Category: Personality

When discussing personality, it’s common to hear people refer to themselves or others as “Type A” or “Type B.” Or, for those who have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, acronyms like ISTJ or ENTP or INFP are so commonplace they frequently show up in online dating profiles.

At Hogan, we’ve historically steered away from labeling people as a certain “personality type” based on their assessment results. The primary reason for this is that personality trait scores lie on a continuum and dividing people into convenient buckets sacrifices precision. Further, even two people with highly similar personality profiles can be dramatically different from each other if they only differ on a single scale.

*This post was authored by Ryne Sherman and Brandon Ferrell.

A recently published study suggests that some of the most common personality assessments (i.e., one’s based on the Big 5) don’t work in other countries. The study was published in a prestigious journal (Science Advances, impact factor > 12), and it has already gained prominent media attention. One outlet said that these personality tests don’t hold up around the world. NPR said that personality tests don’t reveal the real you. Reading these articles might make you conclude that personality assessments just can’t be used in other countries. Fortunately, despite what the economists who contributed to the article and the journalists who are covering it might have you believe, such a conclusion is just wrong. In what follows, we show you why.

Comparing Assessments Across Borders and Languages

If you had a rod that measures 1 meter in Australia, but 2 meters in Kenya, you have a big problem. Clearly, the term “1 meter” doesn’t mean the same thing in different locations or different languages. As a principle of measurement, you want to be sure that whatever you are measuring in one location (or one language) is the same thing that you are measuring in another. In terms of personality assessment, comparing countries (or languages) absolutely requires that the assessments are used in the same fashion across countries and languages. Psychologists use a metric called the congruence coefficient to determine the degree to which instruments are measuring the same thing. Scores on the metric can range from -1.00 to +1.00, with higher scores indicating greater similarity. The accepted standard for declaring the instruments as similar is a congruence coefficient > .84. The recently published study found average congruence coefficients of .73 and .71 in survey data gathered in so-called non-WEIRD countries (e.g., Kenya, Philippines, Colombia, etc.).

What does personality theory tell us about human nature? It depends on who you ask. Learn more here.

On February 13th, the Nevada assembly heard a proposal for a new bill, Nevada AB132. The bill itself is only 2.5 pages long and is pretty easy to read, but effectively has two parts:

The first part of the bill concerning pre-hiring marijuana testing has received a fair amount of local news coverage, and is outside of my areas of expertise. However, I will say it does seem odd that one can be excluded from a job for testing positive for a drug that is recreationally legal in the state. If an alcohol test could determine if you drank alcohol at any time over the past, say 30 days, should people of legal age to consume alcohol be excluded from jobs on the basis of that test result?

A critical task for leaders is to ensure that their followers are working efficiently toward the organization’s goals. In business, employees whose work is aligned with the organization’s objectives are more productive. So-called “performance management processes” are intended to create alignment between the employee’s work and the organization’s goals. A typical performance management process might include planning and setting goals, monitoring progress toward those goals, development and improvement, and periodic performance appraisals (or reviews). These performance management processes could be substantially improved by the use of personality assessments.

Personality is related to every meaningful individual difference. Scientifically validated personality assessments can predict substance use and abuse, longevity, relationship satisfaction, job performance, criminality, and occupational choice, just to list a few examples. Beyond these applications, well-validated personality assessments provide individuals with insights into their own motives, reputations and destructive behaviors, many of which they may not be aware of. Employees can use such strategic self-awareness to modify their behaviors at work to be more in line with the expectations of management. Consider the following (real) example.