Group Differences in Personality: Meta‐analyses Comparing Five U.S. Racial Groups

Abstract

This research poses 2 applied questions: How large are racial group differences on personality scales and are these differences likely to cause adverse impact in personnel selection? We examined the extent to which racial groups differ across Big 5 personality factors and facets. Large-scale, quantitative estimates based on over 700 effect sizes were meta-analytically summarized. Multiple personality instruments and understudied racial groups, particularly Asian Americans and American Indians, were included in the meta-analyses. Most group comparisons and personality scales yielded negligible differences and are not likely to cause adverse impact in selection. However, facet-level analyses produced different d-values, with some group comparisons showing moderate differences, suggesting that the use of personality measures in selection does not uniformly circumvent adverse impact concerns. The veracity of this conclusion depends on (a) the particular trait in question, (b) the composition of the applicant pool (i.e., which groups are to be compared with one another), (c) the effect size (i.e., d-value), and (d) the selection ratio. For practitioners, we present a quantitatively informed summary of when and where to expect adverse impact to result from personality measures used in personnel selection.As noncognitive predictors, personality variables continue to have considerable appeal to organizations. This shift over the past 2 decades can be explained in part by the theoretical development of the five-factor model of personality. Most notably, this has allowed research to be conducted within a parsimonious taxonomy (Goldberg, 1990), which highlights several ways to use trait measures in applied contexts. First, there is now considerable evidence to suggest that personality is important for accomplishing

Race Differences in Personality and Affect Between Older White and Black Patients: an Exploratory Study

“…These results corroborate with prior research showing no race differences in FFM of personality [14,16,17,34]. Yet, considering the sample was relatively homogenous with regards to race may explain the lack of significant race differences in the FFM.…”

“…In the USA, little attention has been given to potential race differences by mainstream psychology and is primarily studied in industrial psychology literature. The few studies exploring race differences in personality and affect have suggested the FFM of personality, and positive and negative affect are similarly distributed among race groups [14][15][16][17]. However, race has been identified as a predictor for a multiple psychological (e.g., depression and life satisfaction) [18,19] and physical (e.g., hypertension) ailments among older adults as well as an indicator of reported health disparities [20,21].…”

Investigating the Uniqueness and Usefulness of Proactive Personality in Organizational Research: A Meta-Analytic Review

“…Hindered by lack of a theoretical base focusing specifically on racial differences in personality characteristics, existing research in this domain lacks integration (Foldes et al, 2008).…”

Handbook of Employee Selection

“…Mean differences on ability and personality measures are commonly examined in the United States, with enough data for large-scale meta-analytic summaries (e.g., Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, & Tyler, 2001;Foldes, Duehr, & Ones, 2008). Mean differences on tests of developed cognitive abilities of roughly 1.00 standard deviation (SD) between Whites and African Americans and roughly 0.67 SD between Whites and Hispanics have been consistently reported (Roth et al, 2001).…”