3.2 Human Attributes 91 BOX 3.1 DIFFERENT KINDS OF READING ABILITY? Doesreading materianeectronicdevices(e.laptop,iPad,Kindle)involve different abilities than does readingraprint materials? Have you ever thought about the fact that parents Council of Teachers of English.the International and children read differently?It is not so much that Reading Association.and the Organization for they read different material(although you would Economic Cooperation and Development.Many be surprised to see your parents reading Perez European countries are beginning to assess elec- Hilton's blog on the web!)but that they read using tronic reading in addition to more traditional print different media.Many adults still spend a great deal reading.Advocates of the assessment of electronic of time reading print material (newspapers,books, reading propose that this 21st-century mode of magazines).while their children read web-based reading uses abilities such as searching for answers sources.This has prompted some educators and to questions in real time,navigating the web,evalu. testing experts to suggest that some abilities may ating information from multiple and occasionally be peculiar to Internet reading and that the speed conflicting sources,and communicating through and accuracy of this reading ability is not captured web posts and blogs. by reading print material.The result is a lively debate that involves organizations like the National SoURCE:Based on material from Rich (20081 simultaneously (known as multitasking).Multitasking is an important part of many work- ing lives (e.g,completing a report while answering e-mail messages and phone calls and questions from the person at the desk next to you).The researchers measured working memory by a person's capacity to keep things (e.g.,sentences,positions of objects)fresh in his or her mind.Not surprisingly,they discovered that the more working memory a person had,the better he or she was at multitasking.Thus,there is reason to propose including a measure of working memory in the assessment of applicants for jobs that require substan- tial amounts of multitasking.We simply do not know as much as we need to about the contribution of specific cognitive abilities to work performance,as general mental ability Scanned by CamScanner
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92 Chapter3 Individual Differences and Assessment (org"or"intelligence")dominated the research and application scene for well over 80 years. Applied psychologists are only now beginning to reexamine the contribution of specific cognitive abilities to behavior.We expect that this reexamination will yield substantial insights over the next decade. Physical,Sensory,and Psychomotor Abilities Physical Abilities Hogan(1991)suggested that seven physical abilities are sufficient for analyzing most jobs. In a manner reminiscent of Carroll's theory of intelligence.Hogan then combines her seven basic descriptors to form three higher-order physical abilities:muscular strength,cardio. vascular endurance,and movement quality.For most jobs,this three-ability taxonomy is likely to be sufficient.Because employers often use physical ability tests to screen applicants for physically demanding jobs,it is important to determine whether such tests are fair to Stamina Phpsical abity female applicants and older applicants.Because we lose muscle,stamina.and flexibility as ospp内md好w we age,the older an applicant is,the less well he or she is likely to perform on physical abil- ygenated blood throuh ity tests.For women,the situation has an additional consideration.On average,females h触acw3 cular sys也m have less muscle mass(which means diminished muscular strength)and lower levels of endurance cardiovascular endurance (or stamina)than men (Hogan.1991).In contrast,on measures of flexibility (e.g.,sit and reach tests),women tend to do better than men.However,most physically demanding jobs require-or are perceived by employers to require-more mus- cular strength and stamina than flexibility.This has meant that male candidates,who tend to excel on those physical tests,are predominantly hired for such jobs.As a result,women candidates for popular positions such as firefighter have filed employment discrimination suits (Brunet v.City of Columbus,1995). Women and men of all ages can increase their individual physical abilities with exercise and training.In addition,many jobs require a fixed level of strength and endurance,beyond which more is not always better.If your job requires you to lift 25-pound boxes,the fact that you are strong enough to move 100-pound boxes is irrelevant.In this case,more strength would not lead to higher performance.Thus,individuals do not always have to compete against each other on physical ability tests;they merely need to demonstrate sufficient strength and endurance to perform the job tasks.By training for several months prior to taking physical ability tests,female candidates can improve their performance significantly. Thus,one way of helping females to do better on these tests is for employers to encourage them to train ahead of time(McArdle,Katch,Katch,2001).We can predict that this same strategy may help older job seekers as well. Employers are usually eager to contain the cost of medical and disability programs for workers-if possible,by predicting who is likely to experience an injury and rejecting those applicants.Physical ability tests have been used as the predictor for future injury.The prob. lem is that while they may be good (but far from perfect)predictors of future injury,such tests may not be particularly relevant for present or future job performance.In a case against Armour Star meat-packing facility in lowa,52 women successfully sued the company for denying them jobs based on a strength test.A federal judge awarded 53.3 million to the women because the test was used to predict injuries,not performance on the job(Business and Legal Reports,2005). Scanned by CamScanner
