A Contemporary Look at the Relationship Between General Cognitive Ability and Job Performance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sackett, Paul R.; Demeke, Saron; Bazian, Isaac M.; Griebie, Anne Marie; Priest, Reed; Kuncel, Nathan R.
• 署名单位: University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001159
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 687-713
• 关键词: Cognitive ability; Job performance; validity; Meta-analysis

摘要

The relationship between general cognitive ability (GCA) and overall job performance has been a long-accepted fact in industrial and organizational psychology. However, the most prominent data on this relationship date back more than 50 years. This meta-analysis examines the relationship between GCA and overall job performance using studies from the current century. Results across 153 samples and a total sample size of 40,740 show a mean observed validity of .16, with a residual SD of .09. Correcting for unreliability in the criterion and correcting predictive studies for range restriction produces a mean corrected validity of .22 and a residual SD of .11. While this is a much smaller estimate than the .51 value offered by Schmidt and Hunter (1998), that value has been critiqued by Sackett et al. (2022), who offered a mean corrected validity of .31 based on integrating findings from prior meta-analyses of 20th century data. We obtain a lower value (.22) for 21st century data. We conclude that GCA is related to job performance, but our estimate of the magnitude of the relationship is lower than prior estimates.