On the applicability of the Big Five Implicit Association Test in organizational settings

Two studies were conducted with the aim of investigating whether the Big Five traits, as measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT), predict supervisor ratings of job performance. Two incumbent groups composed respectively by 52 security guards (Study 1) and 71 semi-skilled workers (Study 2) completed a self-report measure of the Big-Five and five IATs for assessing the same personality dimensions in an implicit way. In study 1, job performance was positively related to self-ratings of energy/extraversion (r = .35, p < .01), agreeableness (r = .25, p < .01), and conscientiousness (r = .22, p < .05), and to the implicit measure of conscientiousness (r = .27, p < .05). In study 2, job performance was positively related to explicit conscientiousness (r = .26, p < .05) and emotional stability (r = .26, p < .05), and to the implicit counterparts of the same traits (r = .25, p < .05, for conscientiousness, and r = .24, p < .05, for emotional stability). These relations held after controlling for the effect of pure valence, as measured by implicit self-esteem (Study 2). In both studies, implicit and explicit measures of personality traits predict unique aspects of job performance (i.e. they have incremental validity over each other). Practical implications of findings and future research directions are discussed.