Effects of an Economic Recession on Leader Personality and General Mental Ability Scores

Abstract

Economic recessions have wide-ranging implications for the workforce. The science and practice of industrial and organizational psychology are certainly not immune to those implications. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an economic recession on leader personality and general mental ability scores in three samples (nTime 1=564; nTime 2=581; nTime 3=281) of US bank employees. The samples differed primarily in level of unemployment in the general US economy (Time 1=4.67%; Time 2=7.77%; Time 3=9.77%) with samples matched on five branches located in cities throughout the United States. Internal consistency reliabilities and similar variances and covariances across samples were found to be statistically indistinguishable. However, statistically significantly higher personality scale means in the Time 2 and Time 3 samples were evidenced in comparison to the Time 1 sample. Additional analyses suggested that these mean differences would result in different percentages of individuals being selected at seven of nine selection ratios. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.