What Is Wrong With Individual Differences Research?
Individual differences research underpins personality assessment, psychometrics, and much of selection science. A 2024 paper identifies four major and largely unrecognised problems with how the field measures what it claims to measure, and the implications are uncomfortable.
Is Psychology Making Progress? A Sobering Assessment
Has psychology made empirical progress over the past 66 years? A 2022 analysis of 1,565 articles finds that explained variance has remained constant since the 1950s, and argues that much of what psychology measures may reflect the semantic structure of language rather than genuine empirical discovery.
What Actually Changes Behaviour? A Hierarchy of Interventions
What actually changes what people do? A comprehensive synthesis of meta-analyses finds that the most popular intervention strategies, targeting knowledge and attitudes, are the least effective. The approaches that work best are those that make desired behaviours easier to enact.
Hybrid Working: What a Randomised Controlled Trial Actually Shows
Does hybrid working damage performance? A six-month randomised controlled trial with 1,600 employees finds it does not, while reducing quit rates by a third. The managers in the study revised their own views after seeing the evidence.
Does Personality Feedback Actually Improve Performance?
Personality feedback is one of the most common tools in leadership development and coaching. A systematic review finds only 12 studies examining whether it actually improves performance, and the evidence for causal benefit remains unestablished.
Why Algorithms Beat Human Judgment in Assessment, and Why Practitioners Ignore Them
Algorithms consistently outperform human judgment when combining assessment data to predict performance. A 2023 survey finds that practitioners know this and largely ignore it, and identifies the specific reasons why the evidence has failed to change practice.
Work Stress and Heart Disease: The Combined Effect
Job stress has long been linked to heart disease. An 18-year study of 6,000 workers finds that when job strain and effort-reward imbalance combine, the risk more than doubles, with implications for how organisations think about workload and recognition.
What Makes Executive Coaching Work? A Behavioural Analysis
Research on coaching effectiveness has identified what matters. A 2024 systematic review goes further, specifying what effective coaches actually do and, crucially, when they do it across the phases of a coaching engagement.
Cognitive Ability Testing for Graduate Selection: Time to Reconsider?
Cognitive ability tests are a staple of graduate recruitment. A 2023 critical review finds that the validity evidence used to justify them has been overstated, their adverse impact is real and consequential, and their use in high-volume screening raises questions that the field has been too slow to confront.
How Reliable Are Supervisor Performance Ratings?
How reliable are supervisor performance ratings, the standard measure against which all selection tools are validated? A 2024 meta-analysis finds higher reliability than previously estimated overall, but meaningful variation by job type that current practices do not adequately account for.