There’s a reason why companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on marketing. Quite simply, it works. A stellar marketing campaign can compensate for even the most significant product deficiencies. Take Airborne, for example. Like many, I was once a true believer. I chomped on these flavorful pellets like they were Smarties, all the while feeling confident that I was bolstering a healthy immune system. Then everything I knew to be good and right ceased when a nutritionist from the Center for Science in the Public Interest discredited Airborne’s claims of the product’s efficacy. Here’s the official quote:
There's no credible evidence that what's in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment. Airborne is …show more content…
But, occasionally our optimism gets the best of us and we are duped into believing a marketer’s assertions. We want to believe there is a better mousetrap.
This is no more apparent than in the domain of talent assessment, particularly when it comes to concept of emotional intelligence, or EQ. Fifteen years ago I conducted a study to understand the nomological network of emotional intelligence and test the incremental validity of EQ above and beyond measures of general intelligence and personality. Statistical analysis indicated that the measure of EQ used was positively related to the measures of general intelligence and personality and didn’t account for any unique variance in job performance.
Since this time, vigorous debate has persisted in the personnel selection literature, popular business publications, and here on LinkedIn. The majority of these discussions conclude that general intelligence is the best predictor of performance in most jobs. Nevertheless, many still question the view that general intelligence is necessary and sufficient for the prediction of performance. It’s easy to understand why when considering that even the most optimistic predictive validity estimates for tests of general intelligence account for no more than 25% of the variance in job performance. Although the argument that general intelligence tests fail to account for the majority of variance in performance is a straw man, it’s hard to deny there is room for improvement. Enter measures of
There's no credible evidence that what's in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment. Airborne is …show more content…
But, occasionally our optimism gets the best of us and we are duped into believing a marketer’s assertions. We want to believe there is a better mousetrap.
This is no more apparent than in the domain of talent assessment, particularly when it comes to concept of emotional intelligence, or EQ. Fifteen years ago I conducted a study to understand the nomological network of emotional intelligence and test the incremental validity of EQ above and beyond measures of general intelligence and personality. Statistical analysis indicated that the measure of EQ used was positively related to the measures of general intelligence and personality and didn’t account for any unique variance in job performance.
Since this time, vigorous debate has persisted in the personnel selection literature, popular business publications, and here on LinkedIn. The majority of these discussions conclude that general intelligence is the best predictor of performance in most jobs. Nevertheless, many still question the view that general intelligence is necessary and sufficient for the prediction of performance. It’s easy to understand why when considering that even the most optimistic predictive validity estimates for tests of general intelligence account for no more than 25% of the variance in job performance. Although the argument that general intelligence tests fail to account for the majority of variance in performance is a straw man, it’s hard to deny there is room for improvement. Enter measures of