"It’s part of the same pseudoscience as measuring people’s skulls"
March 5, 2021 6:51 AM   Subscribe

'They become dangerous tools': the dark side of personality tests – The Guardian on the new HBO Max documentary, Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests, which "investigates America’s infatuation with personality testing, revealing the surprising origin story behind the MBTI while surfacing ethical questions and criticisms that these seemingly harmless instruments are profoundly discriminatory and reflective of larger troubling issues of who exactly is considered worthy and valuable in society."
posted by bitteschoen (119 comments total) 66 users marked this as a favorite
 
The only personality tests worth a dime are those old LiveJournal quizzes that tell you which Muppet you are.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:02 AM on March 5, 2021 [83 favorites]


As an INTJ I've always been skeptical of the MBTI
posted by dis_integration at 7:10 AM on March 5, 2021 [100 favorites]


It's interesting to see a criticism of MBTI that does not need to cover the Forer effect, or the history of personality tests in major world cults.

This article is fascinating in that it asks what the value of such tests would be even if they accurately measured what they claimed to.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:12 AM on March 5, 2021 [27 favorites]


I have this notion that Americans are easily fascinated by numbers and/or things which seem to be easily measured, but I have no idea about why. Theories?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:14 AM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


The stupidest and therefore most persistent attitude in quality-adjacent management is “You can’t [track/improve] what you can’t measure!”
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:20 AM on March 5, 2021 [35 favorites]


i wonder if my dumb bad old toxic employer is still making people do MBTI tests. probably.
posted by entropone at 7:21 AM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


I hear about these tests being used in hiring occasionally, and it's always something very undervalued like stocking shelves or customer service. Isn't the secret to succeeding in customer service a) put a smiling veneer over your real personality and b) be willing to be treated like shit by strangers? Is that part of MBTI somehow??

Anyway, I am curious how widespread this is and for what level of jobs. When I was applying for jobs a lot a few years ago, I encountered maybe one or two mild sets of personality questions. Since I was never getting interviews anyway (even when my qualifications appeared to be perfect and someone at the company put in a good word), it wasn't surprising to not be hired after a question like "do you prefer working in a team or alone?" Which is stupid because the answer is, a combination.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:23 AM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


I'm moderately sure you can't measure what you can't perceive, but measuring is a very limited way of doing some kinds of perception.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:31 AM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


Myers-Briggs: Does it pay to know your type? (Long 2012 Washington Post article that includes a detailed history of its growth)

"From the State Department to McKinsey & Co., it’s a rite of passage. ... The test ... has seen financial success commensurate to this cultlike devotion among its practitioners. ... Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community. ... And yet the psychological community has been reticent to speak up too vocally against it. The fact is, many psychology professors do lucrative side work as organizational consultants. And as taboo as it is to praise Myers-Briggs in U.S. academia, it’s equally taboo to disparage it in corporate America."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:34 AM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


This doesn't get into their use once you are in the workplace, but I have had a lot of problems with that, too. People have always told me I am intimidating, which I took really seriously and worked really hard in the workplace to give off a friendly vibe and make people feel comfortable around me. I did pretty well at it. Then every year or so we would do this personality test. The personality test result basically said "you're a bitch but you get things done" which, ok. THEN, we would all talk about our results, and a couple of the big generalizations about my category were:
- these people don't like weakness in others. stand up for your ideas or they will not respect you.
- these people don't like small talk or interpersonal chatter. just tell them your business and move on.
- these people like to see results. they do not want to spend time haggling over details.

So after all my hard work to make the new people feel welcome and comfortable, I was assigned those characteristics and it all fell apart. There was this vibe that I secretly hated everyone's commitment to details (which were important! It was data analytics!) and was secretly furious at the wasted time every time I made conversation with someone. It was so exhausting to try to overcome that and explain again and again that I actually LIKE talking to you and I know your work is important so please take your time to get it right and yes you can talk to me any time about office issues, even if you feel stupid for bringing up the issue (I was the office manager).

In subsequent years I could have tried lying on the test but longer serving employees already had me in a category so it was no use.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:38 AM on March 5, 2021 [35 favorites]


My partner reports their government employer occasionally uses personality testing suites to help form working groups with members who have diverse thinking styles. This is probably a reasonable, perhaps even positive, use of them. Whatever the tests are measuring, it seems to be valuable in that respect.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:39 AM on March 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


OMG I am SO looking forward to reading this, just popped in to say one of my biggest pet peeves (and I have SO MANY) is personality tests. ALL of them, not just the MBTI. I just posted a semi-regular rant about them on Facebook last week.
posted by cooker girl at 7:48 AM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


My type in all of these has always been the one that impersonates other types and likes peace.

The only actually useful personality test I've taken was one about what type of work/tasks fulfill you. It was called the Sparketype test, developed by the guy who does The Good Life Project which is a podcast I have found soothing from time to time as he interviews people.

It opened my eyes that I above all like to organize, simplify and solve. I dunno if it really was a personality test, but it mostly just picked up on what sort of tasks I found meaningful and got my flow zone on with.

Honorable mention to the really dumb one from 20 years ago where you chose 8 colors in a row to get a personality result.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:49 AM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


Annie Murphy Paul's The Cult of Personality is a good book on this topic that covers a lot of the different tests, starting with phrenology. The tests are a mess. Contra Costa county used the MMPI if you were getting aid to "find out" if you were likely to become an addict. Companies decide you have the personality of a follower and don't give you leadership options. The statistics and conclusions from them are questionable, but people who embrace them justify it with confirmation bias. There's an anecdote about a psychologist who uses a drawing test; totally debunked but "maybe paranoid people don't draw people with big eyes in lab tests, but they sure do in my office!"

In Red Mars there's a great scene where the super-capable first colonists are all making fun of the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) except the psychology, who takes it totally seriously and is horrified to learn people lied on it. "Hell, I'm from Minnesota and I had to lie on half the questions," says John Boone, the died-in-the-wool all American astronaut. "Oh," says the Russian genius Arkady, "I made it on the expedition by thinking of the correct answer to every question and writing down the opposite."
posted by mark k at 7:58 AM on March 5, 2021 [23 favorites]


I told a recruiter to get lost after they tried to sneak in a MTBI and some other kind of personality test instead of an actual programming test for a six-figure technical role I was applying for after I spoke to the hiring manager. I'm lucky in that I can afford to do this since it is not yet mainstream for my role and I was very blunt with the recruiter that I had plenty of other opportunities that wouldn't impose ridiculous irrelevant tests. That was all they needed to tell me about their corporate culture and what their executives believed so in a way it worked; I self-selected out of a job on the basis of "culture fit", but I can't imagine a faster way to have diversity problems and narrow your applicant pool to near zero. If you are going to reject people with INT-types who code that leaves you with <5% of the applicant pool (these people aren't actually all the same of course but they will mostly get dumped into that box because the test is bad), and if you do the opposite and assume ESF-types aren't technical in lieu of assessing their actual programming skill you miss good people in a competitive hiring area and leave yourself open for lawsuits. I don't understand how you can get promoted to C-level and not realize this.
posted by slow graffiti at 8:00 AM on March 5, 2021 [13 favorites]


I once joined the subreddit for my MBTI type and... it was a trip.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:03 AM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


This doc is on my watch list. I have always sort of rolled my eyes whenever someone needs to put their MBTI in their twitter or tinder profile. But no one should be at all surprised that standardized measures of any stripe are racist and ableist and they are those things on purpose. Standardized assessments could be useful but they need to be radically re-conceived (we have stopped, for example, using GRE in admission decisions in my department because of the same criticisms).

Don't even get me started on enneagrams. For some reason all the evangelical/essential oil people I know are very into this lately.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:07 AM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


the history of personality tests in major world cults.

Isn't that Scientology's shtick? They offer free "scientific" personality readings at their centers, which then find problems that only Scientology can cure?
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:10 AM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


Agree absolutely. People who like this topic should also read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil, a data scientist who realized she's empowering the companies and "defected" and is raising the alarm ever since.

