Driver selection and Personality Tests
A recent survey found that about 30 percent of all companies use personality tests as part of their hiring procedure. Not content to assess basic skills such as reading and arithmetic, these companies seek psychological insight into their pool of job applicants. Some companies use the tests to screen whom to interview and others use them as only a small part of their interview and evaluation process. Of course, these tests worry many people who fear the tests are not reliable or for other reasons are not fair to job applicants.
Numerous tests are available, but they do not to quantify personality in the same way. Many of the tests are available on-line and do not add much to the cost and time demands of a personnel department. The most common personality factors that these tests seek to measure are extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. Probably, the two best known tests are The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, which attempts to measure propensity for substance abuse or other pathologies and which is regularly used to assess candidates for sensitive positions in police departments, nuclear plants, etc. and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which measures four qualities of a person -- introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving.
Researchers at University of Manchester Institute for Technology in 2001 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1100347.stm reviewed and statistically analyzed all available studies that examined the connection between personality and safety. They identified what they concluded are 3 key personality traits that affect accident prevention:
1) dependability-tendency toward conscientiousness and social responsibility
2) agreeableness- not being aggressive or self-centered, not highly competitive
3) Openness-tending to learn from experience and from others, imaginative
They found that high levels of dependability or agreeableness lead to fewer accidents, while high levels of openness are associated with higher risk. Other personality traits were neutral as regards safety.
Companies that use personality testing that measure these three traits to aid hiring decisions could factor in the safety ramifications of applicants' personality scores. For jobs in which safety is a high priority, truck drivers, for example, employers could overweight these three elements of personality.
It is not at all clear what to do when the ability to do the job conflicts with the need for safety. Consider a company that believes its sales people need to be aggressive to succeed, yet these employees drive a great deal in the course of their work. If the research is valid, the employer faces either one of two unacceptable scenarios: unsuccessful sales people or higher than average on-the-job automobile accidents.
Professor Ivan Robertson, a psychologist at the University of Manchester in England who lead the study cautions that "there's a definite effect of personality--but it's small." Properly constructed personality tests seem to give unique information that could be useful to employers if used with other forms of screening."
