Measuring Implicit Traits in Organizational Research: Development of an Indirect Measure of Employee Implicit Self-Concept

By Russell E. Johnson, Kristin N. Saboe. 2011

91 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Values, attitudes, and goals are often automatically activated, yet organizational research has relied predominantly on techniques that measure these phenomena at explicit or conscious levels. In this study, the authors validated an indirect measure designed to assess employee self-concept at implicit levels. Because self-concept is believed to operate primarily at implicit levels, it was hypothesized that an indirect measure would be an effective predictor of work criteria. The criteria examined were task performance, citizenship and counterproductive behavior, and the quality of supervisor—subordinate relations. Consistent with predictions, the indirect measure—a word fragment completion task—contributed more to the prediction of criteria than the direct measure— self-report survey items with summated rating scales. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the use of indirect measures in applied settings.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d7a6170d01768cbe970a6b932767fb52b6ee7dea

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Leadership and followership identity processes: A multilevel review ☆ (2017, background): “Johnson and Saboe (2011) further validated this indirect measure and found that it contributed more to the prediction of criteria than the direct measure, the Levels of Self-Concept Scale (LSCS; Selenta & Lord, 2005).”
What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations? (2014, background): “These may include the use of implicit measures (Dinh & Lord, 2013; Johnson & Saboe, 2011) or experimental paradigms that collect reaction time data (Foti & Lord, 1987; Leavitt, Reynolds, Barnes, Schilpzand, & Hannah, 2012).”
Getting Explicit About the Implicit (2012, background): “…that target words share similar lexical frequency and length with their corresponding neutral words (this is true for both wordcompletion measures and the lexical decision task; Balota et al., 2007; Johnson & Saboe, 2011; Koopman et al., in press; Nelson et al., 2004; Tiggemanna et al., 2004).”
Developing trust with peers and leaders: Impacts on organizational identification and performance during entry (2013, background): “” Johnson and Saboe (2011) report sound evidence of the stability of this measure over time.”