But the tests are getting... cute. I was doing an employment assessment last night. Instead of asking questions, they made me play like 20 or so games... I recognized a lot of them as psychological tests, like how much do you share (how you evaluate risk), but some are pure reflex tests... Like for one color you should hit the arrow corresponding to the left side, but for the other color you should hit the arrow corresponding to the OTHER side. And let's just say the arrows appears to be random and/or not matching.
posted by kschang at 8:11 AM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


mbti at work: pretty much a crime. mbti in a therapeutic setting: pretty useful, imho.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:13 AM on March 5, 2021


as an aquarius with moon opposed in leo and a scorpio ascendant, i am mildly interested in the tests and confident they'll show i'm the best but vigorously resent management using it to pigeonhole people so am inclined to subvert them (and management's intentions). in short: intp. i have only seen the test used well as an illustration to a group that there are diverse "thinking styles"; this utility has varied according to the attitudes already existing and inculcated in the group.

i did take the scientology test once on a lark. surprisingly it said i had problems only scientology could fix. they gave me the hard sell. i gave them the smile & nod and then got in the wind.
posted by 20 year lurk at 8:14 AM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


Very excited for this to confirm all of my priors on personality testing.
I used to work at a major software company that loves to hire new college grads and roles & team placement was determined largely by a personality test. Promotions/role changes were limited based on the results of the personality testing you took before you even worked there. It was not great!
posted by shesdeadimalive at 8:18 AM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


The MBTI's origin story was very interesting! I had no idea that it was designed by women or that it is grounded in Jungian theory. 

" 'Personality tests are by and large constructed to be ableist, to be racist, to be sexist, and to be classist,' says the disability justice advocate Lydia XZ Brown." I would have liked it if the article dug in and provided examples of how bias might be built in to tests, and not just the effects, such as what happened to Behm, the applicant at Kroger.

That said, I don't need any convincing that personality tests should not be used in hiring. Even if they were perfectly bias-free and excellent at predicting employee performance, (unlikely!) they would still be creepily invasive. It is wild to me that we allow companies to build psychological profiles of employees.

I'll give an example: a few years ago I had an interview during which I was given a test with two parts, an intelligence component and a personality test. (I later learned it was probably the Wonderlic.) The intelligence test was like recycled SAT questions, which, whatever, but the personality test was...something else. A bunch of questions where I had to agree or disagree to various statements, with many personal questions about my social life outside work. I remember several trying to suss out my affinity for partying on the weekends. I was already finding it comically uncomfortable and then I got to the one that is still burned into my brain. Agree/disagree: "Sometimes I feel bad about my body."

Can you imagine what would happen if an interviewer asked this verbally. "What was a challenge you overcame in your last job?   Can you describe a time you displayed leadership? Do you hate your body sometimes?" Instead we ask prospective employees this question AND get the answer in writing, to keep on file forever! Amaaaazing.

(I didn't answer the question. Still got offered the job but was beyond relieved when I already took a job elsewhere and didn't have to accept.)
posted by prewar lemonade at 8:22 AM on March 5, 2021 [32 favorites]


My partner reports their government employer occasionally uses personality testing suites to help form working groups with members who have diverse thinking styles. This is probably a reasonable, perhaps even positive, use of them.

Maaaaybe. In my experience, when people are using MBTI or thinking styles or learning styles or whatever in that particular way, it's because they want to be able to use the word "diverse" without confronting why the group is largely white cishet men.
posted by solotoro at 8:23 AM on March 5, 2021 [36 favorites]


The stupidest and therefore most persistent attitude in quality-adjacent management is “You can’t [track/improve] what you can’t measure!”

The really destructive issue is the converse: "What we can measure, we must track/improve". The problem is that the set of measurable metrics and actual quality-affecting ones has pretty significant nonoverlap, which only gets worse once you make attempts to improve the metric without improving any desirable quality. But you squint hard enough and see a connection between, say, standardized testing and college-readiness, and you make SATs a metric used to get into college, and then an industry in tutoring laser-focused on improving SAT scores (without, y'know, actually wasting their time doing anything not-SAT-related like preparing them for college) pops up, and soon enough SAT scores tell you less about who's ready for college than who has the resources to juice their stats.
posted by jackbishop at 8:27 AM on March 5, 2021 [25 favorites]


I would have liked it if the article dug in and provided examples of how bias might be built in to tests

The MBTI, and all the standardized assessments that I am familiar with, are universally developed for, by, tested and normed on white able-bodied people of relatively high SES. Then they are treated as being universally applicable. There is no reason why normative data from white people ought to hold for any other groups, and this has led to systemic oppression and disadvantages for POC and other minority populations.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:42 AM on March 5, 2021 [22 favorites]


Please, tell me how you took a personality test and discovered you’re actually an extroverted introvert. PLEASE DON’T STOP TALKING, I’M SO INTERESTED.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:45 AM on March 5, 2021 [29 favorites]


As an INTJ I've always been skeptical of the MBTI

Just like when people ask me my sign, I tell them Capricorns don't believe in astrology.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:45 AM on March 5, 2021 [51 favorites]


The thing that business metric people miss with regard to personality tests as well as everything else ever, is the idea of confidence intervals/margin of error. When a business metric person sees a result they think "this number is 100% true and fully describes a person" but when a scientist sees the same result they think "this number is a mean of a random distribution of possible values that describe a person" and there's a huge difference. Doing anything job critical with a single data point from a single personality test is literally insane because the margin of error is enormous.

The same problem applies when data scientists take their prediction numbers and show them to managers/executives. Business people care more about perceived confidence than actual truth in general.
posted by JZig at 8:49 AM on March 5, 2021 [13 favorites]


StrengthsFinder is the one that I've encountered at multiple jobs. By design it can't not return a list of strengths for every person who takes it. However, by honestly answering neutral to most of the questions I managed to get a message disclaimer saying something like "Here's your list of strengths but due to your responses they may not be particularly meaningful."

Most of my answers were neutral because they seemed to be variations on choosing a preference between two flawed positions.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:50 AM on March 5, 2021 [10 favorites]


I would have liked it if the article dug in and provided examples of how bias might be built in to tests

Many ways, but one of the classic mechanisms is the tests recapitulate the existing strata of society. For example:

It is well documented that women pay a high price for assertiveness compared to men--they are perceived as pushy, not confident. So there's strong pressure to be more of a team player than the average white male. But when you do these tests, and you try to figure out the personality of a business leader, the personality traits white males can get away with will be over-represented (due to the pre-existing gender imbalance.) So you have there line of questioning that tells you that people who have personalities "like" women are best suited for jobs traditionally held by women.

There are individual exceptions of course. Huge ones. But in aggregate, if these tests were completely accurate in a statistical sense, they'd be describing society and all its people who suffer from bias or have privileged roles, only confusing the effects of privilege and bias with the sources of success and failure.
posted by mark k at 8:54 AM on March 5, 2021 [41 favorites]


Speaking of Astrology... The MBTI has 16 personality types. 16. A full natal chart in astrology has a huge, like astronomically huge, number of personality types, starting with the sun sign times ascendant times planets in houses times aspects between planets etc. Yes, could be all BS, but it does provide a very rich way of talking about personality types.

As to the MMPI, it was developed at a mental hospital, doing inventories on patients to determine pathological states. How did they determine “normal” states? They gave the inventories to people who came to visit the patients.

Personally, I find a lot of personality psychology to be pretty much BS.

The above brought to you by a former INTP now ENTP, Virgo with Gemini rising.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:57 AM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


Oh, The book The Organization Man by William Whyte, late 50’s printed, has an appendix on how to cheat on personality tests. It was common practice then to give these tests to people applying for jobs in large corporations. For example, when taking the test remember - I love my family, but the company comes first. Supposedly they outlawed these tests as part of employment.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:01 AM on March 5, 2021 [8 favorites]


The above brought to you by a former INTP now ENTP, Virgo with Gemini rising.

