On the Applicability of the Big Five Implicit Association Test in Organizational Settings Michele Vecchione 1,2 & Francesco Dentale 1 & Guido Alessandri 1 & Maria Tindara Imbesi 1 & Claudio Barbaranelli 1 & Konrad Schnabel 3 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract Two studies were conducted with the aim of investi- gating whether the Big Five traits, as measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT), predict supervisor ratings of job perfor- mance. 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 im- plicit measure of conscientiousness (r = .27, p < .05). In study 2, job performance was positively related to explicit conscientious- ness (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 incre- mental validity over each other). Practical implications of find- ings and future research directions are discussed. Keywords Big Five . IAT . Implicit measures . Implicit personality traits . Job performance Individual differences in personality traits have proved to play a significant role in shaping important organizational criteria, in- cluding occupational level and success at work (Judge et al. 1999). After earlier criticism, the development of the Five Factor Model of personality (Digman 1990) has lead both prac- titioners and researchers to reevaluate the utility of personality tests for Industrial and Organizational (I/O) psychology. Several meta-analytic procedures have shown that the Five Factors are valid predictors of job performance (Barrick et al. 2001). Conscientiousness and emotional stability are the traits with the highest criterion-related validity across different occupational groups and performance criteria (Barrick et al. 2001). These traits showed incremental validity over mental ability tests (e.g., Dunn et al. 1995), and a lower adverse impact against minority groups than cognitive measures (Hough et al. 2001). Yet, the use of personality measures in personnel selection has been criticized for being vulnerable to faking, namely respon- dents’ deliberate alteration of responses aimed to present a favourable impression of themselves. Empirical research has re- vealed that job applicants scored systematically higher than non- applicants on a number of personality measures (e.g., Birkeland et al. 2006). Other studies have shown that faking does not substantially decrease the criterion validity of personality tests, but is likely to change hiring decisions, and may therefore have detrimental effects on both fairness and effectiveness of the test- ing process (Ellingson et al. 1999; Rosse et al. 1998). Several strategies have been advanced to prevent or mitigate the effect of faking, among which the use of forced-choice for- mats, subtle items, respondents warnings, and corrections based on social desirability scales. Yet, none of these approaches has proved to be fully adequate (Hough 1998). Therefore, concern over applicants’ faking still represents a major impediment to the use of personality measures in applied settings. A promising approach for addressing this problem may come from the implicit social cognition area, where several * Michele Vecchione michele.vecchione@uniroma1.it 1 Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy 2 Department of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Rome, Italy 3 International Psychoanalytic University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany Curr Psychol DOI 10.1007/s12144-016-9455-x