The Incremental Validity of Honesty–Humility Over Cognitive Ability and the Big Five Personality Traits

Abstract

The present study examines the incremental validity of Honesty–Humility (H-H), a measure of the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, for supervisory ratings of job performance (including both task and contextual performance) over cognitive ability and the Big Five personality traits. Specifically, we explore the incremental validity of H-H in predicting contextual performance. Results based on 217 South Korean military officer candidates are consistent with previous conclusions that Conscientiousness is the strongest predictor of contextual performance and that cognitive ability is the strongest predictor of task performance. More important, our results reveal that H-H offers moderate incremental validity for contextual performance but no incremental validity for task performance over the effects of cognitive ability and the Big Five personality traits.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2006 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference held in Dallas, TX. We thank Kibeom Lee and Frank Schmidt for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. ¹These correlations represent observed validities that have been corrected for measurement error in the criterion measure and multivariate range restriction. In addition, we classified these behaviors within the domain of contextual performance based on Borman and Motowidlo (1993) and Coleman and Borman (2000).

2. ²Cognitive ability was measured with the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which is derived from verbal and quantitative subtests of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Van Scotter and Motowidlo (1996) also used the same test.

3. ³The results from Motowidlo and Van Scotter (1994) and Van Scotter and Motowidlo (1996) were not corrected for range restriction on the cognitive ability measure and measurement error in supervisor ratings of performance.

4. ⁴Case IV is the same as Case II except that u_t is used instead of u_x. We estimated u_t for the KPOAB using the selection ratio on s being 1/18.28 (u_s = 0.38; Schmidt, Hunter, & Urry, 1976, p. 476; Hunter & Schmidt, 2004, pp. 111–112) and the assumed reliability of s in the unrestricted population of .81 (= ρ_st of .90; the correlation between the aptitude test scores [s] and its true score [t]). Applying these two values (u_s and ρ_st) to Equation 18 (Hunter et al., 2006, p. 601), we estimated u_t at .55 for the KPOAB.

5. ⁵It is noted that we report adjusted R rather than R² given this study’s implication for personnel selection; utility (selection effectiveness) is a direct function of validity (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998).

6. ⁶This is indeed the “converse” of Emotionality (similar to Neuroticism) as the sign of the standardized regression weight for Emotionality is negative in predicting contextual performance; note that RWs (in percentage form) are always positive.

7. ⁷We thank the reviewer for bringing this to our attention.