And that does bring up another point about both astrology and personality testing. While not necessarily scientific, story telling can enable conversations that might be difficult or even impossible otherwise.

But then of course I don't want bureaucracies reading my astrological charts either.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:15 AM on March 5, 2021 [11 favorites]


I've never been asked to fill out a personality test when applying for a job (or at work), although I may have taken a couple when I was a kid at school. I will say, though, that management at even my non-profit organization has become increasingly fixated on measurable "outcomes" over the past 5-10 years. Metrics must be defined and compiled (if an action or service cannot be classified within a drop-down menu, can it even be said to have occurred or been provided?), boxes in spreadsheets must be filled in, and numbers must be pushed up the ladder and compiled into larger and larger groups of numbers in order to provide a foundation for further number-gathering exercises that may or may not serve a purpose outside of the act of compiling the numbers in the first place. "Look," the managers say to whoever they answer to, "at all the work we have done to quantify everything that occurs in this workplace during this fiscal period of time to an individual unit level!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:21 AM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


Honorable mention to the really dumb one from 20 years ago where you chose 8 colors in a row to get a personality result.

The Lüscher Color Test. Pretty much discredited, as you might expect. My parents had a copy of the test and book, which I self-tested with on a semi-regular basis as a teenager. It was interesting as a tool for self-reflection, but otherwise it was just a fun parlor trick.
posted by me3dia at 9:32 AM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


My own favourite corporate story is we did True Colours(tm) at work and just before we all opened our booklets (ancient days), my boss turned to me, the coordinator for a group of social workers, and chirped "It's a good thing you're going to be gold!" Why yes, indeed my test results did indicate that! Because then I decided to throw the test that way.

My favourite personal story is that my spouse and I did the MBTI in marriage preparation course and the priest going through the results it looked at his, looked at mine, asked about our birth order (both oldest) and returned the tests to us saying solemnly, "I wish you both luck, and the grace of God, as you will need it." (This was 27.5 years ago and we're still happily married so I'd say we're ok. The I/E divide was sort of critical information.)

I will say the one thing group personality activities gave me in my 20s was an appreciation for difference. Since I was raised in a household where there was kind of One True Way (whatever my parent felt like that day) it was actually helpful to have society reinforce that there are many ways of being in the world, all with strengths and weaknesses.

I will say...as a multiple personality, taking an external personality test can lead to migraine-level cacophony (can't see, can't process information, headache) unless a helpful boss tells you which way to throw the test.

Either one of us takes the test, in which case we test to the people who enjoy test taking/people pleasing which may not be the people showing up to work/school/in the group discussing the results, or we argue over many of the questions (or the loudest person wins) and I'm pretty sure the results wouldn't make sense if they were really a thing. I think we do have a narrower range of results than general humanity, because we have after all a massive shared background, shared genes, and a shared actual brain.

Even so, we went through a period of Everyone Taking All The Tests so that we could like, understand each other, and spent a few years almost holding each other to that, like, "aren't you the INTP? Shouldn't you be able to think your way out of this?"

That eventually got a bit toxic though because of the issues well identified here - if you predetermine who is going to be good at something and who is going to be challenged by something, and you reinforce that by removing opportunity, it tends to stifle growth - not just for the individual, but for the structures around them.

All of which is to say that I've got an inside track on how the narrative of different personalities can help us bridge differences, but it's really bad to use them as destiny.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:37 AM on March 5, 2021 [23 favorites]


After my last job search adventure, I came out with a personal rule that any company giving personality and/or intelligence tests as a part of their hiring process is an automatic hard pass. It says so much more about the culture of the company than those using it think it does, and none of it’s good.
I have this notion that Americans are easily fascinated by numbers and/or things which seem to be easily measured, but I have no idea about why. Theories?
One thing we Americans have done, and unfortunately spread to much of the rest of the world, is to promote the idea that “management” is a skill of its own, completely untethered from any deep understanding of who or what is being managed. The problems with this get compounded at scale: If you’re in a huge company and you’re a low-level worker, then the business goals of the company are a weird abstraction with no clear connection to the things you do day-to-day. If you’re in upper management, the actual work being done in the company is a similarly weird abstraction. If you’re in middle management both ends are weird abstractions.

So the reasons for, and the problems with, this obsession with easy measurability are laziness and cowardice. Laziness, because you’ve got managers who don’t understand their business well enough in a holistic sense to make decisions they can be confident in. Cowardice, because lacking confidence in their decisions, they want to appeal to some outside authority as being responsible for their decisions. If you make a bad call, you get to point to “the numbers” and say “I’m a ‘numbers guy,’ so given another shot I’d have to make the same bad decision again and then blame ‘the numbers’ again when it fails again.” And people keep their jobs with that strategy.

Americans love passing the buck to an outside authority that allegedly makes hard or uncomfortable decisions for them. Personality tests give you that, with all the specificity of a horoscope wrapped up in a veneer of pseudoscience. It allows hiring managers to rationalize any venal, unprofessional or unjustifiable decision they’d already made, without taking personal responsibility for it. “The Test” said you were over 40 not a good fit for our culture because of your age attitude towards authority.
The stupidest and therefore most persistent attitude in quality-adjacent management is “You can’t [track/improve] what you can’t measure!”
What is measured is always optimized, but optimizing for things that are easy to measure is an antipattern, and not widely enough understood as such. What’s easy to measure is easy to game, even unconsciously. If you decide “the Dow” is a shorthand for “the economy” then you’ll do things that cause people to starve but make stocks go up and crow about the success of “the economy” while people starve.

Money in general is the most important example of this. If you conclude “more money” is automatically indicative of doing something right, then the “invisible hand” will quite readily kill people to make that happen. If you’d rather it didn’t do that, you’ve got to specifically make decisions that incentivize people remaining alive.
posted by gelfin at 9:48 AM on March 5, 2021 [52 favorites]


Now that we're allowed to question personality tests, is anyone out there ready to question the DSM?
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:49 AM on March 5, 2021 [15 favorites]


My undergraduate honors thesis 25+ years ago was a multivariate examination of all the major Self-Esteem inventories that were in popular use in psychology research at the time using over 25,000 participants worth of data from all kinds of different populations.

Not a single inventory had the properties they claimed. Not a single inventory met the not even very stringent requirements of that era to be considered valid measures by psychometricians (current requirements are a bit tougher and better enforced - but not by much - mostly because computers have made analysis easier). But the psychometricians were not the ones doing research on self-esteem and they were not the ones promoting it is a concept for use in practice (unless they were selling their inventory commercially). One of the big flaws of peer review is that there are typically only a few peers involved - maybe three - and they may or may not possess the statistical or measurement knowledge to properly assess the validity of measures. Some people are area specialists with no knowledge outside their content area and can be shockingly unskilled at the foundational tools used in research. Also deeply suspect inventories continue to be used by people who are unaware of their problems because they are not "in the loop" or have only done shallow lit reviews.

Measurement in psychology is a huge mess and may well always be because of some core foundational issues and I am extremely skeptical of even the more accepted scientific tests that have had lots of proper validation work done.

And all that mess doesn't even get into the issues of bias or the ethics of using inventories to determine peoples futures.

Self-esteem largely ended up recognized as Goop level bullshit and I am so glad Oprah moved off standard cable so it could largely die out as something people were obsessively focused on the way it was in the late nineties but alas all that happens is that people move onto other vapid ideas.
posted by srboisvert at 10:01 AM on March 5, 2021 [20 favorites]


Most of my answers were neutral because they seemed to be variations on choosing a preference between two flawed positions.

Forced to take this same test at my last job, had the same assessment (two flawed positions.) When I mentioned my personal assessment of the questions to my supervisor, - that my native responses/feelings were “none of the above”, I was labeled as being combative.

