficient convergent validity to be used interchangeably. We found only 1 significant correlation (of 10) between variability in repeated ratings of affect or personality and variability in repeated ratings of a theoretically unrelated construct (i.e., features of images). There was very little evidence supporting the response styles hypothesis.