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3.2 Human Attributes 93 CASE STUDY 3.1 A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD It is common to test for physical abilities before right turns.Since men tend to be larger and stronger, choosing candidates for recruit positions in fire they simply pick up the dummy and carry it through training academies.Although physical abilities will the maze,while women are more likely to drag the be improved in the 16 weeks of the academy train- dummy along the floor of the maze.Similarly.for ing program,recruits still require a minimum the hose pull,men tend to simply loop the hose over amount of ability to profit from the training.Most their shoulder and pull it through the maze in one fire departments administer physical ability tests single movement.The test is not exactly the same that simulate actual tasks performed by firefighters. as the actual task,however;in an actual fire situa- As examples.candidates may be asked to carry tion the firefighter is usually pulling a person or a heavy hose bundles up stairs,open fire hydrants hose through a burning room and must stay close to with wrenches,or hang heavy exhaust fans in win- the ground because the toxic fumes,smoke,and dows.Two tests,in particular,seem to be harder for temperature (often as high as 2.000 degrees)are female applicants than their male counterparts.The more deadly in the upper part of a room. first is thedummy drag"simulation.In this test,the If you wanted to make these test components candidate is asked to drag a 150-pound dummy more realistic,how would you redesign the test through a 40-foot maze with several left and right course?If you did redesign it.do you think that the turns in it.The second task is pulling 50 feet of a performance of women would improve?Why or simulated fire hose through a 50-foot maze with two why not? Sensory Abilities Sensory abilities are the physical functions of vision,hearing,touch,taste,smell,and Senso写ab6shyd kinesthetic feedback (eg.noticing changes in body position).Hogan includes kinesthetic cosof vision,hearing feedback in a dimension she calls"movement quality."The sensory abilities of vision and u能me以nd hearing are particularly interesting for applied I-O psychologists because employers often nesthetic fee企eg uticng changes i body test these abilities in would-be employees. To prevent employers from using a disability as an excuse to reject an applicant who is capable of performing a job,the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 forbids them to Americans with Disabilities Act Federal ask about or test areas such as sensory or physical abilities that may be considered'disabili- ties"until after they have made a job offer to the candidate. Until recently,cognitive psychologists considered sensory abilities to be independent of cognitive abilities.but Carroll's (1993)model of intelligence calls that assumption into dsabilities the same question-remember that two of his midlevel abilities are visual perception and auditory dmte通th信 perception.In addition.Ackerman's research (e.g..Ackerman et al.,2002,2005)shows the ho店ndemploy气 nd certain close association between perceptual speed and other measures of cognitive ability.But in adaptations in the work most real-life settings,sensation and perception are inextricably bound together.We usu ally infer from some kind of report (verbal or behavioral)that a person has sensed some- thing.Further research will shed light on the extent to which"noncognitive"abilities are really"noncognitive." Scanned by CamScanner
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Chapter3 Individual Dfferences and Assessment BOX 3.2 REACTION TIME IN WORK SITUATIONS It is interesting to note that some specific mental slowly").Not only is that nonsense from a physio- abilities show remarkable stability well into the life logical standpoint,but with the advent of the semi- span.As an example.reaction times change very automatic handheld weapons issued by most police little between age 30 and age 65,"slowing"by per- departments,more problems have arisen because haps 1/20 ofa second from.45 second to .50 second. officers fire their weapons too rapidly,not because Technically,it is true that reaction timediminishes" of lags in reaction times.Two famous examples with age,but what are the practical consequences occurred in New York City when civilians Amadou for most jobs of a decrease of .05 second? Diallo (Cooper,1999)and Sean Bell (Buckley Nevertheless,the belief that older workers are Rashbaum.2006)were each killed in a hail of bullets "slower"may influence staffing decisions.As an by police officers who reacted quickly.In retro. example,the Vermont State Police requires troopers spect,slower rather than faster reaction time might to retire at age 55 because of the fear that this have been in order in each case. "decrease"in reaction time might lead to dangerous behaviors (eg.drawing and firing a weapon "too SoURcEs:Buckley Rashbaum (2006):Cooper(1999). Psychomotor Abilities Psychometor abalities Psychomotor abilities,sometimes called sensorimotor or just motor abilities,deal with Physical functions of issues of coordination,dexterity,and reaction time.Once again.Fleishman (Fleishman movement.20心 oordnatindeterityand Reilly,1992)has done the most extensive work in identifying these abilities.We can easily reacbon