When Winning is Everything: The Relationship between Competitive Worldviews and Job Applicant Faking

Abstract

Job applicant faking, that is, consciously misrepresenting information during the selection process, is ubiquitous and is a threat to the usefulness of various selection tools. Understanding antecedents of faking is thus of utmost importance. Recent theories of faking highlight the central role of various forms of competition for understanding why faking occurs. Drawing on these theories, we suggest that the more applicants adhere to competitive worldviews (CWs), that is, the more they believe that the social world is a competitive, Darwinian‐type of struggle over scarce resources, the more likely they are to fake in employment interviews. We tested our hypothesis in three independent studies that were conducted in five different countries. Results show that CWs are strongly associated with faking, independently of job applicants’ cultural and economic context. More specifically, applicants’ CWs explain faking intentions and self‐reported past faking above and beyond the Dark Triad of personality (Study 1), competitiveness and the six facets of conscientiousness (Study 2). Also, when faking is measured using a response randomisation technique to control for social desirability, faking is more prevalent among applicants with strong vs. less strong CWs (Study 3). Taken together, this research demonstrates that competition is indeed strongly associated with undesirable applicant behaviors.

Once an Impression Manager, Always an Impression Manager? Antecedents of Honest and Deceptive Impression Management Use and Variability across Multiple Job Interviews

“…Those who use more deceptive IM tactics are less experienced, lower on Conscientiousness and Honesty-Humility, but higher on Extraversion, the dark triad of personality (i.e., Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy) and Competitive Worldviews. Overall, such findings are in line with previous studies (Levashina and Campion, 2007; Hogue et al, 2013; Roulin and Krings, 2016) and provide additional evidence supporting the practical importance of distinguishing between honest and deceptive IM (Levashina et al, 2014), and the claims that deceptive IM could be detrimental for organizations (Levashina and Campion, 2006). …”

“…Our results were largely aligned with theoretical propositions from IM models (Levashina and Campion, 2006; Roulin et al, 2016). Our study thus helps clarify findings from earlier research, which have examined IM without distinguishing honest from deceptive tactics (Kristof-Brown et al, 2002; Higgins and Judge, 2004) or focused on deceptive IM only (Levashina and Campion, 2007; Roulin and Krings, 2016). It also replicates recent findings with both honest and deceptive IM (Bourdage et al, 2015) and complements them by including additional applicant characteristics (e.g., the dark triad of personality and core self-evaluations).…”

“…For instance, studies focused on deceptive IM found that applicants low on Honesty, but high on Machiavellianism, Narcissism, self-monitoring, and Competitive Worldviews are more likely to use image creation in their interview (Levashina and Campion, 2007; Hogue et al, 2013; Roulin and Krings, 2016). Furthermore, Bourdage et al (2015) examined both honest and deceptive IM.…”

Individual Difference Variables and the Occurrence and Effectiveness of Faking Behavior in Interviews

“…Specifically, Roulin and Krings (2016) recently found that competitive worldviews, which can be seen as an attitude (Duckitt et al, 2002), also explained variance in faking beyond personality. Other research has also found significant correlations between faking behavior and personality.…”

Are observer ratings of applicants’ personality also faked? Yes, but less than self‐reports

“…This definition is a slightly simplified version of typical faking definitions. For example, Fell and König () define faking as “applicants’ conscious distortion of responses in order to achieve better scores (e.g., on a personality test) and to increase their chances of being hired” (p. 672; for similar definitions see, e.g., McFarland & Ryan, ; Roulin & Krings, ). Such a simplification is necessary because typical faking definitions only capture faking in self‐reports and not faking in other‐reports.…”