Faking it! Individual differences in types and degrees of faking behavior

Abstract

Personality measures are commonly used in personnel selection and other high-stakes situations. In these settings, respondents may engage in purposeful deception, or faking, to increase the likelihood of receiving a valued outcome (i.e., being offered a job). However, some individuals may tend to only fake slightly, others may demonstrate more extreme response tendencies, and others may respond honestly. In this study, we used within-person, two-wave data to investigate faking on a conscientiousness measure across honest-responding and faking conditions using latent transition analysis (LTA) to identify different types of fakers. Agreeableness, neuroticism, and the perceived ability to deceive (PATD), obtained in the honest-responding condition, were used to predict faking behavior patterns. We also examined whether counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB) differed across the faking types. Results supported three-class solutions in both honest-responding and faking conditions, and that respondents could be classified as honest respondents, slight fakers, and extreme fakers. Results partially supported the role of high agreeableness and low neuroticism as predictive of stable response patterns. PATD results did not suggest a significant predictive relation with faking behavior. Extreme fakers were also found to generally exhibit the highest levels of CWBs. Implications and directions for continued research are discussed.