It’s impossible to get good results when the options don’t include an adequate array of experiences.

There is also an inherent bias when so much of potential human response is simply not on the test.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:01 AM on March 5, 2021 [12 favorites]


DERAIL:

is anyone out there ready to question the DSM?

Sounds like a new post, but name a period of time when people didn't question the DSM?

As someone who's lived experience has extremely rarely been believed by anyone (as a child being abused, as a teen with neuroatypicalities, as a woman seeking help in a toxic culture, as someone who is comfortable with thelr diagnosis who is told every time it comes up it's not a thing because a bunch of other people went on Oprah in the 90s....) I promise you no one believes anything they don't want to. :)

END DERAIL
posted by warriorqueen at 10:04 AM on March 5, 2021 [25 favorites]


Gelfin: "One thing we Americans have done, and unfortunately spread to much of the rest of the world, is to promote the idea that “management” is a skill of its own, completely untethered from any deep understanding of who or what is being managed. "

Sheldon Wolin talks about this very thing in Democracy, Incorporated.
posted by JohnFromGR at 10:06 AM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


A while back, in my early 20s when I was on dating websites, I had the line "If you're into myers-briggs, I'm a hufflepuff" in my bio. It worked really well as a litmus test - some people would just laugh at the humor (an ok response), some people would get the hint that I'm making fun of MBTI by comparing it to a children's book (best response) some people would take it as an opportunity to talk 'nerd' (I am a nerd but not that kind). The worst responses were people who were really, really into mbti. Invariably men who wanted to teach me something. Very easy to ignore
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:30 AM on March 5, 2021 [19 favorites]


One thing that has always frustrated me about the MBTI is that the four "preferences" are first scored as a percentage, and then that gets quantized to four binary options.

So if you're around 50% in two of those preferences (as I have been when I took it), you can take the test four times and get four different results, zero of which should be taken seriously.
posted by Foosnark at 10:38 AM on March 5, 2021 [16 favorites]


Warriorqueen has it right: if they slap you with true colors you want to be gold or orange, depending on your boss's personality. (Gold=money-driven, orange=risk-taking/competitive.) Whatever you do, don't end up a green-blue hybrid. Claim that you like the pictures of diamonds and skiing more than the pictures of puppies and books.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:50 AM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


Not good at tests, never took a personality test as I knew I could not face that D-. (rim shot)
posted by sammyo at 11:14 AM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


is anyone out there ready to question the DSM?

Um, people are always questioning the DSM. That's why they keep revising it.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:27 AM on March 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


This was a really bad and poorly researched documentary. It is very misleading and sensationalist. I'm really surprised to see CNN co-produced it.

A few things - The documentary wrongly conflates MBTI, which is nearly useless and not for use with any hiring or high stakes situations, with Big 5 or Five-Factor Model personality assessments. The Big 5 actually predicts behavioral outcomes in life and at work, but most of this movie is focused on MBTI. The movie leaves a lot of contextual detail out about how real psychometrically solid personality assessments for selection are developed and used. It ignores how they should or shouldn't be used ethically. It ignores how the EEOC provides guidelines developed with work psychologists on the development and use of fair and valid selection tools that avoid adverse impact on minority populations. It ignores how these assessments have not been found to have an adverse impact on protected classes.

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology has issued their statement here.


HBO Max Documentary on Personality Tests Fails: SIOP Responds

HBO Max and CNN Films recently released a documentary titled: Persona: The dark truth behind personality tests. The documentary makes a number of assertions that are inaccurate, potentially undermining good science and practice involving uses of personality assessments in the workplace. The film focuses on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and correctly communicates that the types were not designed, nor should they be used, to make hiring or other highstakes decisions. However, the focus on how the MBTI can create problems for individuals and organizations obscures the fact that there is a body of research that supports the use of personality assessments to inform decision making.

Scientific research clearly shows that personality assessments developed according to modern professional standards can predict which job applicants are most likely to become successful performers, be more satisfied in their job, and less likely to quit, without unfair discrimination. Unfortunately, the film conflates MBTI and scientifically valid personality assessments such that most viewers will not understand the distinction. Scientifically based, professionally developed Big 5-based assessments and their variants are not medical diagnostic tools and cannot be used to diagnose or detect mental health conditions. Test questions are screened for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The film depicts personality assessment as a single source of information used by organizations. In practice, any single assessment is rarely used as the sole source of information for hiring decisions.

The field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology specializes in the implementation of scientifically valid assessments in the workplace. We study the requirements for success in jobs and help organizations evaluate candidates against those job requirements, using assessments as the most effective and proven method. I-O psychology was inaccurately described as supporting only organizational operations and profits. Rather, I-O psychology addresses workplace issues to protect and improve careers and lives of individuals, and to enhance the effectiveness of teams and organizations. A major focus for the field is to promote fairness, equity, and unbiased decision making in organizations. When used as part of a job-related approach to assessment, personality assessments increase compliance with guidelines for ensuring fair and non-discriminatory hiring outcomes that organizations are legally held accountable to.

We do not advocate for the use of general personality assessments without proper methods to relate specific traits measured on the assessments to job requirements, and without proper validation evidence showing that they predict job-relevant outcomes. This distinction is what sets scientifically valid assessments apart from MBTI and others. There is a dark side to personality assessments, or indeed any assessment, when they are not used responsibly or researched properly. However, there is also a bright side to personality assessments when used in an appropriate, evidence-based manner, by well-trained professionals.

posted by Che boludo! at 11:32 AM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


There's a lot of sleight of hand in personality tests. StrengthsFinder is often touted as having consistency in results via Gallup, but that doesn't mean that it's measuring what it claims to measure. It clearly isn't able to tell if you're actually good at the things you think you're good at, so that means that it's measuring self-image. Which, I mean, that's cool, I guess--there's some value in gaining confidence in yourself. But I certainly wouldn't make hiring decisions based on it.
posted by past unusual at 11:33 AM on March 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


I'm absolutely going to watch this, but my main takeaway from the trailer is that I really, really wish they hadn't gone all out on sensationalism. It's already an interesting subject; it does not need an interstitial frame saying "WILL YOU SUBMIT?" over a human face, or a tagline about "THE DARK TRUTH."

The sensationalism is distracting and makes it way harder to take the film seriously. Which is not to mention that running ominous music and messages about how people are being manipulated is, itself, manipulative.

I'm still hyped to learn about the history behind the pseudoscience and how its application has evolved over time, though.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:43 AM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


Scientific research clearly shows that personality assessments developed according to modern professional standards can predict which job applicants are most likely to become successful performers, be more satisfied in their job, and less likely to quit, without unfair discrimination

The part I emphasized is total self-serving nonsensical drivel, or could perhaps be more charitably described as begging the question.

People use the tests to discriminate between applicants. The tests are not perfect. I would say if you take a test and are denied a job you could have done because you are somehow similar to people who failed at that job, it is unfair. The people who design the tests want it to claim it is fair because their hearts are pure or something; they weren't targeting you specifically.

People need to think carefully about their intuitions when applying statistics to humans. Even when they are accurate the best they do is put people into categories and then shunt one category to the side and privilege a different one.
posted by mark k at 11:45 AM on March 5, 2021 [30 favorites]


without unfair discrimination
[citation needed]

(On preview: jinx.)
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:46 AM on March 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


And from the comments, it is apparent that there is a common misconception that MBTI is used for hiring. I'm not saying it never has been used incorrectly in this way but it leaves an employer open to lawsuits. I'm defending good assessments and if I see MBTI or Disc for team building or coaching purposes I'm rolling my eyes and praying to not have to be involved.

If anybody is interested in a valid Big 5 assessment - The IPIP-NEO (International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO PI-R®) The International Personlaity Item Pool can be found here for some technical detail.

