Current Projects

Developing a situational judgment test for measuring negative personality traits 

• We are developing a situational judgment test (SJT) to measure negative personality traits that elevate risk for unethical, antagonistic, and impulsive work behavior. 

Why measure negative traits?

• Unethical, antagonistic, and impulsive work behaviors pose significant financial and social risks to organizations. 

  • • Individuals high on traits like Machiavellianism (manipulativeness), narcissism (entitlement, grandiosity), or impulsivity are known to elevate the risk for organizational misconduct and poor team dynamics.

    • Current assessments may not fully capture these subtle but critical risk factors, leading to costly personnel decisions. Our research aims to fill this gap by creating an alternative measure of personality specifically designed to predict job performance decrements and workplace deviance.

Using SJTs

• An SJT presents participants with realistic, work-related situations and asks them to choose the most effective (or most likely) course of action to take from a set of options. 

• By analyzing the choices made, we can generate a score reflecting a candidate's likelihood of engaging in ineffective work behavior vs. demonstrating sound behavioral judgment under pressure.

• The project involves extensive situation and response option creation guided by theoretical models of personality and rigorous psychometric validation to ensure the test is both reliable, valid, and fair. 

Research impact

• The successful development and validation of this SJT will provide practitioners with a novel, legally defensible, and highly predictive assessment tool for identifying candidates who may pose a high risk to organizational success and environment. This research has the potential to meaningfully improve selection utility, reduce organizational risk, and foster healthier work environments.

Developing and testing the validity of chatbot-based test of personality

• We are developing and testing the validity of chatbots that measure personality through interactive role-play.