Integrity Testing and Counterproductive Work Behavior

Organizations have great interest in controlling counterproductive work behaviors. In an effort to reduce the amount of counterproductivity among employees, professionals have turned to integrity tests – a non-cognitive measure used worldwide for more than 60 years to identify individuals with a higher propensity to engage in counterproductive work behaviors. Integrity tests contain either personality-based items or overt questions inquiring about an applicant's honesty, attitudes toward integrity, and past behaviors. Both types of integrity assessments are strongly related to each other and overlap substantially with a compound personality construct consisting of Big Five factors of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability. Integrity tests are able to predict a plethora of counterproductive work behaviors. Interestingly, they also display predictive power for a number of positive behaviors such as training performance and job performance. Thus, organizations can greatly benefit from integrity test use in employee selection.