Page 289 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases
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 (d) the consequences of stigmatization, (e) the personality construct, (f) per­
 sonality measures in organizational contexts, (g) the negative affectivity
 construct, (h) construct validity problems with measures of negative af­
 fectivity, (i) social causation models of well-being, (j) the criterion-related
 validity of personality measures, and (k) several conclusions concerning
 the use of personality measures as predictors of various criteria.
 UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE
 Measures that discriminate have the capacity to differentiate between the
 attributes of measured entities (e.g., people). The better the measure, the
 greater its capacity to discriminate and provide information about the de­
 gree to which measured entities differ from one another. For example, a
 meter stick that is calibrated in millimeter units has a greater capacity to
 discriminate among the heights of individuals than one that is calibrated
 in centimeter units. In addition, all else constant, a test of job-related ability
 with 50 items has greater capacity to discriminate among test takers than a
 test with 10 items. The longer test would have greater reliability and, thus,
 greater ability to discriminate.

 Fair Discrimination

 There is nothing wrong (vis-a-vis either psychometric or ethical perspec­
 tives) with measures that are valid and, thus, discriminate fairly. For ex­
 ample, there would be no problem with an organization using a highly
 discriminating, construct valid (i.e., highly reliable and unbiased) mea­
 sure of job aptitude for the purpose of personnel selection. In fact, all else
 constant, the greater the capacity of such a measure to discriminate, the
 more effective it would be in predicting job performance. However, a bi­
 ased measure would present both operational and ethical problems. More
 specifically, because of the fact that it lacked construct validity, it would
 discriminate unfairly.
 Unfair Discrimination


 In organizational contexts, unfair discrimination can result from the use of
 invalid (biased) measures of both predictors and criteria. For example,
 a preemployment test that measured factors that were not predictive of
 actual job performance (e.g., previous membership in college fraternities
 or sororities) would discriminate unfairly among job applicants. In addi­
 tion, a measure of job performance would discriminate unfairly against job
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