Faking personality questionnaires in personnel selection

Investigates the extent to which it is possible to fake a personality questionnaire to match the ideal candidate’s profile. Previous research suggests that responses to personality measures can be faked with relative ease. It was anticipated that the amount of information available to the candidate might make faking‐to‐profile easier. Therefore this study manipulated the information available to participants through three experimental conditions: job title, job description and person specification. The results show that the participants can selectively manipulate their responses on scales, rather than inflating all scales. There was not, however, any effect of information manipulation. All groups, regardless of which information was given, produced similar profiles suggesting all three groups were faking to the same stereotype. Participants were unable to fake their responses to match the ideal profile for the job. Suggests that this is encouraging news for people using personality questionnaires as part of their selection process.