What is Faking? #

Faking is the act of intentionally providing false or distorted information in order to appear more favorable. This can occur in various types of assessments, including psychological assessments, aptitude tests, and personality tests. In the context of behavioral assessments like the E3, faking can take the form of exaggeration, minimization, or falsification of personal characteristics when completing the assessment.

How can faking effect the E3 results? #

If an applicant or existing employees fakes the E3 assessment, the results likely won’t be an accurate representation of how that person behaves. Many organizations are weary of this because it would make assessments less effective tools in the hiring and development process.

But is faking actually a big problem? #

Thankfully, faking is not a wide-spread problem in the industrial-organizational psychology industry. According to the March 2007 Journal of Applied Psychology research report, less than 4% of job applicants distorted their responses to an extreme degree.

Should I be concerned about faking? How does BE prevent faking? #

Based on many years of experience with diverse clients and companies, Behavioral Essentials does not believe faking is an issue when using a validated psychological tool like the E3 Assessment for the following reasons:

• Because the E3 Assessment is a free-choice, self-report assessment, there are no “right” or “wrong” adjectives. It would be very difficult for a person to correlate an adjective to the behavior it was intended to measure in order to strategically present oneself in a more favorable light.
• Compared to full sentence assessment questions (i.e; I always listen to my colleagues), the Adjective Checklist approach utilized in the E3 Assessment makes it much harder to discern which selections are more favorable.
• The Behavioral Essentials Team takes great initiative to ensure that the E3 Assessment is introduced and administered to employees in a relaxed, non-stressful manner that celebrates strengths. We also review the results with the participants as soon as possible in order to establish therapeutic rapport early in our relationship. These essential practices all reduce the likelihood of faking.
• In our history, no Behavioral Essentials client has ever had an issue with faking among job applicants or existing employees. Numerous organizations and employees have seen dramatic increases in self-awareness, performance and purpose by utilizing the E3 Assessment and its resulting reports. If the E3 Assessment were impacted by faking, we would not have evidence of the assessment’s ability to predict and improve not only performance, but personal and professional well-being.