Not Aggressive or Just Faking It? Examining Faking and Faking Detection on the Conditional Reasoning Test of Aggression

Abstract

Substantial research has been dedicated to examining and combating respondent misrepresentation (i.e., “faking”) on personality assessments. Two approaches to combat faking that have garnered particular attention include: (a) designing systems to identify likely fakers and (b) developing difficult-to-fake measures. Consistent with suggestions to combine these strategies, the present article examines a new faking detection system specifically designed for a difficult-to-fake measure (i.e., the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression; CRT-A). Four studies (a) help elucidate the conditions under which the CRT-A is fakeable, (b) provide initial construct validity evidence for the faking detection system developed here, (c) examine the effects of faking and faking detection on the CRT-A’s criterion-oriented validity, and (d) show that participants identify CRT-based faking detection items at worse-than-chance levels even when they are fully informed about how these items work. Taken together, these studies reinforce the importance of maintaining the indirect nature of CRTs but also show that the faking detection system developed here represents a promising method of identifying those who may have used inside information to manipulate their scores.

The Eyes Chico, They Never Lie – Using Eye-Tracking to Examine Faking on the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression

“…Although our conclusions are limited by the relatively small student samples in our studies, we believe that this feature of our study did not disqualify our overall conclusions. First, our findings about the test scores were mostly in line with meta-analytical findings on faking on personality questionnaires (e.g., Viswesvaran & Ones, 1999) and the results of CRT-A faking studies (LeBreton et al, 2007;Wiita et al, 2020). Second, the eyemovement portion of the data was in line with findings by van Hooft and Born (2012).…”

“…The conditional reasoning tests (CRTs) have been identified as one of the most prominent indirect personality assessment methods capturing implicit cognitions (Sackett et al, 2017; Uhlmann et al, 2012). The idea that the tests capture aspects of implicit personality is based on the elaborate theoretical work (James & LeBreton, 2012) and the findings that the CRTs are unsusceptible to response distortion (LeBreton et al, 2007; Wiita et al, 2020). In this paper, we report the results of two studies in which we investigated responding to the CRT for aggression (CRT-A) by recording participants' responses and their eye-movement in conditions that differed in demands for self-presentation.…”

“…A claim that a measure captures a construct that is defined as implicit rests on the assumption that “implicit constructs are ones measured indirectly” (Greenwald & Lai, 2020, p. 421) and that “the processes underlying a measure should be automatic” (De Houwer et al, 2009, p. 363). LeBreton et al (2007) and Wiita et al (2020) tested this assumption by comparing scores on the CRT-A under typical instruction and solving it as if applying for a desirable job (i.e., a fake-good instruction) and showed that the test was unfakeable if its true purpose was hidden. When researchers explained the CRT-A's logic, the participants were able to fake the test.…”

Put Do Mračne Strane Posla:

“…Prediktivna valjanost TUR-A za NOP potvrđena je kroz nekoliko meta-analiza (Berry et al, 2010;James & LeBreton, 2012), a studije na američkim i hrvatskim uzorcima pokazale su da predviđa NOP povrh upitnika agresivnosti (Bing et al, 2007;Galić et al, 2018), velikih pet faktora i hostilnosti (Galić et al, 2014; te osobina mračne trijade, HEXACO modela ličnosti i samokontrole (Galić, 2016). Osim toga, TUR-A predviđa agresivno ponašanje i u interakciji s eksplicitnim aspektima ličnosti (Bing et al, 2007;Frost et al, 2007;Galić & Ružojčić, 2017), a pokazao se i otpornim na lažiranje dok god je prava svrha testa skrivena sudionicima/kandidatima (Galić et al, 2014;LeBreton et al, 2007;Wiita et al, 2020).…”

Insufficient Effort Responding as a Partial Function of Implicit Aggression

“…Previous research on the personality correlates of IER (e.g., Bowling et al, 2016; Huang, Liu, et al, 2015) have focused on explicit measures such as self- or peer reports. Here, we aim to expand the nomological network of IER to include implicit aggression as measured by the Conditional Reasoning Tests for Aggression (CRTA), an indirect implicit measure that is less susceptible to socially desirable responding and intentional faking than self-report measures (LeBreton, Barksdale, Robin, & James, 2007; Wiita, Meyer, Kelly, & Collins, 2020).…”