Political affiliation and employment screening decisions: The role of similarity and identification processes.

Recent research in political science, along with theory in applied psychology, has suggested that political affiliation may be associated with substantial levels of affect and, thus, might influence employment decision-makers. We designed 2 experiments using social media screening tasks to examine the effects of political affiliation similarity on ratings of hireability. Our findings in both studies suggest that the identification (capturing positive affect) and disidentification (capturing negative affect) of a decision-maker with a job applicant's political affiliation were important variables that influenced perceived similarity. Consistent with the similarity-attraction paradigm, perceived similarity was related to liking and, in turn, liking was related to expected levels of applicant task and organizational citizenship behavior performance. Further, in both studies, political affiliation related variables influenced hireability decisions over and above job-relevant individuating information. Future research should continue to examine political affiliation similarity, particularly in light of its frequent availability to decision-makers (e.g., via social media websites). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Constituent attachment and voluntary turnover in low-wage/low-skill service work.

This paper draws on life stage theory, ethnographic research conducted in the service sector, and evidence for secondary segmentation within the low-wage/low-skill labor force to offer evidence that social bond development with coworkers can help reduce the high rate of turnover observed in low-wage/low-skill service work. Contrary to the belief that these employees will leave before social ties can develop, constituent attachment was found to be the only significant predictor of turnover in 2 samples of front-line service workers in a casual dining, national restaurant chain after controlling for other aspects of work that can create a sense of attachment to a job, and other job attitudes, such as satisfaction and commitment. However, the effect was dependent on developmental life stage. Constituent attachment reduced turnover among workers classified as emerging adults, whereas constituent attachment did little to affect turnover among nonemerging adults. Implications of the results are discussed with respect to the value of considering segmentation in future research on turnover in the service sector and the use of life stage theory for understanding the leaving behavior of workers in different stages of adulthood.

Personality retesting for managing intentional distortion.

Self-report personality questionnaires often contain validity scales designed to flag individuals who intentionally distort their responses toward a more favorable characterization of themselves. Yet, there are no clear directives on how scores on these scales should be used by administrators when making high-stakes decisions about respondents. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether administrator-initiated retesting of flagged individuals represents a viable response to managing intentional distortion on personality questionnaires. We explored the effectiveness of retesting by considering whether retest responses are more accurate representations of a flagged individual's personality characteristics. A comparison of retest scores to a baseline measure of personality indicated that such scores were more accurate. Retesting should only work as a strategy for dealing with intentional distortion when individuals choose to respond more accurately the second time. Thus, we further explored the emotional reaction to being asked to retest as one possible explanation of why individuals who engage in intentional distortion respond more accurately upon retest.

Personality assessment across selection and development contexts: insights into response distortion.

Insight into applicant intentional distortion on personality measures was obtained by comparing individual responses provided in an organizational context with high motivation to distort (selection) and those provided in an organizational context with low motivation to distort (development). An assessment firm database containing responses to the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) was searched for within-subject data. Seven hundred and thirteen individuals were identified as having completed the CPI twice: once for selection purposes and once for development purposes or twice for the same purpose. Scale-score analyses both within and across contexts revealed a limited degree of response distortion.

Substance versus style: a new look at social desirability in motivating contexts.

Although there is an emerging consensus that social desirability does not meaningfully affect criterion-related validity, several researchers have reaffirmed the argument that social desirability degrades the construct validity of personality measures. Yet, most research demonstrating the adverse consequences of faking for construct validity uses a fake-good instruction set. The consequence of such a manipulation is to exacerbate the effects of response distortion beyond what would be expected under realistic circumstances (e.g., an applicant setting). The research reported in this article was designed to assess these issues by using real-world contexts not influenced by artificial instructions. Results suggest that response distortion has little impact on the construct validity of personality measures used in selection contexts.