Meta-analysis of bidirectional relations in personality-job performance research

Standard meta-analysis (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990a) assumes unidirectional (i.e., all positive or all negative) predictor-criterion relations. We challenge this assumption in the context of personality-job performance linkages based on several limes of evidence supporting the coexistence of true positive and true negative correlations involving the same trait. Subjecting such bidirectional relations to standard meta-analysis will underestimate effect sizes to an unknown degree owing to cancellation of positive and negative values. A modification of standard procedures is proposed that accounts for the possibility of bidirectionality. It employs successive iteration of an initial estimate of the absolute correlation, accounting for sample sizes and the sampling distribution of the correlation. Tests of the procedure using hypothetical distributions show it works as expected. Application to previously documented personality-job performance relations (Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991) yields interpretable effect sizes substantially stronger than previously reported estimates. Implications for interpreting prior meta-analytic findings in this area are discussed.