A context-independent situational judgment test to measure prosocial implicit trait policy

Abstract

Human Performance, in press. We gratefully acknowledge Margaret Beier for her help with some of the analyses reported here.Two studies developed and validated a context-independent situational judgment test (SJT) of prosocial implicit trait policy (ITP). The first study developed an SJT based on critical incidents about the prosocial behavior of physicians, lawyers, community service volunteers, and human factors engineers. In a sample of 396 undergraduates, this SJT was internally consistent and correlated significantly with other trait constructs related to prosocial ITP. In the second study with 134 undergraduates, the SJT was significantly correlated with relevant trait constructs and prosocial performance in role-plays simulating scenarios in which others needed help. These results show that a generic SJT developed from items that describe situations and actions specific to several occupations can predict behavior in situations unlike any that appear in its items.

Prosocial implicit trait policies underlie performance on different situational judgment tests with interpersonal content

“…Conceptualizing general domain knowledge as an ITP provides a key benefit for establishing construct-related validity because it provides a way to scale individual differences in general domain knowledge according to a construct that has ready implications for theoretical connections with other known constructs such as ability, personality, values, and interests (Lievens & Motowidlo, 2016;Motowidlo & Beier, 2010;Motowidlo, Ghosh, Mendoza, Buchanan, & Lerma, 2016). Depending on what trait is represented in a particular ITP, that ITP can be readily associated with particular personality traits, values, interests, and so on.…”

“…Depending on what trait is represented in a particular ITP, that ITP can be readily associated with particular personality traits, values, interests, and so on. For instance, ITP for prosociality is theoretically and empirically associated with individual differences in agreeableness, conscientiousness, benevolent values, emotional intelligence in the form of both understanding and management, social interests, and (negatively) with relativistic ethical ideology (Motowidlo et al, 2016;Motowidlo, Kell, Martin-Raugh, & Ghosh, 2017). As these traits are theoretically presumed to be antecedents of prosocial ITP, they lend themselves to tests of theory-driven connections between procedural knowledge measured by SJTs with interpersonal content, prosocial ITP, and these traits.…”

“…Correlations between the three SJTs ranged from .28 to .52 with a mean of .38, thereby showing that although the three SJTs were developed for very different occupational settings, the prosocial ITP scores they produce still share considerable variance. Motowidlo et al (2016) reasoned that if prosocial ITP generalizes across professional occupational settings, it should be possible to construct an SJT that would be contextindependent with respect to professional occupations by combining prosocial and antisocial items from several different professions. They developed an SJT that consisted of five prosocial and five antisocial items about each of four professions -physicians, lawyers, community service volunteers, and human factors engineers.…”

Investigating the Nexus Between Personality Traits and Islamic Work Ethics

“…Karim et al (2009) in the study on personality and internet facility misuse also found that individuals with high agreeableness personality are less likely to engage in unethical and fraudulent behaviour, and high agreeableness is considered a good predictor of ethical predisposition. Agreeableness also has been mentioned as an important determinant of prosocial behaviour and volunteerism and correlates significantly with benevolent values (Motowidlo, Ghosh, Mendoza, Buchanan, & Lerma, 2016). Individuals higher on agreeableness make more social investments in work, family, religion, and other prosocial activities (Saadullah & Bailey, 2014).…”

Situational Judgment Tests: From Measures of Situational Judgment to Measures of General Domain Knowledge

“…It should result in more generic SJTs, thereby increasing their applicability across jobs and settings. For instance, in Motowidlo, Ghosh, Mendoza, Buchanen, and Lerma (2015), an SJT was developed to measure general domain knowledge about the utility of prosocial action across work settings that combined items about prosocial and antisocial action in four different professional occupations (law, medicine, community service volunteering, and human factors engineering). Results suggested that this "generic " SJT can predict prosocial behavior in occupational and social settings very different from those reflected in the situational item content.…”