Chapter 3 - Individual differences and assessment Flashcards
Individual differences
Human characteristics / personal attributes.
The more-or-less enduring psychological characterstics tht distinguish one person from another, and thus help to define each person’s individuality;
- Cognitive abilities.
- Knowledge
- Physical abilities
- Personality
- Interests
- Emotion
What are the assumptions regarding individual differences?
- Adults have attributes that are relatively stable over time.
- People differ in these attributes.
- People’s relative differences in these attributes remain, even after training, job experiences, and other interventions.
- Differ job required different attributes.
- These attributes can be measured.
The imporatance of personal attributes of organizations;
Job requirements + personal attributes = FIT, result to a good performance effective work behavior.
Mental test/ Intelligence test
An instrument designed to measure subjects ability to reason, plan and solve problems (intelligence test).
Psychometrician
Is a psychologist trained in measuring characteristics such as mental ability.
Cognitive ability
A general mental capability involving reasoning, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, complex idea comprehension, and learning from experinece.
General mental ability
“g”is an abbreviation
Nonspecific capacity for resoning, learn and solve in any way.
g-ocentric model
Sternberg and Wagner (1993), called this model to understand and predict the behavior of workers simply by examining “g”.
Intelligence “g”
General mental ability (GMA)
General cognitive capability of people; e.g. reasoning, planning, problem solving, abstract thinking, understanding of complex ideas, fast learning, learning from experience.
Intelligence model of Caroll (1993)
Caroll proposed that there are three layers of intelligence. The highest layer is “g”, next layer has the seven braod abilities, and the third includes abilities that are tied to the seven broad abilties.
Is “g” important for work?
Yes, it contributes to work performance;
- It is shown in meta-analyses using European and US samples.
- For more complex jobs: higher predictive validity of “g”.
- But not perfect relation (average correlation r=0.50).
- Other attributes such as emotional reaction, personality traits, and interests also play an important role in successful job performance.
Stamina
Ability to supply muscles with oxygenated blood
Fluid intelligence
You are quick in understanding things
Crystalilized intelligence
Your database of knowledge.
Sensory abilities
The physical functions of vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and kinesthetic feedback (feedback from your body about position etc.)
Americans with disabilities act
Says that an employer can’t test areas such as sensory or physical abilities that mya be considered disabilities.
Pscyhomotor abilities
A division of sensory abilities. This is reaction time, coordination, dexteritiy, arm-hand steadiness and wrist-finger speed.
Physical abilities
The most physically demanding jobs reuire all three (muscular strength, cardiovascular edurance, movement quality) physical capacities.
Personality
Predisposition (typical patterns of behavior, thinking, and emotion): “habitual way of responding”.
Taxonomy Five-factor model (FFM)/Big Five
OCEAN
- Openness to experience (curious, imaginative, independent).
- Conscientiousness (responsible, persistent, planful).
- Extraversion (Sociable, talkative, energetic).
- Agreeableness (cooperative, trusting).
- Neuroticism (secure, calm, relaxed)
Some conclusions about personality
Personality, ability, conscientiousness
- Personality debends on work behavior, independent of “g” and is based on motivation “will do”.
- Ability is the knowledge and skillss “can do”.
- Conscientiousness is important trait in work situations and has a bigger impact on work behavior as the autonomy of employees increases.
Some conclusions about personality
P-factors, functional personality at work, Ones (1993), Judge (2007)
- Personality factors have influence on different jobs: Emotional stability (security jobs, teamwork), Extraversion (sales performance, management), Openess to experience (expats, sucess in training), Agreeableness (custmer service, teamwork).
- Functional personality at work: combinations of personality traits predict success.
- High C, High A and Low N = high integrity (Ones 1993).
- High E & Low N = Happy/buoyant personality (Judge 2007).
Emotional intelligence meaning
A individual’s ability to perceive emotion in self and others, to understand emotion, and then to manage emotion in self and others.
What are the measurement “streams”of EI?
- Ability test.
- Self- and peer-report instruments.
- Mixed instruments.
Streams 1 and 3 measures show that EI has added value in predicting performance, in additon to cognitive ability tests and personality test (O’Boyle 2011).
Occupational information network (O*NET)
Is a collection of electronic databases based on well-developed taxonomies.
Tacit knowledge
Action-oriented, goal directed knowledge acquired without direct help from others to achieve goals you value.
Procedural knowledge
Knowing how to solve something (so tacit knowlegdge).
Declarative knowledge
Is understanding what is equired to perform a task (so having information like O*NET), knowing informaiton about a job task.
Psychological test
An objective and standardized procedure to measure a psychological construct, using samples of human behavior.
Objective implies
Quantification, numerical results
Standardized
Test results get meaning by norming, comparing test scores to other relevant test scores.
Norm group
Group whose test scores are used to compare and understand an individual’s test score.
Test battery
Combining multiple tests. Typically different characteristics are measured. “Battery” within one test period, or over a very short time period.
- Important decions, based on which combinaiton of test? AND how should the results of the different test be combined?
Types of psychological tests
- Speed vs Difficulty: Speed test and Power test.
- Group vs individual.
- “Pencile and Paper” vs. “Performance”.
Ethical Aspects of tests are
- Test bias: are there (structural) errors in the perdiction for certain subgroups?
- Test fairness: Are the decisions based on the test scores fair?
- Culture: Opportunity to become familiar with the subject matter or processes required by a test item.
What are characteristics of Assessment Center?
- Done in groups.
- Multiple assessors.
- Focus on observable behavior, assessed via simulations.
- Job-relevant behaviors.
- Combinations of different methods.
- Transparent procedures and criteria.
Application of Assessment Center is used for;
- Selection (external and internal).
- Training
- Especially for management functions.
- Especially for functions that require interaction with others.
What are problems of Assessment center?
- Construct validity; What is actually measured? (mainly intelligence?).
- Inter-rater reliability: Assessors do not always agree with each other.
- High costs: Often multiple days, multiple assessors, costs of development, payment of assessors.
What are adventages of Assessment Center?
- Relatively high perdictive validity (average correlation with work performance is r-.40)
- Enthusiastic participatns, acceptance of feedback.
Integrity tests
Aim is to predict dishonest behaviors at work.
- Predicts overall performance better than FFM personality test (r=.41 vs r=.23).
- Predicts counterproductive work behaviors not as well as FMM personality test (r=.32 vs r=.51).
Overt Integrity test
Questions about past honesty behavior (stealing, etc.) as well as attitudes toward various behaviors (employee theft, etc.).
Personality Based Integrity Test
Infers honesty and integrity from questions dealing with broad personality constructs (e.g. conscientiousness, social responsability).
Unstructured vs structured interviews
- Predictive validity (r=.51 vs .38) and inter-rater reliability are higher for structured interviews.
- Problems with objectivity (halo-effect, overweighing of negative information.
Desing of structured interviews
- Based on analysis of the job.
- Similar kinds of questions and percise answering categories.
- Scoring procedure is standardized.
Situational interview
Candidate is asked to describe in specific and behavioral detail how he or she would respond to a hypothetical situation.
Cognitive ability test
Allows individuals to demonstrate what they know, perceive, remember, understand, or can work with mentally.
Pyschomotor ability test
Is a test that also involves the coordinated movement of the limbs.
