Psychology Commons^™

The Role Of Emotions As Mechanisms Of Mid-Test Warning Messages During Personality Testing: A Field Experiment, Hairong Li, Jinyan Fan, Guoxiang Zhao, Minghui Wang, Lu Zheng, Hui Meng, Qingxiong Weng, Yanping Liu, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study focuses on the role of emotions in personnel selection and faking research. In particular, we posit that emotions are likely to be activated when applicants receive warning messages from organizations. Drawing on Nabi (Nabi, Communication Theory, 9, 1999, 292) cognitive-functional model of discrete negative emotions, we propose and empirically test the effects of three discrete negative emotions (guilt, fear, and anger) triggered by a warning message during a personality test on personality score accuracy and perceived test fairness. Participants in this within-subjects field experiment were 1,447 applicants for graduate school at a large public university in China. They …