Job Applicant Faking of Overt Integrity Tests: Fact or Fantasy?
Integrity tests are among the least utilized pre-employment selection instruments due, at least in part, to concern regarding the ease at which applicants can successfully fake their responses. The current study attempted to assess the extent to which actual job applicants fake overt integrity tests. We assigned one group of applicants to an honest condition and one group to a standard response condition. Applicants in the honest condition received a set of instructions that were modified to illustrate the importance of responding as honestly as possible when completing the questionnaire, whereas the standard response condition received a set of instructions that were not modified. We hypothesized that job applicants in the honest group would score worse on the integrity test and social desirability scales than would applicants completing the tests under the normal instructions. We failed to find a significant difference between groups on the scores on the integrity test but did find a significant difference between the groups on the social desirability scale.
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