Presenting | Mosaic Tasks

Max talking at the BPS conference on objective personality tasks

2019 – Presenting at the British Psychological Society DOP conference, UK

In January 2019, Alan, Max and Johnny presented at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology on “An Alternative to Personality Questionnaires”. Every seat was taken and there were people forced to stand at the back of the room. There was a lively debate afterwards on how the approach could be used until the session ran out of time. As is usually the case with our conference sessions, the practical demos of the tasks was probably the most popular element.”

Alan and Johnny at the AMCHAM HSSSE conference in Trinidad.

2019: AMCHAM T&T HSSE conference – Trinidad

Presenting

Alan and Johnny travelled to Trinidad to present at the AMCHAM T&T HSSE conference – our topic was ‘Using personality assessments to build safety‘. We pesented on the research that links certain personality traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness to certain safety behaviours (Beus et al., 2015). We also covered how it’s not always a good thing to be at the high end of certain personality traits. For instance, higher levels of self-assurance and devotion to duty related to higher level of pilot error mishaps and incidents (King et al, 2000). We then did our by now customary demo of Mosaic Personality Tasks! We were treated to some great hospitality and had a fantastic time.

Beus, Jeremy & Dhanani, Lindsay & McCord, Mallory. (2015). A Meta-Analysis of Personality and Workplace Safety: Addressing Unanswered Questions. Journal of Applied Psychology. 100. 481-498. 10.1037/a0037916.

King, Raymond & Retzlaff, Paul & Orme, Daniel. (2000). A Comparison of US Air Force Pilot Psychological Baseline Information to Safety Outcomes. 21.

2019 – The International Congress on Asssessment Center Methods – Shanghai

Presenting

Alan presented to a large group of psychologists and assessment experts from across the Asia Pacific region on the topic of “using personality tasks to boost the validity of assessment centers”. The presentation covered issues such as increasing the efficiency and accuracy of Assessment or Development Centers, utilizing technology in assessments and directly measuring personality instead of relying on self-report questionnaires. The session included the video and sound person completing a live personality task on stage – not what he thought he was going to be doing that day when he got up in the morning! There was considerable interest from conference delegates from China, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore.

2019 – Presenting on the Personality and Safety Reseach at Step Change in Safety (Aberdeen) and AOSH (Bristol), UK

Presenting, Research

Towards the end of 2019 we presented at two different workshops on the research links between personality and safety behaviours. An overview on the topic can be found here – https://www.ioshmagazine.com/2019/04/11/safe-traits. We discussed some of the research we had completed on the links between certain personality traits. As an example, below is some of our findings.

The graph above illustrates all the statistically significant correlations between personality facets and risk-taking (n = 139). This means that these relationships were not due to chance – Positive relationships are on the right and negative relationships on the left. When used in combination we would see a moderate to large effect of these facets on risk-taking behaviour. As an example, people with a combination of high excitement-seeking and low cautiousness would take statistically more risks. People with this personality combination may well excel in certain tasks but may be more challenging to influence in terms of following certain methods and behaviours.

As there was considerable interest and discussion at these sessions about how personality assessments could be utilised to improve safety we decided to add a safety leadership report as one of our report options. The Safety Leadership report provides analysis and development tips around 8 Safety Leadership competencies as well as potential role strengths. It can be downloaded from our home page. We believe it will be of significant benefit in helping develop safety leadership behaviours. Please get in touch to discuss.

2018: Presenting at the Association for Business Psychology (ABP) conference, UK

Presenting

ED: This was posted in 2018. At the time we had 12 tasks. The final version has 8 tasks.

Alan and TK presented on Friday 12th October 2018 at the ABP conference in Brentford. The paper outlined some of our key findings so far from the research on Mosaic Tasks. We now have 12 fully functioning tasks and we will be working hard over the next couple of months to complete the research and finesse the tasks. The final set of tasks will measure all the big 5 personality traits and facets. We will be presenting more of our findings at the Division of Occupational Psychology conference in January, 2019. In the meantime, please do get in touch if you have any questions or would like to discuss the tasks further.

2018: Mosaic Tasks presenting in Hong Kong and Singapore

Presenting

As part of launching Mosaic Tasks we will be out presenting at conferences around the world. We are starting off in Hong Kong and Singapore where Alan Howard and TK Wu will be presenting to the Division of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (DIOP) in Hong Kong. To book a place and see more about the Hong Kong event click here and for the Singapore event click here.

Personality Tasks – An Alternative To Personality Questionnaires

Utilising recent advances in technology, personality assessment can be revolutionised so that one no longer needs to rely solely on questionnaires, which routinely suffer from distortion such as social desirability responding. (Birkeland et al 2006).

The alternative approach – Objective Personality Tests or OPTs – builds on the research of Cattell (e.g. Cattell and Warburton 1967). OPTs rely on measuring task performance – but it is the way people complete each task, rather than how well they do on it, that reveals their personality traits. Participants are unaware of which aspects of their personality are being assessed. The tasks are typically short e.g. 5-12 minutes, completed online and resemble puzzles or challenges that are applicable to all ages and levels of seniority.

In this interactive session, the speakers will share their own research into the validation of multiple OPTs using self-report ratings of personality and biodata.