Using General Mental Ability and Personality Traits to Predict Job Performance in Three Chilean Organizations

Abstract

Although the field of personnel selection has amounted around 100 years of research, there has been an overrepresentation of American and Western European samples in these studies. In particular, samples from Latin America have been almost entirely absent from industrial and organizational psychology journals. Thus, it is unknown whether welldocumented findings, such as the prediction of job performance based on general mental ability and conscientiousness, replicate in this region. This research intended to address this gap in the literature with three studies conducted in Chilean organizations, using different research designs, and different operationalizations of predictors and criteria. Results are generally consistent with previous studies, showing that conscientiousness and general mental ability significantly predict job performance in these Chilean samples.

Responsible Personal Finance: The Role of Conscientiousness in Bank and Pension Savings in Chile

“…Likely because of this, conscientiousness significantly predicts job performance and college grades (Borghans et al 2008), a robust result that has been found in countries with different cultural backgrounds (e.g. Barros et al 2014).…”

Too arrogant for their own good? Why and when narcissists dismiss advice

“…Second, there has been virtually no attention to the influence of personality traits on advice taking (Bonaccio & Dalal, 2006;Dalal & Bonaccio, 2010). This is unfortunate, as advice taking is related to better decisions and job performance (Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne, and Kraimer (2001), and the use of personality is one of the ways job performance can be predicted in personnel selection (Barros, Kausel, Cuadra, & Díaz, 2014;Gatewood, Feild, & Barrick, 2010). Third, while previous organizational scholars had theorized accountability  personality interactions (Slaughter & Kausel, 2009), to our knowledge, this is the first study that has actually tested them.…”

Predictive Validity toward Job Performance of General and Specific Mental Abilities. A Validity Study across Different Occupational Groups

“…In addition, Verbeke et al (2008) provided an extensive list of studies in which GMA were not related to the performance of sales staff. There were no connections, either, between GMA tests scores and quantitative measures in such occupations as recruitment consultants, bankers, insurance representative, and transit operators (Barros, Kausel, Cuadra, & Dí az, 2014;Downey, Lee, & Stough, 2011;Hausdorf & Risavy, 2015;La Grange & Roodt, 2007). Secondly, numerous examples of SMA that proved to be a valid job performance predictor (more than GMA) in certain context can be found as well; these are: mechanical comprehension and mechanical reasoning for manufacturing employees (Muchinsky, 1993), performance correctness (Thomas, Barrett, & Alexander, 1996) and performance speed for clerks (Whetzel et al, 2011) or perceptual speed for warehouse workers (Mount, Oh, & Burns, 2008).…”