Executive Attention: An Alternative Perspective on General Mental Ability, Performance, and Subgroup Differences

Abstract

The validity‐adverse impact tradeoff associated with the relationships among general mental ability (GMA), ethnicity, and employee performance represents one of the most pressing concerns in organizational staffing. We conducted 4 studies with 273 bank employees and 197 university students designed to assess the extent to which executive attention (EA) and GMA predict simulation performance and supervisory ratings of performance. We also assess the extent to which measures of EA and GMA are associated with subgroup differences. Results indicate that, like GMA, EA positively predicts managerial simulation and supervisory ratings of performance. In addition, although reaching statistical significance in only 1 of our 4 studies, EA was generally associated with smaller subgroup differences than GMA, and meta‐analysis across our samples supports this reduced subgroup difference. Moreover, advantages of EA tend to increase as studies move from the laboratory with undergraduate students to a concurrent validation organizational setting with employees. We discuss implications for a theory‐based view of cognitive ability in employee selection and implications for managerial practice.