Addressing Elusive Questions: Investigating the Faking-Performance Relationship

The goal of this study is to critically examine the impact of applicant faking behavior on criterion-related validities using a simulated applicant setting. We specifically distinguished between the effect of faking behavior on task, contextual, and counterproductive work behavior. We examined the impact of applicants faking in 2 separate studies. Results suggested that a significant number of applicants faked their scores in both studies. For study I, no statistical significant mean difference between fakers and non-fakers was found on task related job performance, as was hypothesized. Furthermore, criterion correlation coefficients for fakers were significantly lower than the criterion correlation coefficient for non-fakers. For study II, we did also not find significant difference between fakers and non-fakers on contextual performance and counterproductive performance measures. Once again, different patterns of relationships were found between counterproductive behavior and applicant conscientiousness scores for fakers and non-fakers. Criterion-related validity for the combined samples were lower than observed criterion coefficient for the honest sample. While small sample size may limit our conclusions, our data suggested that applicant faking behavior may attenuate criterion validity. A substantial body of literature has demonstrated that personality measures are valid predictors of job performance and other work-relate