Psychological Assessment – Lecture 5, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].

Psychological assessment is used for selection of personnel (1), development of personnel (2), career choice (3), absence and reintegration of personnel (4), assessing motivation (5), assessing leadership (6) and improving performance (7).

Personal interest is related to occupational fulfilment and success. They promote better performance (1), greater productivity (2) and greater job satisfaction (3). It can be assessed using an interest measure (e.g. Strong Interest Inventory). Interest is less predictive of job performance and work outcomes than personality traits. A combination of test instruments increases the predictive validity for work outcomes.

Holland’s theory of vocational personality types states that there are six personality types and vocational choice reflects one of these personality types. Hunter states that there are five families of jobs; setting up (1), feeding and off-bearing (2), synthesising and coordinating (3), analysing, compiling and computing (4) and copying and comparing (5). The interest inventories could recommend a family of jobs to a person.

High school aptitude predicts job performance and not job satisfaction. Both are not predicted by interest inventories. A portfolio assessment refers to the evaluation of an individual’s work sample to make a decision regarding this individual (e.g. placement). The advantages of portfolio assessment are evaluating many work samples by the assessee (1), obtaining understanding of the assessee’s work-related thoughts and habits (2) and question the assessee further regarding aspects of the thought-processes (3).

An integrity test refers to a narrowly defined personality test to predict an employee’s integrity (e.g. theft). Overt integrity tests are asking straight-forward questions regarding integrity. Tests like these are characterized as criterion-focused occupational personality scales.

Screening refers to the superficial process of evaluation based on minimal standards. Selection refers to a process whereby each person evaluated for a position will be either accepted or rejected. Classification refers to categorization with respect to two or more criteria. Placement refers to a disposition, transfer or assignment to a group or category that may be made based on one criterion.

Cognitive performance, personality and motivation are predictors of work performance. However, cognitive performance tests are controversial because they may be biased towards a group. The personality and cognitive performance of a candidate can be assessed using a situational performance test. Motivation can be assessed using work preferences inventory or an interview.

There are differences in a person’s motivation to accept a job and to retain the job. These differences might be explained by the expectancy of outcomes through their efforts (e.g. efficacy).

Intrinsic motivation refers to having an internal driving force for motivation and effort. This consists of subfactors that concern the challenge of work tasks. Extrinsic motivation refers to having an external driving force for motivation and effort (e.g. money). This consists of subfactors that concern the compensation for work (1) and external influences (e.g. recognition) (2).

People can have controlled or autonomous motivation and the more autonomous motivation, the higher job performance and job satisfaction and the lower job absence. Autonomous motivation is related to intrinsic motivation.

The self-determination theory states that people have the need for autonomy (1), the need for competence (2) and the need for relatedness (3). Alderfer’s theory states that once a need is satisfied, an individual might strive to satisfy it to a greater extent. When one need is frustrated, energy might be channelled into satisfying a need at another level.

Validity (1), reliability (2), norms (3), applicant reactions (4), costs (5), combination of instruments (6) and potential adverse effects of testing (7) need to be taken into account when using selection.

Values refer to a broad tendency to prefer a certain state of affairs over others and reflect an employee’s needs and personality. Traits refer to core qualities or basic tendencies of an individual that are largely inherited. Goals are the mechanism by which values lead to action.

Context affects the extent to which an employee’s needs are met and values are fulfilled. It can have a direct effect or interact with personality to affect a person’s behaviour in the workplace. The model of cultural self-representation states that people strive to fulfil values for self-enhancement, efficacy and self-consistency. However, people from individualistic and collectivistic cultures do this in different ways. Projecting values on people from other cultures that differ on these dimensions can create dysfunctional consequences in terms of employee motivation (1), interpersonal communication (2) and overall performance (3).

National culture influences people’s self-concept (1), norms about work ethic (2) and environmental factors (e.g. education) (3). Inadequate adjustment to a culture is a cause of low job performance. Cultural intelligence is determined by a person’s self-efficacy and social discourse in cross-cultural settings. Cultures that embrace universalism rely on rules for assessing what is right and wrong. Cultures that embrace particularism take the context into account for assessing what is right and wrong.