The Society for Human Resources (SHRM) provides information on assessment processes:

Screening by Means of Pre-Employment Testing

More articles from SHRM on the topic are here.
posted by Che boludo! at 11:48 AM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


My manager was super-hot for our team to go through the Emergenetics training and evaluation. Just the name itself pinged my BS meter, and the website itself (which I refuse to link to) even harder. The absolutely required "training", as I expected, was total rah-rah woo BS. I answered 'C' to all 75 or so questions of the evaluations. After that we never heard a word about it again, to my relief.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:17 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


People use the tests to discriminate between applicants. The tests are not perfect. I would say if you take a test and are denied a job you could have done because you are somehow similar to people who failed at that job, it is unfair. The people who design the tests want it to claim it is fair because their hearts are pure or something; they weren't targeting you specifically.

They aren't targeting people unfairly. When used correctly an assessment is 'selecting for' a desired trait or behavior and not necessarily 'screening out'. Screening does happen. Police departments for example and other high-stakes positions often screen for mental pathologies which is another topic. What are a job interviews and other screening processes anyway? To 'discriminate', your choice of words, between acceptable, unacceptable, and ultimately who is the best or preferred candidate for a job. It's not just a personality assessment result that makes these final decisions. Assessments are used as an overall larger job selection battery. The job search process sucks and a lot of times it seems really unfair and often probably is. To state that assessment designers 'want to claim it is fair' is a pretty unfounded assumption itself.
posted by Che boludo! at 12:19 PM on March 5, 2021


A simple google search will reveal that the NEO FFI/PI-R/etc is filled with its own problems and critiques and biases, not unlike many of those leveraged against MB. To defend it as Super Valid and Great and Totally Different From The Others is really weird.

In my field, there was a lot of interest in using the NEO for a while to predict various health-related outcomes. This has been largely abandoned because of problems with the assessment.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:29 PM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


> The absolutely required "training", as I expected, was total rah-rah woo BS. I answered 'C' to all 75 or so questions of the evaluations. After that we never heard a word about it again, to my relief.

That's the end result of a lot of management-driven crap like this, and probably the expected and desired outcome on their end, too.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:49 PM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Deleted a few long copy-paste comments. Moving forward, please post with shorter selected passages and link to the longer document if needed.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 1:11 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


My last place went through an MBTI phase. The main thing I liked about it was the idea that other people are different and different is ok. We did have a session where 80% of the participants were J-types (planners) and the other 20% were P-types (flexible organisers). The Js were absolutely convinced there's was the one true way and the rest of us were slackers. So that was interesting. Just about that time, I started developing my excellent reputation for being able to plan, project manage and deliver.
posted by plonkee at 1:13 PM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


I once joined the subreddit for my MBTI type and... it was a trip.

Mine seemed to be about equally composed of a) people who were just having fun with it, b) people who were acting as if criticisms of MBTI were some kind of forbidden knowledge which they alone dared reveal, and c) people for whom it seemed to be their religion and/or complete lifestyle. I've always been a little tempted to periodically retake the test, as I've wandered across one category or another practically my entire adult life, and subscribe to the relevant subreddit, just to see if the experience changes significantly, but I don't have that much free time.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:24 PM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


A simple google search will reveal that the NEO FFI/PI-R/etc is filled with its own problems and critiques and biases, not unlike many of those leveraged against MB. To defend it as Super Valid and Great and Totally Different From The Others is really weird.

Absolutely fair points. Let's just say the MBTI is from an entirely different planet. If I have any beef here it's with the ubiquitousness of the MBTI in people's conscientiousness. It is complete pseudoscience and near worthless. They are different and a Google search doesn't exactly bring up fair and accurate assessments of assessments either which leads into the documentary in question. My really big beef is with this documentary which conflates all assessments as being the same pseudoscience. If you watch it it's pretty heavy-handed and hamfisted.

I am very curious about the state-depression versus trait emotional stability (aka neuroticism) effect on each other which is a largely unexplored and unexplained part of the documentary. I don't want to spoil it, but the ending but there are some pretty specious claims drawn about the connection between assessment results and one individual's outcome. From what I can tell with a brief search is that there is research connecting certain Big 5 traits to risk for depression and other affective disorders. I can find nothing linking long-term mood disorder to any kind of distorted results which seems like could be a huge possibility.
posted by Che boludo! at 1:46 PM on March 5, 2021


My local Jordan Peterson wanna-be and (fortunately) now-former colleague studied personality, apparently....
posted by eviemath at 1:47 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


A. Did one open the link(s)
B. Have the link(s) been read.
C. Have comments been read.
D. Did one comment.
E. non applicable.
posted by clavdivs at 1:57 PM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


I do think there are several cross-context conversations being had in these threads, which in itself is rather interesting.

My personal experience with MBTI is mostly negative, as it was "weaponized" by people who did not like how I operated and they attempted to use it to force me to conform to their personal ideas of how I should perform my job. That lasted all of 5 minutes after they essentially _told me_ what my MBTI personality type was. Man, that HR encounter was really funny. It was also one of the few times involving HR actually worked in my favor.

The part I find amusing is how many people think that personality is a "fixed" aspect of an individual. I know for certain if I take any kind of self-evaluation test, it will have different results for time of day, whether I've eaten yet, whether I've had coffee, if I'm distracted by something I'm working on (I tend to "backbrain-process" things internally, often to the point of distraction), what the weather is like, etc, etc, etc. All major factors of how I evaluate my own mental state. Also, major life events can drastically change a persons expression of personality traits, so taking a personality test when you are 20 versus taking the same test ten years later can return drastically different results.

The biggest danger/downside to any of this is the tendency for people to want a simple answer to a complex question. "For every complex question there is always a simple, pat, and wrong answer." There are not simple answers to complex questions, and a human personality is a complex thing.

Now, I will point out that this does not mean that we shouldn't attempt to study and academically understand how this complex thing functions, simply that too often the complex things studied in academic isolation get used in the wild in very detrimental ways. As some have stated in previous comments, some people will use "the numbers" as their scapegoat to justify decisions that "the numbers" have very little to do with. The worst tendency for people who insist that personality tests are valid tools for categorizing people and making decisions "for the greater good" behave in the same mode as people who insist that Eugenics are a good idea, just misunderstood. You may (or probably may not) find is surprising how many "good liberals" believe in things that are just rebranded Eugenics or heck, just plain old Nazi shit, simply because it was sold in a prettier packaging, with a big ol' "Science Approved" sticker on the box.

I do think it is important to know where an idea comes from and how it became a large phenomena in society, but I also think it is important to discern the total effects of applying that idea, especially when it is used as a tool to craft policy or law. Just because it is legal to use a personality test as a way to select job applicants does not mean that it is good, nor does it mean that the reasoning why it is allowed is good and didn't ignore the unintended consequences of that reasoning. It is not anecdotal that a large portion of people discriminated against by the use of these tests are in protected classes, but never seem to meet the criteria for "unfair treatment". The rules define "unfair treatment" by a legal definition that looks at groups, not individuals. A rule, mind you, put in place by a predominantly white, male majority. While a majority of the current research and study done around personality and psychology are decidedly _not_ white males, this historical disconnect has to be understood as a pre-existing factor which does affect how the use of these tools have impacts beyond their intended application. Also note that the only means of arguing that these tools have been used for discriminatory purposes is through the court system, which, unless you can afford a lawyer (which the vast majority of marginalized people cannot), you are not going to see a lot of active legal pushback against it.

(edited to fix a typo)
posted by daq at 2:00 PM on March 5, 2021 [8 favorites]


Previously I posted large selections of a few documents that address fairness in selection procedures which includes personality assessment in The United States. These two documents go into great detail about how to use and develop a fair and unbiased job selection tool or procedure. Hopefully, these shorter selections are suitable and helpful.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Guidelines on Employment Selection Procedures

(8) Fairness. This section generally calls for studies of unfairness where technically feasible. The concept of fairness or unfairness of selection procedures is a developing concept. In addition, fairness studies generally require substantial numbers of employees in the job or group of jobs being studied.

