The Faking of Tests in Personnel Selection Situations: the Exploration and Extension of the Research

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (2) : 490-495.

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PDF(6158 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (2) : 490-495.

The Faking of Tests in Personnel Selection Situations: the Exploration and Extension of the Research

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Abstract

Faking behavior is likely appeared in psychological tests in occupational selection situations. This problem raises concerns that psychometrical and organizational management researchers try to explore whether candidates fake actions, why they do it, how they can make it, and how faking performance adversely affected the tests and so on. Now it is thought that faking is attributed to individual desire for job when applicants are in particular occupational selection situations, rather than social desirability or impression management. Other cases may also have impact on faking behavior----some objective factors, such as surrounding environment, tests’ forms and contents, and some subjective factors such as attitude, personality traits, ability, experiences, etc… Validity of personality tests would be affected as well as the enterprise employment decision since candidates do not express truly. Fortunately there are many methods and technologies helping people identify faking, like faking detection scale, IRT, forced-choice scales, warning, and so on. However, researchers start to realize that there’s still no theoretical framework to explain how these caus-es influence faking behavior. Frameworks of faking behavior and mental models have been built trying to explain how these factors lead to faking behavior, such as Snell’s faking motivation and faking ability interaction model, McFarland and Ryan’s faking plan behavior model, Muller-Hanson and his colleagues’ integration model of faking behavior, Goffin's general faking behavior model, as well as Ellingson and McFarland’s VIE theory model of applicants’ faking behavior. These models constructed to explore the psychological process of the faking behavior have provided many useful suggestions. Not only theoretical models of faking, the application field are also concerned. Today, the Internet is widely used for psychological research and other assessment domains. Many researches focus attention on the fakeability of psychological measures. Examination of the equivalence of pencil-and-paper and Internet-based versions of some psychological measures has been undertaken, with results suggesting the differences of faking behavior, faking intention in two kinds of tests. But the results cannot be seen as correct. To get more meaningful conclusions, further exploration should be done in the future. In the future researchers could pay attention to the accuracy of those faking behavior models and cognitive neural mechanism of one’s faking action, explore the various factors related to the faking behaviors, find new methods to make clear the entire process of faking behavior, and predict candidates’ faking performance through some factors related to faking that have been explored. Studies on faking theory and empirical research in online psychological tests would provide a new orientation in this field. Those potential environmental and individual effects on faking behavior in online tests may attract more attention, and need new methods to explore these unresolved issues, find more useful results.

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faking of personality tests / psychological model / faking in online psychological test

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The Faking of Tests in Personnel Selection Situations: the Exploration and Extension of the Research[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2015, 38(2): 490-495
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