Page 55 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

34 ability and non-ability predictors of job performance
stronger influence on performance proficiency than individual differences in general
cognitive ability. For purposes of personnel selection, the indirect influence of abilities
on knowledge suggests that criterion-related validities of general cognitive ability and job
knowledge will depend both on the nature of the task and the performance to be predicted.
In inconsistent tasks, ability is likely to play a substantial role in the prediction of job
performance regardless of job knowledge. However, in consistent tasks, job knowledge
may play a larger role in predicting performance compared to ability, particularly when
prediction is focused on performance proficiency.
Another consideration pertains to the extent to which meta-analytic findings gen-
eralize to contemporary work environments where emphasis is placed on ancillary or
contextual performance dimensions (e.g., organizational citizenship, team performance,
theft, absenteeism). In the manufacturing and industrial sectors, job performance typ-
ically refers to observable behaviors and outputs, such as number of bolts assembled
or shoes made. In the product development and service sectors, however, a substantial
aspect of performance involves interpersonal skills and tasks. To the extent that indi-
vidual differences in cognitive abilities have been shown to be weakly or unrelated to
several non-cognitive traits involving interpersonal tendencies (Ackerman & Heggestad,
1997), individual differences in general cognitive ability may show weaker relations to
measures of job performance that incorporate such dimensions. In the next section, we
address these issues in our consideration of research on personality and other non-ability
predictors of job performance.

PERSONALITY/NON-ABILITY TRAITS

The story of contemporary developments in the personality–performance domain stands
in stark contrast to developments in the ability–performance domain. As noted in pre-
vious reviews by Kanfer et al. (1995) and Murphy (1996), the use of personality tests
for purposes of personnel selection waxed and waned for much of the twentieth century.
Unlike research in the ability domain, no grand theories of personality guided empiri-
cal research on the predictive validity of trait measures for job performance (with the
exception, perhaps, of the McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell (1953) formulation
of need for achievement); studies of personality–performance relations were often only
loosely related to personality theory and there was little coordination of findings inves-
tigating similar trait constructs. In short, theory and research on non-ability prediction
of job performance was in the scholarly doldrums, and reviews of the predictive validity
of personality tests for job performance remained generally pessimistic (e.g., Guion &
Gottier, 1965; Schmitt et al., 1984).
Beginning in the early 1980s, however, interest in personality trait prediction of work
behavior and performance burgeoned (e.g., Weiss & Adler, 1984). Similar to the history
of ability research more than half a century earlier, the major forces underlying the
renewal of interest in trait research were new theoretical developments in a basic domain
of psychology (personality) and the development of valid trait measures for normal
adults. In particular, the rising popularity of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality
(Goldberg, 1990), the development of multidimensional personality inventories designed
to assess these factors, and the fading of the situationism debate in social psychology (in
which person factors were proposed to exert less influence on behavior than situational