Whoever You Want Me to Be: Personality and Incentives

Arbeitspapier

What can employers learn from personality tests when job applicants have incentives to misrepresent themselves? Using a within-subject, laboratory experiment, we compare personality measures with and without incentives for misrepresentation. Incentivized personality measures are weakly to moderately correlated with non-incentivized measures in most treatments but are correlated with intelligence when test-takers have information about desired personalities or are warned that responses may be verified. We document that actual job ads provide information about desired personalities and that employers in the UK who administer personality tests are also likely to administer intelligence tests despite the potential for substitution between the tests.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 13809

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design ; Personnel Economics: General
• Subject: personality ; measurement ; hiring ; screening ; experiments

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): McGee, Andrew ; McGee, Peter
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/227336
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET