Whoever You Want Me to Be: Personality and Incentives

Andrew McGee and Peter McGee

No 13809, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: screening; hiring; measurement; personality; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D82 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Economic Inquiry, 2024, 64 (3), 1268 - 1291

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Related works:
Journal Article: Whoever you want me to be: Personality and incentives (2024)
Working Paper: Whoever You Want Me to Be: Personality and Incentives (2023)
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