Examining the Effect of Social Desirability on the Relationships Between Personality Traits and Safety Performance

Personality inventories can be used to identify safety-prone employees when making selection and job placement decisions. Self-report personality scores, however, are susceptible to social desirability. For personality inventories to be used with confidence in selecting and placing employees in safety-related positions, it is necessary to understand how social desirability influences the criterion-related validity of personality scores. In response, the current study examined whether two types of social desirability, self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) and impression management (IM), suppress or moderate the relationship between personality scores and safety performance. Participants in this concurrent validation study were 95 blue-collar employees working at a chemical firm in China, who completed a self-report personality measure, and their supervisors rated their safety performance. Results indicated that (a) conscientiousness scores, but not agreeableness and emotional stability scores, were positively related to safety performance, and (b) SDE and IM scores moderated, rather than suppressed, the criterion-related validity of conscientiousness scores in predicting safety performance ratings such that the validity was stronger when SDE or IM scores were lower. These findings suggested that both SDE and IM may introduce criterion-irrelevant error into personality scores that weaken personality validity. Implications, study limitations, and future research directions were discussed.