To predict behavior, social-cognitive psychologists often observe behavior in realistic situations. One ambitious example was the U.S. Army’s World War II strategy for assessing candidates for spy missions. Rather than using paper-and-pencil tests, Army psychologists subjected the candidates to simulated undercover conditions. They tested their ability to handle stress, solve problems, maintain leadership, and withstand intense interrogation without blowing their cover. Although time-consuming and expensive, this assessment of behavior in a realistic situation helped predict later success on actual spy missions (OSS Assessment Staff, 1948).
Military and educational organizations and many Fortune 500 companies have adopted assessment center strategies (Bray & Byham, 1991, 1997; Eurich et al., 2009). AT&T has observed prospective managers doing simulated managerial work. Student teachers are observed and evaluated several times during the term they spend in your school. Many colleges assess nursing students’ potential by observing their clinical work, and they assess potential faculty members’ teaching abilities by observing them teach. Most American cities with populations of 50,000 or more have used assessment centers in evaluating police officers and firefighters (Lowry, 1997).
These procedures exploit the principle that the best means of predicting behavior is neither a personality test nor an interviewer’s intuition. Rather, the best predictor of future behavior is the person’s past behavior patterns in similar situations (Lyons et al., 2011; Mischel, 1981; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). As long as the situation and the person remain much the same, the best predictor of future job performance is past job performance; the best predictor of future grades is past grades; the best predictor of future aggressiveness is past aggressiveness. If you can’t check the person’s past behavior, the next best thing is to create an assessment situation that simulates the task so you can see how the person handles it (Lievens et al., 2009; Meriac et al., 2008).