Thinking styles in the context of psychological personnel assessment : Validation of a new thinking styles questionnaire

Abstract

This study was conducted for initial validation of a new thinking styles questionnaire measuring intuitive and rational thinking styles. Thinking styles refer to individuals’ typical ways of perceiving, thinking, solving problems and remembering, and the concept touches upon both personality and cognition. Intuitive thinking refers to affect-oriented thinking involving little effort and consideration, while rational thinking refers to analytical and effortful thinking characterized by the requirement for justification by logic and evidence. Intuitive and rational thinking styles have been shown to connect to various phenomena relevant to working life and to provide additional information beyond personality and intelligence measures, advocating for the addition of a thinking styles measure to psychological personnel assessment. The aim of this study was to assess the construct validity of the new thinking styles questionnaire by examining its factorial structure, internal consistency, and correlations with the Big Five personality traits. Additionally, the relationship between thinking styles and social desirability was investigated, as distortion in responses to a socially desirable direction is a relevant aspect to consider in the context of personnel assessment. Social desirability can be divided into impression management and self-deception, and this study assessed the relationships between thinking styles and these two social desirability types separately.

The data was collected as part of usual personnel assessment processes carried out by Psycon Ltd. in 2024. The sample (N=422) consisted of people seeking employment mainly in professional or manager level positions. Intuitive and rational thinking styles were measured with the first version of the new thinking styles questionnaire, and Big Five traits were measured with selected subscales from the Motivation Questionnaire. Social desirability was measured using two scales that combined social desirability items from different questionnaires. The participants filled out the questionnaires remotely in an online system. The factorial structure of the thinking styles questionnaire was investigated with explorative factor analysis, and the correlations with Big Five traits were investigated with Spearman’s correlation test. The associations between thinking styles and social desirability were explored first with Spearman’s correlation test, and linear regression analyses were conducted to check whether the associations differed by gender.

In line with the hypothesis, the questionnaire items loaded onto two distinct factors corresponding to rational and intuitive thinking. The two-factor structure was also robust across gender. For the correlations with Big Five traits, intuitive thinking was found to have a positive association with agreeableness and rational thinking with conscientiousness, as hypothesized based on earlier research. The other hypothesized Big Five associations could not be demonstrated in this study, while some unexpected associations were also found. The explorative investigation on the associations between thinking styles and social desirability revealed intuitive thinking to have a negative association with impression management and rational thinking to have a positive association with self-deception.

The findings of this study demonstrate the new thinking styles questionnaire to have a robust factorial structure, giving initial support for the use and further development of the measure. At the same time, further investigation is needed on the convergent and divergent validity. Additionally, the finding of differing associations between thinking styles and two social desirability types is valuable new information, as only very limited earlier research existed on the topic. The current study thus contributes to the field of personnel assessment research by addressing a gap in previous knowledge with these findings, encouraging future investigation for better understanding of how these phenomena relate to each other.