(a) Unfairness defined. When members of one race, sex, or ethnic group characteristically obtain lower scores on a selection procedure than members of another group, and the differences in scores are not reflected in differences in a measure of job performance, use of the selection procedure may unfairly deny opportunities to members of the group that obtains the lower scores.

Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures

Statement of Purpose The purpose of the Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures (hereafter referred to as the Principles) is to specify established scientific findings and generally accepted professional practice in the field of personnel selection psychology,........with a focus on the accuracy of the inferences that underlie personnel decisions

Fairness Fairness is a social rather than a psychometric concept. Its definition depends on what one considers to be fair. Fairness has no single meaning and, therefore, no single definition, whether statistical, psychometric, or social. There is agreement that issues of equitable treatment, access, bias, and scrutiny for possible bias when subgroup differences are observed are important concerns in personnel selection. Most organizations strive for a diverse and inclusive workforce and equitable treatment of cultural and linguistic minorities. There is not, however, agreement that the term “fairness” can be uniquely defined in terms of any of these issues.

The document then goes on to discuss bias and fairness of testing and how to avoid them in lengthy technical terms.

posted by Che boludo! at 2:10 PM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


in lengthy technical terms.

Well I think we've identified the (or, at least, a) problem.
posted by eviemath at 2:14 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


When in the past I've been asked if I have taken the Myers-Briggs I say, "I did. It came out J.

...

just ... J."
posted by komara at 2:20 PM on March 5, 2021 [14 favorites]


The stupidest and therefore most persistent attitude in quality-adjacent management is “You can’t [track/improve] what you can’t measure!”

There is some truth to this in my experience. Where it gets stupid is that people fail to understand that not all measurements are meaningful or useful. It's in a similar vein to the "we must do something and this is something, so we must do this" compulsion that many people seem to have.

The formula for calculating the circumference of a circle is always valid for its intended purpose, but you're still gonna get the wrong answer if you're actually looking for the area, you know?
posted by wierdo at 2:22 PM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


Well I think we've identified the (or, at least, a) problem.

It's technical stuff and one of the documents is a legal one so some legalese is added on top of it all for fun. The document also addresses quite a few more related selection procedures so it covers a lot of ground.
posted by Che boludo! at 2:30 PM on March 5, 2021


There had always been something about personality tests that bugged me but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and then a few years ago I was taking a test that everyone in my office seemed obsessed with and it hit me: (often) (many of) these tests are vague to the point of uselessness. In certain situations I am extroverted and in other situations I am introverted, but with these tests I am to decide one or the other in some hazily described scenario. It's lazy test-making, because I am obligated to provide context, but it's sort of arbitrary and I could easily guess "wrong" and be given a wildly different result and the end.
posted by zardoz at 3:08 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


I had to take the MBTI as part of an "emerging leaders" program at the big corporation I used to work at. It told me nothing that I didn't already know about myself. But it did tell the people running the program that I wasn't really cut out for management. They gave me the option to continue, though, so I did. But I was marked as unsuitable for managing and my career pretty much flatlined from that point.
posted by tommasz at 3:08 PM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


these tests are vague to the point of uselessness. In certain situations I am extroverted and in other situations I am introverted

That's the problem with typologies like MBTI. It's all binary. Yes or no. On or off. Extro or introvert. Traits exist on spectrums and don't demonstrate in the same way in each situation.

I wasn't really cut out for management. They gave me the option to continue, though, so I did. But I was marked as unsuitable for managing and my career pretty much flatlined from that point.

That is bad. Depending on the situation, lawsuit bad. I really hope that you are still not there and that it didn't set you back too much.
posted by Che boludo! at 3:15 PM on March 5, 2021


Even if the test were accurate and repeatable (it's not) it amounts to a tautology.

The test asks which characteristics you prefer, and assigns you a type based on the prevalence. But the definition of each type ends up being those same characteristics! One could simply pick the list of adjectives they like best and apply the label for that box.
posted by mikek at 3:49 PM on March 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


Every time I take one of these tests, I end up exactly on the edge of 2 or 3 axes, so it’s like, “eh, choose your preferred result.” And I’m like “why do you do this?”
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:00 PM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


When in the past I've been asked if I have taken the Myers-Briggs I say, "I did. It came out J.

...

just ... J."


This is the result I got the last time I took it! The other 3 items landed in the middle of the continuum.
posted by Emmy Rae at 4:05 PM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


If these tests seem to work in a hiring situation, that's probably because many applicants, like me, lie through their teeth when taking them. Personality assessments have become very trendy in retail job applictions here, and it's pretty obvious they want someone smiley and outgoing who loooooves people so that's what I give them. Even though I'm a total misanthropic weirdo. Luckily I have a good game-face when actually at work.

So no, personality tests are not a great and fair way to assess people's ability to do the job, they're a great way to discount honest applicants in favour of smart liars. I resent ever single one I've had to take.
posted by stillnocturnal at 4:24 PM on March 5, 2021 [28 favorites]


I'm sure a million people with professional expertise have wrung their hands about this, but for me, the main issue with these tests is that they beg so many questions. What is the ultimate goal of administering these tests? Is a test the best way to attain that goal? Are there core personality traits? If so, and if the traits listed are core ones, why are they the most relevant? Is a quiz really the best way to assess these traits? Is quantifying qualities the best way to get at something meaningful here? Or are we quantifying things in order to make the exercise seem more official/high-minded/scientific/unbiased? How do these tests control for external factors or change over time, especially if they aren't being offered longitudinally? If the test is being administered to determine "requirements for success," who is setting those requirements and how were they determined? What is the relationship between these traits and that success? Who designed the test and what blind spots might they have? Who administers the test and in what setting? At what time of day? How does that impact the outcome? Does the fact that the test is a marketable product introduce bias or overreach? How does telling someone their traits modify their self-perception and behavior going forward? And on and on.

I've had to do the HBDI and a short and informal four-color work-styles test. I think their main value wasn't so much in their results as in providing an opening for my teams to have a detached conversation about expectations, preferences, and work styles, and how we might better meet one another in the middle. It was definitely helpful for us to have that conversation! I just feel like there are other, less pseudoscientific, less essentializing ways to get there. The tests also feel super American, so it's a little weird for us to be to imposing them on on an international team.

On a personal level, I do find it pretty fun to think about archetypes and how I relate to them, but I don't see much of a difference between big-five personality traits, astrological signs, or people identifying as kind of a Samantha. I once took the MBTI on my phone in the dark at 3 a.m. because I couldn't sleep and figured a long list of boring questions might help. My result was served along with a Humira ad starring a former coworker who's an actress. It was pretty funny to be laying in bed as my true self was revealed and a tiny image of someone I know grinned and feigned arthritis. I guess there's a time and place for everything.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 4:27 PM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


Why would anyone in their right mind fill in honest answers to these tests in cases when their future employment or career progression is at stake? If you want to advance into management for example, simply channel your inner Straight White Minnesota Manager persona.

The whole industry is at best cargo cult "science". If it results in preferentially hiring people like a firm's current workforce, then it likely reinforces current racism and sexism.
posted by monotreme at 4:28 PM on March 5, 2021 [22 favorites]


... and it's pretty obvious they want someone smiley and outgoing who loooooves people so that's what I give them. Even though I'm a total misanthropic weirdo. Luckily I have a good game-face when actually at work.

This!

Some of us have Inclinations, and then a whole body of adaptive skills we’ve developed and deploy very well in public situations. If you test only for “personality traits” you deselect individuals who achieve the **practical implementation** of those traits albeit through different personal channels.

Just.... geez.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:31 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


Every time I take one of these tests, I end up exactly on the edge of 2 or 3 axes, so it’s like, “eh, choose your preferred result.” And I’m like “why do you do this?”

