Applicant faking warnings: Are they really effective?

Evidence suggests that a large percentage of job applicants fake their responses on personality tests. This faking has the potential to undermine the value and validity of personality tests in the selection context. Faking warnings are messages that try to dissuade applicants from faking by warning them about potential consequences and have been shown to be effective in reducing faking in some studies. We developed new faking warnings that leverage accountability and morality theory to reduce applicant faking. Accordingly, we examined the efficacy of our faking warnings in reducing applicant faking in one applied sample. We examined 534 mTurk participants who believed they were being considered for a real employment opportunity for a remote customer service position. Compared to participants not interested in the job, participants who were interested in the job had significantly more favorable personality scores. After informing participants that the position was fictitious and asking them to fill out the same personality measure as honestly as possible, the same previously interested participants received significantly less favorable personality scores. However, there were no differences in faking across the different faking warning conditions, suggesting the faking warnings were ineffective.

Automated summary

Evidence suggests that a large percentage of job applicants fake their responses on personality tests, which undermines the value and validity of these tests in the selection process. Although faking warnings have been shown to be effective in reducing faking, our study found that new faking warnings leveraging accountability and morality theory were ineffective.