Faking and the Validity of Personality Tests: An Experimental Investigation Using Modern Forced Choice Measures,<\/a>\u201d appears in a special issue of the journal Personnel Assessment and Decisions<\/i> focused on understanding the impact of impression management on assessment outcomes. Additional study authors include Nathan Kuncel, Ph.D., from the University of Minnesota, Huber\u2019s wife Katie Huber, Ph.D., from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and Anthony Boyce, Ph.D., a principal research scientist at Amazon.<\/p>\nThe study builds on prior research demonstrating that personality assessments employing a multidimensional forced choice (MFC) format\u2014where respondents must choose between two or more statements that are most and least descriptive of their typical behavior\u2014tend to generate higher predictive validity than traditional Likert-type formats, where respondents rate on an agree-disagree scale the extent to which a statement describes their typical behavior. Huber and his colleagues designed an experiment to tease out whether the MFC format\u2019s advantage is due to its resistance to faking by varying participants\u2019 motivation to fake as well as changing the type of response format (MFC vs. traditional Likert).<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s findings indicate that the MFC format does make it harder to fake personality assessments even when directed to, as study participants were less able to raise their scores artificially (relative to their honest answers) when responding to the MFC format. This resistance to faking did not translate into improved predictive validity results for the MFC format, however. Huber and his colleagues suggest that Likert-type scales may retain their validity even when test-takers fake because the assessment is measuring something other than \u201ctrue personality\u201d in such situations\u2014for example, an examinee\u2019s views about what type of personality an ideal employee would have.<\/p>\n
In addition, it appears that fakers engage in more selective distortion when responding to MFC-based assessments, with score increases under directed faking conditions observed primarily on scales that were clearly relevant to the employment setting, such as drive, cooperativeness, composure, ambition, and mastery. In contrast, score increases were more uniformly positive across all scales when fakers responded to a traditional agree-disagree rating scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur study demonstrated that self-reported personality scores can still predict external criteria like job performance, even if those scores are largely fabrications,\u201d Huber noted. \u201cThat could be a problem, for example, if a company is trying to hire conscientious employees as opposed to those who simply know how to appear conscientious.\u201d Huber suggested that to better understand the effects of faking, \u201cresearchers should go beyond just exploring what assessments predict and investigate what a test is actually measuring when people fake.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.humrro.org\/corpsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Huber_Christopher_rev_WebRes-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/div>