This is why I usually give up on personality tests partway through. If a test doesn't have the kind of answers that will allow me to answer it accurately, how accurate with the test be? I'm interested in taking them, because I always hope they'll tell me something about myself that will be useful to me. I've long thought there was something atypical about me, either personality-wise or neurologically, and that it would help me to get it diagnosed, but I've yet to find the diagnostic tool that can nail it down.

Most of the corporate personal development stuff is crap, in my experience. At one place I worked they had training sessions with levels that I think were referred to in terms of precious metals and gemstones -- you could get to the gold or diamond or emerald level or some such. They had all of us take the first level, and I didn't get a thing out of it. It was all so vague and trite.

That's not to say personality tests can't be used for good purpose. Martin Seligman has written about the time he was hired to consult with Metropolitan Life on its retention rates for their salespeople, which were terrible, though the company was using a personality quiz to screen employees. On average, it took their salespeople fifty calls to make one sale, and most people simply won't keep making that many dead end calls to get to the one successful one -- they'll start to procrastinate and/or simply give up. Seligman figured out that what MetLife needed were extremely optimistic people who wouldn't be discouraged by those forty-nine unsuccessful calls. He devised a test that would assess how optimistic their job applicants were, and it worked -- the people who tested as highly optimistic proved to be the ones with the staying power for the job, and MetLife's sales staff retention rates improved dramatically. He then tried an experiment to test the efficacy of the former personality test by measuring the success of those who passed that test versus those who didn't (with of course a control group of those who weren't given the personality test at all), and the test was found to be irrelevant and discarded completely.

Personality assessment can work in a corporate setting, but it has to be designed, tested, and implemented by those who actually understand how it works, and from what I've seen, it's usually put in place by corporate executives who haven't a clue.
posted by orange swan at 4:32 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


" He took personality tests/and stapled them to his lower lip"
Stan Ridgway, "Jack Talked Like a Man on Fire"
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:34 PM on March 5, 2021


you could get to the gold or diamond or emerald

Do you work at Duolingo?

Is the owl your boss? Please don't tell him I'm here.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 4:44 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


When I wintered in Antarctica, the MMPI was a major part of the psychological evaluation I had to go through to make sure I wouldn't crack and hit someone with a hammer (for example). I recall questions like:

"I prefer a) hunting and flower arrangement or b) knitting and sports"

and

"I always do what the voices in my head tell me to."

a. strongly agree b) agree c) neither agree nor disagree d) disagree e) strongly disagree

The absurdity of the test was meant to be tempered somewhat by an interview with an actual person, but that person was typically a temporary hire working for a subcontractor and had no firsthand knowledge of the reality of winter in Antarctica as well as a strong desire for expediency. Needless to say (and to judge generally by the people who typically spend winters in Antarctica), passing the winter psych-eval was much more a matter of figuring out the "right" answers than actually being somehow mentally "qualified" to winter over.
posted by deadbilly at 4:50 PM on March 5, 2021 [13 favorites]


Maybe the way to think about MBTI and its bastard children is that they're psychology theater, in the way that the various indignities that TSA subjects people to at airports is security theater. It resembles what it supposedly is enough to be believable, with a little suspension of disbelief.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:52 PM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


> One thing that has always frustrated me about the MBTI is that the four "preferences" are first scored as a percentage, and then that gets quantized to four binary options.

So if you're around 50% in two of those preferences (as I have been when I took it), you can take the test four times and get four different results, zero of which should be taken seriously.


> That's the problem with typologies like MBTI. It's all binary. Yes or no. On or off. Extro or introvert. Traits exist on spectrums and don't demonstrate in the same way in each situation.

Glad someone said it. Back at Large University, I made sure to ingrain a deep-seated resentment of the MBTI into students by showing them the nearly infinite scenarios where one minor change in responses could yield entirely different categorizations, and that this lazy approach encourages stereotyping and a frankly unscientific rigidity towards something as variable as the manifestation of personality characteristics in a given situation. Good times.

And to the person who asked why Americans are fascinated by numbers and measures like this, my answer is also laziness. Transforming something complex or abstract into a singular measure means the measure does all the thinking and decision-making for you, despite being further and further removed from the original construct it was meant to represent. But because this approach works under other circumstances, the inappropriateness of its transfer is lost on them.
posted by Arson Lupine at 4:53 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


In certain situations I am extroverted and in other situations I am introverted, but with these tests I am to decide one or the other in some hazily described scenario.

Ages ago, I attended a workshop built around something called "I-SPEAK Your Language." It was Jungian, like the MBTI, but it only claimed to evaluate preferred communication styles - not one's personality as a whole. What I found particularly interesting/useful was that it returned 2 scores: your regular communication style and your communication style when under stress.

For example, I'm typically an Intuitor - idea-oriented, head in the clouds, big picture kind of person.
But, under stress, I become very systematic, concrete, and brusque - nail down the facts and the next steps, and everything else is irrelevant.
And sometimes, I don't even realize how much pressure I'm under until I notice myself breaking everything down to bullet-points.

One thing that has always frustrated me about the MBTI is that the four "preferences" are first scored as a percentage, and then that gets quantized to four binary options.
So if you're around 50% in two of those preferences (as I have been when I took it), you can take the test four times and get four different results, zero of which should be taken seriously.


When I first took the MBTI, decades ago, I think I was an INFX, because my score on the last category was too close to call.
posted by cheshyre at 5:00 PM on March 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


My local Jordan Peterson wanna-be

Mommy, that man is scaring me
posted by benzenedream at 5:06 PM on March 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


y'all know you can blockquote a key graf, then link, right? blockquote. blockquote blockquote blockquote.
j_
posted by j_curiouser at 5:22 PM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


I’ve watched the documentary (well, had it on while I was working), and one of the examples they gave was a perfect example of the sort of asinine question that can’t be answered simply.

“If I see a fire truck go by with sirens going, I follow it to see what’s happening.”

If you’re trying to suss out my curiosity and my engagement with my environment, my knee-jerk, non-impulse-controlled response would be an emphatic “Strongly Agree.” I’m exactly the sort of person who’d want to find out what’s happening.

But in practice my answer would be “Strongly Disagree” for all the reasons that no responsible adult does that: I’ve got other obligations, my curiosity might amount to an unsavory interest in disaster porn, I’m not trained to meaningfully help, and moreover I’d potentially be in the way. I understand my curiosity is not more important than other people’s safety, and I have a Kantian categorical sort of instinct about what the world would be like if everybody swarmed after fire trucks.

Both of those answers say something about my “personality,” but they’re diametrically opposed answers. Is the question meant to test my curiosity or my maturity? Pick wrong, and you effectively fail. Every personality test is littered with ambiguous questions like this, and their advocates hand-wave away concerns with BS responses like “say whatever comes into your mind first” which might as well be “just flip a coin” for all it resolves the issue.
JohnFromGR:
Sheldon Wolin talks about this very thing in Democracy, Incorporated.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve added it to the pile.
posted by gelfin at 5:28 PM on March 5, 2021 [12 favorites]


Why don't they just bring in someone to read tarot cards, at least it would be fun. I've only ever done these tests at retreats, and they were like the TED talk videos we watched, utterly useless but mildly entertaining.
posted by emjaybee at 5:45 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


"Why would anyone in their right mind fill in honest answers to these tests in cases when their future employment or career progression is at stake? If you want to advance into management for example, simply channel your inner Straight White Minnesota Manager persona."

In a sense the employment tests are actually useful for testing aptitude. You have to figure out what the test writer means in the often poorly written question, which answer would be valued by the test scorer, and then avoid the traps "I have never stolen from work" and put in a few wrong answers so as not to have a suspiciously good score. Anyone who can figure out THAT bullshit can probably figure out how to do their work tasks.
posted by mikek at 6:08 PM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


Hey remember when Google was famous for asking job candidates weird brain teasers like "How many golf balls fit on a plane?" Well they stopped asking those questions because they had no correlation to employee success.

They also stopped asking for college transcripts and GPAs, because they, too, were worthless for predicting employee success.

