Neil Christiansen, Ph.D.
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  • Position: I/O Faculty, IOPA Advisor
  • Department: Psychology
  • Campus Address: Sloan Hall 223, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859
  • Email: chris1nd@cmich.edu
  • Vitae: Curriculum Vitae

Website: http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/neil_christiansen/

Bio:

Neil Christiansen received his B.S.E. from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. After a brief experience teaching in the public schools, he completed an M.A. in Social Psychology from Southern Illinois University, followed by a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology from Northern Illinois University. Prior to coming to CMU in 1997, he chaired the I/O program at Florida Tech and worked as a consultant in test development and personnel selection.

Research Interest:

I am broadly interested in personnel psychology in terms of the key areas of personnel selection, performance appraisal, and job analysis. Within those areas, I tend to do research and consult with organizations on ways to improve their hiring processes with an emphasis on employment testing and validation.

My primary academic research interests have involved furthering our understanding of the relationships between personality and work behavior. Within that area, my focus has often been on personality assessment in the workplace, including applicant faking of personality inventories and alternative methods of assessing personality. More recently, my research has expanded to consider the interaction of personality and work situations as determinants of work behavior, cognitive underpinnings of personality-behavior relationships, and the accuracy of personality judgments made in organizations. Areas of future interest include models of applicant reactions to selection processes and motivational mechanisms whereby personality affects change in behavior.

Secondary research interests have been on individual differences in more general areas of social and personality psychology involving attitudes, social judgments, and behavior. In these areas I have done research on prejudice and social judgment (measurement of racial attitudes; effects of prejudice on support for affirmative action; discrimination in the workplace) and political attitudes (political ideology and support for social policies; effects of intra-attitudinal structure on political behavior; development of political attitudes).

Recent Research:

Roscoe, D., & Christiansen, N. D. (in press). Exploring the attitudinal structure of political partisanship. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

 Christiansen, N. D., Burns, G., & Rozek, R. F. (2010). Effects of socially desirable responding on hiring judgments. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 9, 27-39.

Webster, J., Beehr, T. A., & Chrisitiansen, N. D. (2010). Toward a better understanding of the effects of hindrance and challenge stressors on work behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 68-77.

Christiansen, N. D., Janovics, J. E., & Siers, B. (2010). Emotional intelligence in a selection context: Criterion-related validity and vulnerability to response distortion. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 18, 87-101.

Christiansen, N. D., & Tett, R. P. (2008). Toward a better understanding of the role in situations in linking personality, work behavior, and job performance. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 3, 312-316.

Burns, G. N., Siers, B. P., & Christiansen, N. D. (2008). Effects of providing pre-test information and preparation materials on applicant reactions to selection procedures. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 16, 73-77.

Tett, R. P., & Christiansen, N. D. (2008). Personality Assessment in Organizations. In G. Boyle, G. Matthews, & D. Saklofske (Eds.), Personality Measurement and Assessment (pp. 720-742) . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Tett, R. P., & Christiansen, N. D. (2007). Personality tests at the crossroads: A reply to Morgeson, Campion, Dipboye, Hollenbeck, Murphy, and Schmitt. Personnel Psychology, 60, 267-293.

Lievens, F., Chasteen, C. S., Day, E. A., & Christiansen, N. D. (2006). Large-scale investigation of the role of trait activation theory for understanding assessment center convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 247-258.

Phillips, L., & Christiansen, N. D. (2006). A contingency model of attitudes toward affirmative action programs. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36, 1617-1639.

Burns, G., & Christiansen, N. D. (2006). Use of social desirability in correcting for motivated distortion. In R. Griffith (Ed.), A Closer Examination of Applicant Faking Behavior. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Christiansen, N. D., Wolcott-Burnam, S., Janovics, J., Burns, G., & Quirk, S. (2005). The Good Judge revisited: Individual differences in the accuracy of personality judgments. Human Performance, 18, 123-149 .

Christiansen, N.D., Burns, G., & Montgomery, G.E. (2005). Reconsidering the use of forced-choice formats for applicant personality assessment. Human Performance, 18, 267-307 .

 

Wagner, S.H., Parker, C., & Christiansen, N.D. (2003). Employees who think and act like owners: Effects of psychological ownership beliefs and behavior on organizational effectiveness. Personnel Psychology, 56, 847-871.

Goffin, R.D., & Christiansen, N.D. (2003). Correcting personality tests for faking: A review of popular personality tests and initial survey of researchers. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 11, 340-344.