Game on, Faking off? Are Game-Based Assessments Less Susceptible to Faking Than Traditional Assessments?

Abstract

Game-based assessment (GBA) in personnel selection and assessment has gained increasing attention among researchers and practitioners in recent years. A postulated advantage of this new selection method is its suggested suitability to reduce applicant faking. However, currently, it is unclear whether GBAs are indeed less susceptible to faking than traditional assessments. To address this question, we conducted an experimental study to examine whether a GBA measuring honesty-humility does indeed reduce faking compared to a traditional personality test. N = 171 participants were randomly assigned to an honest or an applicant condition and then completed a GBA and a traditional test that both measured honesty-humility. Results showed that test takers were able to distort their responses in the GBA and in the traditional honesty-humility test. However, the faking effect in the honesty-humility GBA was significantly smaller than in the traditional test. Thus, our findings suggest that using GBAs to measure personality can reduce faking compared to traditional tests to some degree but that GBAs are not a panacea to completely prevent it.