Job autonomy consists of method control (1), timing control (2) and allowing supervisory discretion in setting performance goals (3). Job autonomy is influenced by the extent to which the supervisor provides clear, attainable goals (1), exerts control over the activities (2), ensures that the resources are available (3) and gives timely feedback on the progress toward goal attainment (4).

Job satisfaction and job performance are influenced by job autonomy. This is predicted by the self-determination theory. It is important that people have job autonomy over the job characteristics that they deem important. Job satisfaction is based on the perception of one or more job characteristics (1), the employee’s value standards (2) and the resulting judgement of discrepancy between an employee’s perception and values (3).

Mechanistically oriented job designs (i.e. jobs focused on simplification and specialization) are associated with efficiency-related outcomes. Motivationally oriented job designs are associated with satisfaction-related outcomes. There is a negative relationship between job efficiency and job satisfaction.  

A complementary fit refers to a profile of a candidate who meets the needs of the organization and complements what is missing. A supplementary fit refers to a profile of a candidate who shares the same values as the organization or has similar characteristics with the organization.

A person-environment misfit affects strain when supplies exceed a person’s values because the job is too complex (1) or too simple (2).

The higher the person-job fit, the higher job satisfaction (1), commitment (2), job performance (3) and organizational commitment (4). The higher the person-organization fit, the higher job satisfaction (1) and commitment (2). The higher the person-group fit, the higher the co-worker satisfaction (1) and job satisfaction (2).

The media synchronicity theory states that a team’s tasks consist of the exchange (1) and deliberation (2) of the meaning of the communication and convergence regarding the development of the shared meaning of the information. The choice of media is governed by the nature of the task and the developmental stage of the team.

The attraction, selection, attrition (ASA) model states that people gravitate towards organizations and jobs that are congruent with their values. People will drop out of the selection process when they perceive a misfit. According to the model, the organization will perform worse when the person-environment fit is high as a certain level of incongruency can lead to increased performance. One disadvantage of this model is that it does not take people attempting to change the values of the organization or vice versa into account.

A person’s values will change if there is no congruence between the organization and the person and the person is open for change or the person will leave the organization. The organization’s values are likely to change if the person has high self-efficacy and there is a discrepancy between the values.

Personal-environment fit:

• It is a multidimensional concept.
• It is a weak predictor of overall job performance.
• It is a moderate predictor of organizational citizenship.
• It is a moderate predictor of intention to quit.
• Its benefit is the relationship with organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
• It is predicted better by the needs-supplies fit than the demands-ability fit.

Person-supervisor fit is a strong predictor for job satisfaction but not for organizational commitment.

Coping refers to the thoughts and behaviours used to manage internal and external demands of situations that are appraised as stressful. It is initiated in response to the individual’s appraisals that important goals have been harmed, lost or threatened. Coping is sensitive to the environment (1), environmental demands (2), resources (3) and personality dispositions that influence the appraisal of stress (4).

There are different ways of coping:

• Problem-focused coping refers to addressing the problem causing distress.
• Emotion-focused coping refers to ameliorating the negative emotions associated with the problem.
• Meaning-focused coping refers to the use of cognitive strategies to manage the meaning of the situation.
• Social coping refers to using the social environment to manage the situation.

The disadvantages of using these problems are that it might mask the differences within categories (1), the internal consistency might not be good (2) and the factors within the multifactorial scale are not independent of each other (3).

The problems with using retrospective reports of coping for research are the accuracy of the reports (1), the length (2), the sampling (3), the response keys (4), the variation in recall period (5), confounds (6) and the changes in the meaning of a coping strategy, depending on when it occurs (7).

The effectiveness of coping is difficult to assess as it is not inherently good or bad but depends on the situation and the appraisal of the situation. Furthermore, it is difficult to assess because some outcomes are proximal and some are distal (1), the effectiveness depends on the situation (2), coping does not necessarily permanently solve the problem (3) and the effectiveness depends on who evaluates the outcome (4). The context needs to be taken into account.

