Developing an Assessment Game to Measure Honesty-Humility

PhD project of Ard Barends (September 1st 2015 – August 31st 2019) under the supervision of Prof. dr. Reinout de Vries and Prof. dr. Mark van Vugt. In collaboration with Marian de Joode and Rob Fraats (LTP business psychologists).

LTP business psychologists funded my PhD project develop an assessment game to measure the Honesty-Humility trait of the HEXACO model of personality. The honesty-humility trait reflects the degree that people are sincere, fair, and modest. This is an important trait to assess of prospective employees as it is related to whether people will misbehave at work or not.

During my PhD project we contributed to the scientific literature in various ways. First, we further investigated the theoretical relevance of honesty-humility. We demonstrated that honesty-humility and conscientiousness are the traits that are central to integrity. We found that honesty-humility captures the moral pole of integrity, such as being honest and fair, and that conscientiousness captures a morally neutral pole, such as keeping promises. Using methods from behavioral economics, we demonstrated that honesty-humility is especially important for people in high-power positions as their position allows them more room to behave in line with their personality.

Second, we developed and validated novel game-based assessments of honesty-humility. We developed the game by using existing tools that allow to measure honesty-humility, for example, economic games and situational judgment tests. We also developed and validated a gamified assessment method based on so-called virtual behavioral cues that was also used for the game. Honesty-humility assessed with Building Docks converges with self-reported honesty-humility and to predicts various relevant criteria, in one case better than self-reported personality. These results suggest that these game-based assessments of honesty-humility are useful complements to traditional self-reports in personnel selection and assessment.

Find out more

Computerspel test potentiële werknemers op integriteit | LTP business psychologen (in Dutch)

Integriteitsspel voorspelt gedrag medewerker - Binnenlands Bestuur (in Dutch)

Barends, A.J., De Vries, R.E., & Van Vugt, M. (2019). Gamified personality assessment: Virtual behavioral cues of honesty-humility. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 227(3), 207-217. Link

Barends, A.J., De Vries, R.E., & Van Vugt, M. (2021). Construct and predictive validity of an assessment game to measure honesty-humility. Assessment, 1073191120985612. Link

Op 26 oktober werd Ard Barends geïnterviewd door BNR.