Don Zhang

Louisiana State University | LSU · Department of Psychology

The cross-fertilization of JDM and I-O has increased since the earlier version of this chapter, but there remains considerable opportunity for the areas to contribute to one another. Like the previous chapter, this chapter was written with the objective of presenting an accessible treatment of modern judgment and decision making research, and stimu...

To stand out, some organizations have started asking unorthodox interview questions to uncover unique qualities of the candidates while signaling the playful culture of their organization (e.g., “Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?”). Despite its growing popularity, there is no empirical research on the organizationa...

This manuscript has been accepted for publication at European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. This version is not the final copy and may not reflect the final, authoritative version of the article. Please cite this as: Zhang, D.C., & Kausel, E.E., (2022, in press). The illusion of validity: How effort inflates the perceived validity...

Oblique bifactor models, where group factors are allowed to correlate with one another, are commonly used. However, the lack of research on the statistical properties of oblique bifactor models renders the statistical validity of empirical findings questionable. Therefore, the present study took the first step to examine the statistical properties...

Oddball interview questions have gained both popular and academic traction in recent years. Regardless of the intentions behind these questions, job seekers will form judgments about the employer based on its selection tactics. This paper examined the effect of oddball interview questions on organizational personality perceptions and subsequent att...

Although risk takers are traditionally seen as liabilities, a growing body of research suggests that risk takers may be critical for organizational achievements because of their courage and willingness to take risks for the benefit of others. Despite the prevalence of risk taking in studies of strategic management and organizational behavior, we kn...

Interviewers are often confident in the validity of their interview questions. What drives this confidence and is it justified? In three studies, we found that question creators judged their own interview questions as more valid than when the same questions are judged by an evaluator. We also found that effort expenditure inflated the perceived val...

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...

Meta-analysis of 6,644 correlations from 133 independent samples (N = 69,125) was conducted to examine whether risk propensity is subsumed by or independent of the traits comprising the five-factor model (FFM) of personality, and whether risk propensity has predictive utility above and beyond the FFM. Analyses revealed weak to modest relations betw...

Risk aversion is a universal characteristic of humans. This is demonstrated by simple experiments showing, for example, that people will overwhelmingly choose a sure $3000 over an 80% chance of $4000. This is despite the fact that the expected value of the risky option is $3200—demonstrating that people will pay to avoid risk. The Swiss mathematici...

The development of a scoring key for the situational judgment test often requires subject matter experts (SMEs) to identify the best responses for a hypothetical situation. And yet, there is no gold standard for identifying the SMEs. This paper describes an empirical and context-free approach: the Cochran–Weiss–Shanteau (CWS) method, which does not...

Research evidence in the social sciences often relies on effect size statistics, which are hard to understand for the public and do not always provide clear information for decision-makers. One area where interpretation of research evidence has profound effects on policy is college admission testing. In this paper, we conducted two experiments test...

Risk-taking is a long-standing area of inquiry among psychologists and economists. In this paper, we examine the personality profile of risk-takers in two independent samples. Specifically, we examined the association between the Big Five facets and risk-taking propensity across two measures: The Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) and the...

The development of a scoring key for the situational judgment test (SJT) often requires subject matter experts (SMEs) to identify the best responses for a hypothetical situation. And yet, there is no gold standard for identifying the SMEs. This paper describes an empirical and context-free approach: the Cochran-Weiss-Shanteau (CWS) method, which do...

Domain-specific measures of subjective wellbeing are valuable tools for assessing the mental health of college students. In this study, we examined relations between Big Five personality traits and college students’ subjective wellbeing (SWB) using a college-specific measure: The College Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (CSSWQ). Using a l...

Should you sign your reviews? Open peer review and review quality - Volume 13 Issue 1 - Don C. Zhang, Rachel Williamson Smith, Sheryl Lobo

In an effort to bridge the scientist–practitioner gap in the employee selection, some researchers have advocated telling stories to better communicate the value of evidence‐based hiring practices to human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we conducted two experiments that examine the efficacy of storytelling for overcoming managers’ resis...

In this paper, we review basic findings from experimental studies in judgment and decision making that could contribute to designing policies and trainings to enhance police decision making. Traditional judgment and decision-making research has focused on simple choices between hypothetical gambles, which has been criticized for its lack of general...

Turnover as decisions: How judgment and decision-making (JDM) research can inform turnover modeling - Volume 12 Issue 3 - Don C. Zhang

Much research on moral judgment is centered on moral dilemmas in which deontological perspectives (i.e., emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with utilitarian judgements (i.e., following the greater good defined through consequences). A central finding of this field Greene et al. showed that psychological and situational...

Domain-specific measures of subjective wellbeing are valuable tools for assessing the mental health of college students. In this study, we examined relations between Big Five personality traits and college students’ subjective wellbeing (SWB) using a college-specific measure: The College Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (CSSWQ). Using a l...

People often assess the reasonableness of another person's judgments. When doing so, the evaluator should set aside knowledge that would not have been available to the evaluatee to assess whether the evaluatee made a reasonable decision, given the available information. But under what circumstances does the evaluator set aside information? On the o...

Research collaborations are two-way streets. To obtain support from organizations, academics must communicate the value of their research projects to the stakeholders. In their focal article, Lapierre et al.(2018) described this process as the academic "sales pitch", one that must be "short yet attention grabbing" (p.20). Academic research in indus...

It is well established in the risk literature that men tend to take more risks than women. This gender difference, however, is often qualified by its domain-specificity. Considering recent research on the domain-generality of risk taking as a disposition, there is a need to examine the degree to which men take more risks than women, in general. In...

Brainteaser interview questions such as “Estimate how many windows are in New York” are just one example of aggressive interviewer behaviour that lacks evidence for validity and is unsettling to job applicants. This research attempts to shed light on the motives behind such behaviour by examining the relation between dark‐side traits and the percei...

Alternative displays of effect size statistics can enhance the understandability and impact of validity evidence in a variety of applied settings. Arguably, the proliferation of alternative effect size statistics has been limited due to the lack of user-friendly tools to create them. Common statistical packages do not readily produce these alternat...

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) is a three-item performance-based measure designed to assess one's tendency to over-ride automatic responses in favor of further reflection. Although the test has been widely cited, and predicts varied outcomes, little is known about the sex differences observed in the initial report. This study...

The Domain-specific Risk-taking scale was designed to assess risk taking in specific domains. This approach is unconventional in personality assessment but reflects conventional wisdom in the decision community that cross-situational consistency in risk taking is more myth than reality. We applied bifactor analysis to a large sample (n=921) of resp...

Landers and Behrend (2015) present yet another attempt to limit reviewer and editor reliance on surface characteristics when evaluating the generalizability of study results (see also Campbell, 1986; Dipboye & Flanagan, 1979; Greenberg, 1987; Highhouse, 2009; Highhouse & Gillespie, 2009). Most of the earlier treatments of sample generalizability, h...