The goodness of fit refers to the fit between the appraisal of controllability of the situation and coping

Coping flexibility refers to people’s ability to modify their coping according to situational demands. Rumination refers to the tendency to passively and repeatedly focus on negative emotions and the possible consequences of those negative emotions.

The dual process of coping (DPM) states that a bereaved person oscillates between loss and restoration. Most models of coping focus on the individual and do not focus on the social aspects of coping.

Religion influences how people appraise events and how they respond psychologically and physically to long-term events. The research into religious coping needs to distinguish religious coping from religious dispositions and psychological and religious outcomes (1), define methods related to religious coping (2), deal with confounds between religious and non-religious coping (3) and distinguish between religiosity and spirituality (4).

There are specific types of coping (i.e. within the previously described categories):

• Future-oriented coping refers to coping in advance to prevent or mute the impact of events that are potential stressors.
• Reactive coping refers to efforts to deal with a critical event that is certain to occur.
• Preventive coping refers to efforts to deal with an event that is not certain to occur.
• Proactive coping refers to efforts to deal with upcoming challenges that are potentially self-promoting.
• Loss-oriented coping refers to avoiding changes associated with restoration.
• Restoration-oriented coping refers to attending to secondary stressors that come as a consequence of loss and loss-oriented coping.
• Adaptive coping refers to employing oscillations between loss and future orientations (1), approach and avoidant coping (2) and positive and negative reappraisals (3).
• Communal coping refers to coping responses that are influenced by and in reaction to the environment.
• Religious coping refers to employing religion and becoming involved with religion as a method of coping.
• Emotional approach coping refers to actively processing and expressing emotion.

Religious coping can be both positive (i.e. expression of spiritual connectedness) and negative (i.e. religious struggle for significance). Communal coping can be pro-social or anti-social.

Emotion regulation refers to the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them and how they experience and express these emotions. This can be automatic or controlled. Coping is prompted by negative emotions and emotion regulation is not necessarily prompted by negative emotions.

Antecedent-focused regulation includes situation selection (1), situation modification (2), attentional deployment (3) and cognitive change (4). Response-focused regulation includes response modulation.

Positive emotions occur frequently in stressful contexts and there often is a co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in stressful contexts. Some coping strategies reduce distress and others increase positive emotions. People consciously seek out positive meaningful events or infuse ordinary events with positive meaning to increase their positive affect.

Stress-related growth (i.e. post-traumatic growth) refers to a greater appreciation of life and reprioritizing goals after a traumatic event. Discovery of meaning refers to a major shift in values, priorities or perspective in response to a stressor. Benefit reminding refers to effortful cognitions in which the individual reminds oneself of the possible benefit from the stressful experience.

Burnout is a multidimensional construct that consists of (emotional) exhaustion (1), depersonalization and cynicism (2) and reduced personal accomplishment (3). It occurs globally although the terminology differs across countries and burnout is a medical diagnosis in some countries.

The roots of burnout are a large influx in the human services with an idealistic (unobtainable) goal (1), professionalization of the service industry (2), cultural revolution (3), flexible capitalism (4), development of the narcissistic culture (5) and transformation from industrial society to service industry (6).

Ideological communities might prevent burnout because it provides a collective identity that harbours social commitment (1), a sense of communion (2), contact with the collective whole (3) and shared strong values (4).

There is a lack of reciprocity (i.e. discrepancy between professionals’ efforts and the rewards received in terms of recognition and gratitude) and this fosters burnout.

Interventions for burnout can be both organization and person-focused. This can include increasing competence, support and coping styles. The coping styles are problem-focused coping (1), emotion-focused coping (2), meaning-focused coping (3) and social coping (4). The coping-environment fit needs to be improved.

It is possible to use AI in selection and recruitment although challenges to this are overcoming bias (1), having sufficient knowledge (2) and using the right methodology (3).

In order to use psychological assessment for career choice, it is necessary to map the interests (1), values (2), abilities (3) and skills (4) of the candidate. To assess this, personality questionnaires (1), interests questionnaires (2), values questionnaires (3) and assignments (4) can be used.