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Is Personality Related to Assessment Center Performance? That Depends on How Old You Are

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Abstract

Despite compelling arguments that performance in the assessment center (AC) should be related to personality, past research has failed to demonstrate a consistent link between personality and AC performance. This study investigated whether managerial candidates’ age could be moderating, and thus obscuring, specific personality–AC performance relations. A large sample of managers (N = 371) participated in an AC and also completed the leadership relevant personality scales of achievement, dominance, and exhibition from the Personality Research Form-E (PRF-E; Jackson, D. N. (1984). Manual for the personality research form. Port Huron, MI: Research Psychologists Press). Consistent with hypotheses, age moderated the relations of dominance and exhibition with AC performance (p < .05), such that dominance and exhibition were more strongly related to AC performance for older as opposed to younger managers. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for the criterion-related and construct validity of ACs.

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Notes

  1. Substituting assessors’ exercise ratings (i.e., aggregating dimensional scores within exercises)—which is another valid means of combining AC judgments (Bycio, Alvares, & Hahn, 1987)—did not change the conclusions that were drawn from this work.

  2. Normative estimates were not based on those values given in the PRF-E handbook (Jackson, 1984) because those estimates were based on a relatively small college sample (N = 84). Because Anderson’s (1999) data were collected from a reasonably large sample of managers (N = 227) they were expected to provide a more accurate, and relevant estimate for the current study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MICA Consulting Partners, Inc., 229 Yonge St., 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5B 1N9

    Henryk T. Krajewski

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Richard D. Goffin

  3. Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Mitchell G. Rothstein

  4. Private Practice, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Norman G. Johnston

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  1. Henryk T. Krajewski
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  2. Richard D. Goffin
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  3. Mitchell G. Rothstein
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  4. Norman G. Johnston
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Correspondence to Henryk T. Krajewski.

Additional information

This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Richard Goffin and Mitchell Rothstein. A portion of the data from this research was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Toronto, April, 2002.

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Krajewski, H.T., Goffin, R.D., Rothstein, M.G. et al. Is Personality Related to Assessment Center Performance? That Depends on How Old You Are. J Bus Psychol 22, 21–33 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-007-9043-z

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