A Meta‐Analytic Investigation of Job Applicant Faking on Personality Measures

TLDR

The study examines how much job applicants fake responses on personality tests. The authors meta‑analyzed 33 studies comparing applicant and non‑applicant personality scores. Applicants consistently scored higher on extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and openness, but the magnitude and rank ordering of these differences varied by job type, were smaller than in prior work, and were larger for direct than indirect Big Five measures.

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which job applicants fake their responses on personality tests. Thirty‐three studies that compared job applicant and non‐applicant personality scale scores were meta‐analyzed. Across all job types, applicants scored significantly higher than non‐applicants on extraversion ( d= .11), emotional stability ( d= .44), conscientiousness ( d= .45), and openness ( d= .13). For certain jobs (e.g., sales), however, the rank ordering of mean differences changed substantially suggesting that job applicants distort responses on personality dimensions that are viewed as particularly job relevant. Smaller mean differences were found in this study than those reported by Viswesvaran and Ones ( Educational and Psychological Measurement , 59 (2), 197–210), who compared scores for induced “fake‐good” vs. honest response conditions. Also, direct Big Five measures produced substantially larger differences than did indirect Big Five measures.