The personality trait of conscientiousness has seen considerable attention from applied psychologists due to its efficacy for predicting job performance across performance dimensions and occupations. However, recent theoretical and empirical developments have questioned the assumption that more conscientiousness always results in better job performance, suggesting a curvilinear link between the 2. Despite these developments, the results of studies directly testing the idea have been mixed. Here, we propose this link has been obscured by another pervasive assumption known as the dominance model of measurement: that higher scores on traditional personality measures always indicate higher levels of conscientiousness. Recent research suggests dominance models show inferior fit to personality test scores as compared to ideal point models that allow for curvilinear relationships between traits and scores. Using data from 2 different samples of job incumbents, we show the rank-order changes that result from using an ideal point model expose a curvilinear link between conscientiousness and job performance 100% of the time, whereas results using dominance models show mixed results, similar to the current state of the literature. Finally, with an independent cross-validation sample, we show that selection based on predicted performance using ideal point scores results in more favorable objective hiring outcomes. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Three measures of response distortion (i.e., social desirability, covariance index, and implausible answers) were examined in both applicant and incumbent samples. Performance data, including supervisor ratings of task and contextual performance as well as objective performance criteria such as tardiness, work-related accidents, and a customized work simulation, were obtained for the incumbent sample. Results provided further support for the existence of applicant faking behavior and shed light into the relationship between faking and job performance, largely depending on how one defines and measures faking as well as the performance criteria evaluated. Implications for future research and practice in personality assessment for selection purposes were discussed.

A five-part model of the development of indigenous psychology movements was proposed from a sociology of science perspective, two parts of which, the local relevance path and the conditions of work path, were examined in the context of the Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement (TIPM). The Local Relevance Path focuses on indigenous movements’ concerns with the cultural relevance of Western psychology, the validity of positivist epistemology and methodology, and the appropriateness of English-language communication. The Conditions of Work Path places the research activities and career strategies of non-Western psychologists in the context of their available resources and career contingencies. A study of 103 proponents and opponents of the TIPM provided support for both models, particularly in respondents’ dissatisfaction with positivist epistemology and their research resources. The TIPM is well known in Taiwan and garners moderate support, but strong divisions were found among subdisciplines and between locally versus overseas-educated respondents on most measures. Issues of qualitative versus quantitative methods, the influence of the Taiwanese cultural renaissance, and the validity of outsider analyses of indigenous movements are discussed.

Several recent articles have suggested that assessments of the relative importance of different abilities or competencies to a job have little bearing on the criterion‐related validity of these selection tests that measure those abilities. We hypothesize that selection test batteries chosen to maximize the judged importance of knowledge, skills, and abilities will not predict performance better than batteries of tests chosen at random. The results in two independent samples consistently show that the validity of test batteries chosen based on subject matter expert judgments of importance is not different from the validity of batteries of a comparable number of tests chosen at random from a set of intercorrelated tests, or even those chosen to provide the worst possible match between test content and job content.

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