time aho caled name some jobs for which they may be important (e.g.crane operators,organists,watch moor or semerimotar repair technicians,surgeons,wait staff,and bartenders).From this discussion it should be abites dear that many psychomotor abilities(e.g.,rate control and aiming)may very well be asso- ciated with visual and/or auditory perception or cognitive speed,facets of Carroll's theory of intelligence.See Box 3.2 for a discussion of reaction time in work situations. The work of researchers like Carroll and Ackerman blurs the classical distinctions between cognitive and"noncognitive"abilities.In some senses,this is a good development, for it is clear in real life(and-more importantly for us-in work)that all of these abilities interact within a single person to produce a response or action. Personality and Work Behavior Personality is a big deal in I-O psychology,probably the biggest deal since the consideration of the role of intelligence in work behavior a century ago.There is now a broad consensus that personality predicts not only general behavior and happiness (Steele,Schmidt, Shultz.2008)but also specifically work-related behavior.This work-related behavior includes performance,absenteeism,counterproductive work behavior,and team effective. ness.Barrick and Mount(2005)provide the following seven reasons why"personality matters in the workplace"and document those reasons using research: 1. Managers care about personality.In hiring decisions,they weigh personality charac. teristics as heavily as they do intelligence. Scanned by CamScanner
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3.2 Human Attributes 95 2.Many research studies show the importance of various personality measures in pre dicting both overall job performance and specific aspects of performance.Personality addresses the"will do"aspects of performance,while intelligence addresses the'can do"aspects of performance. 3 When we combine personality characteristics (rather than considering them one at a time),the relationship between personality and work performance becomes even stronger. 4. Personality measures improve the predictability of work performance over what would be found using only measures of intelligence or experience. 5. There are much smaller differences among age,gender,and ethnic minority sub- groups on measures of personality than on measures of intelligence. 6: Personality measures predict not only near-term behavior (e.g.,current job perfor. mance)but also distant outcomes such as career success,job and life satisfaction. and occupational status. Personality measures predict a wide variety of outcomes that are important to managers,including counterproductive behavior,turnover,absenteeism,tardiness. group success,organizational citizenship behavior,job satisfaction,task perfor. mance,and leadership effectiveness. Three major journals (Human Performance,2005;International Journal of Selection and Assessment,2007:Personnel Psychology,2007)have had special issues that addressed the role of personality in understanding work behavior.The interested reader can use these sources to examine the issues and promise of personality in understanding work behavior.Although these treatments highlight some disagreements among researchers (e.g,Hogan,2005; Morgeson et al.,2007;Tett Christiansen,2007)regarding how many personality factors there are,how to assess them,and how predictive they are of work performance,the general conclusion confirms our position:Personality is a big deal in understanding work behavior. The Big Five and Other Models of Personality Historically,an increased interest in personality measurement(both in general human behavior and more specifically in work behavior)began with the development of a taxon- omy of personality dimensions labeled the Big Five or the Five-Factor Model(FFM) Big Five of fie (Digman,1990:McCrae Costa,1985,1987).According to this model,an individual's penonality factons:the personality can be described by where that individual falls on five dimensions:openness to Five-Factor Model (FFM) experience,conscientiousness,extraversion,agreeableness,and neuroticism(the opposite Five Factor Model开HM0 of emotional stability):a useful acronym for the five scales is OCEAN.The FFM was the Aano可fe result of both statistical analyses of personality test information gathered over many dec. penonality facton ades and a careful conceptual analysis of what most personality tests were trying to assess. The FFM is a good way to gain a broad understanding of the structure of personality,but it comdentiousness, 电ai的n,greeableness may be a bit too general for dealing with specific aspects of work behavior.In fact,many stablity.and work-related personality models have developed from the more generic FFM and seem to pemness to experience have more relevance for work behavior.These include the Five-Factor Model Questionnaire (FFMQ:Gill Hodgkinson.2007).the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan,Davies, Hogan,2007).and the Personal Characteristics Inventory (Mount Barrick,2002). Virtually all modern personality models resemble the Five-Factor Model in that they pro. pose that we can describe someone's "personality"by looking at some small number of rela- tively independent factors.Personality can be defined in simplest terms as the typical way that an individual has of responding.It is considered to be a collection of traits because it is fairly stable,even though situations and circumstances might lead a person to behave in a way that is out of character with his or her overall personality.Using the FFM as an example. Scanned by CamScanner
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