So yeah, even your college grades don't mean shit. Much less these personality tests.
posted by ryanrs at 6:20 PM on March 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


A proper employment personality screening should challenge candidates with an array of alluring hazards to navigate, several shocking novelties, and a devastating rejection to overcome.

Willa Wonka is a good model.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:22 PM on March 5, 2021 [17 favorites]


One of the big oil companies had all their contractors take some four-colors test and then had everyone on the rig wear a sticker of "their" color on their hard-hat.
Being the only blue sticker on a rig full of reds just made me into a target - swapped it when I moved to a different rig.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:28 PM on March 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


Because of this thread I subjected myself to an assortment of online psychological personality tests. According to the results I'm a Lawful Neutral Potato.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:34 PM on March 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


What color of potato though?
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:37 PM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


If I had to guess, I'm INXS but my partner is more NOFX.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:17 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


What color of potato though?

Couch.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:32 PM on March 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


Well they stopped asking those questions because they had no correlation to employee success.

Kind of? They still recommend people practice Fermi problems, and they still have people do estimation problems, but instead of golfballs and airplanes, it's GMail customers and servers.
posted by pwnguin at 9:01 PM on March 5, 2021


many employers value -even at the expense of profit and productivity - the domination of their employees' bodies and minds. MBTI is often a fig-leaf for that. Managing people and the economy is too important to be left up to the managers. They would make up a phrenology cult litmus test even if no one sold them one. *and you can learn more about that from my 4 hr workshop, and gold-level subsription *
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:09 AM on March 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


They did a DiSC personality assessment on me before I became a manager. It was not a completely useless construct, as it helped me emotionally adapt to and understand different personalities. I place it in the realm of Dale Carnegie training and the like. Unfortunately, many people overgeneralize it’s worth. In some countries, blood type is used this way...even astrological signs...and the value of those is probably the same. I evaluate with my own tests based on the specific task required for the job.
posted by metamonday at 6:49 AM on March 6, 2021


I first became aware of the MBTI in the early 1980s, when a friend of mine who was briefly a roommate while we were in college discovered it and became convinced it was the best way ever devised to explain human behavior. He got everyone he could to take whatever version of the test he had access to and would go on at great length about how that 4-letter code explained everything you said or did. I have no idea what my type is (it may have changed from test to test since I did it more than once), but the whole time we roomed together he would constantly remark on something I said or did "that's typical of an (insert MBTI type here)." We have since lost touch but I would not be surprised if he is still preaching the MBTI gospel to this day. Since this was before the days of the internet I didn't do very much in the way of research on it, but the descriptions of the types immediately struck me as very vague and open to a lot of interpretation and post hoc reasoning. Pretty much the same as a horoscope with added scientific jargon. I have since taken it and similar tests about as seriously as I take astrology (I'm a Sagittarius; we're skeptical!). One benefit of being exposed to the MBTI at an impressionable age is that I quickly recognize these tests when they are trotted out in various places. I have usually seen them in various "team-building" exercises where they can probably function as a bit of an ice-breaker if not taken too seriously, but using them for any kind of pre-employment screening is really inappropriate. One department head that liked to use personality tests at departmental retreats was also a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell books and would often choose the latest one as the theme of our retreats. People were generally pleased when he moved on to other things.
posted by TedW at 7:03 AM on March 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


This thread inspired me to poke around the official website, where I learned that for $49.95 you can take the official test for yourself. And you can also give it as a gift! Just in case anyone needs an idea for next winter's secret quonsar.
posted by TedW at 7:14 AM on March 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


In some countries, blood type is used this way...

hey, they were joking about this on the episode I just saw of the Korean TV show Start-Up.

had all their contractors take some four-colors test and then had everyone on the rig wear a sticker of "their" color on their hard-hat...

Ugh, what a shitty idea! Who thinks up this kind of drivel? They should have a puke sticker on their hat.
posted by ovvl at 8:00 AM on March 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Ovvl - those kinds of things are the unholy trinity of ambitious HR executives whose promotion and bonus incentives are aligned to “championing” floridly conspicuous policy changes and demonstrations, consultants who send host said HR execs to really nice dinners, and senior executives susceptible to the influence of the former.

Work is one long series of tests whose character isn’t always obvious, and I have always felt employment personality tests are highly valid in demonstrating that someone is able size up tests and give the right answer. I don’t give them because I like tests you pass by being good, not by being strategically dishonest.

Employment tests more broadly are amazing tools because people lie on their resumes and in interviews; interviewers are biased and susceptible to being charmed (or downvote candidates who didn’t lay out enough charm for jobs that don’t need it), and references are afraid to be candid or are in on the scam.
posted by MattD at 8:38 AM on March 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


My Myers Briggs type is IDGAF.
posted by pleasant_confusion at 9:58 AM on March 6, 2021 [6 favorites]


They did a DiSC personality assessment

I suspect I'm a Rincewind, if I'm honest.
posted by solotoro at 10:40 AM on March 6, 2021 [14 favorites]


HR suggested that our managers encourage us to put our four "true colors" stickers in order on our name plates beside our office doors for the amusement and edification of our coworkers. If anybody asked where mine were, I was going to claim that I lost them. 'Cause of course I did, ha ha, I'm a bluegreen!

HR should take the test that tells them which of the nine circles they're going to end up in.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:43 AM on March 6, 2021 [6 favorites]


Just gonna leave this here:
Official D&D Alignment Test from Wizards of the Coast
(Warning: some questions may hit home.)

I just came up Neutral Good, where in the past I've come up Chaotic Neutral. FAKE TEST
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 11:02 AM on March 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


When used correctly an assessment is 'selecting for' a desired trait or behavior and not necessarily 'screening out'.

Except that coincidentally, that selection for a desired trait somehow screens out people with mental health disabilities, who are perfectly capable of doing the job except the screeners think mental health is icky, or they don’t want to have to give extra sick days out.
posted by corb at 11:30 AM on March 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


The very notion that Big 5 is right and the wrong ones are wrong is itself the purest form of scientism. Big 5 itself has done a lot of harm getting people into the reasoning trap of the type I/they are/aren't high/low in openness/neuroticism/etc. therefore I should/shouldn't do X. And it is so pure because its validation and legitimacy is reinforced by the psychology profession itself whereas with the pop psych ones, psychology is happy to say those are obviously fake and wrong.
posted by polymodus at 12:42 PM on March 6, 2021 [8 favorites]


Emmy Rae: People have always told me I am intimidating, which I took really seriously and worked really hard in the workplace to give off a friendly vibe

Sounds like a classic case of "Woman in a position of authority" syndrome and sadly there is (apparently) no cure. Temporary relief can be found by writing "FUCK YOUR TEST" in big black sharpie, and turning it in with a totally non-threatening smile.
posted by simra at 1:14 PM on March 6, 2021 [6 favorites]


10 - 12 years ago, I was on a retreat/PD day and the whole thing was run by people fro HR and focused on these BS personality tests. At one point, they asked everyone to form a line with the extroverts toward the back of the room and the introverts to the front and towards the exit.

So, I left the building and had a smoke in the parking lot. I felt that I had followed the directions accurately, but the HR folks were miffed.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 1:21 PM on March 6, 2021 [16 favorites]


It's too bad biorhythms fell out of favor. They could put a machine next to the time clock.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:28 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


My work never did MBTI, but we have done things like DiSC, as well as TRACOM social styles.

These weren't meant for qualification or even for selection, but as things to expand our thinking about working in teams.

While I totally disagreed with my TRACOM social style (my coworkers pegged me as a driver, when I would see myself as analytical), what I liked about it was that it was about having your *coworkers* evaluate your behaviors -- you had to send the form to several of your coworkers, several direct reports, as well as your bosses. You also filled the form out yourself, but the twist was that your quadrant is determined by how *others* view *you.* Iin the follow-up training session, they explained how you could see the difference between how others view you and how you view yourself. Then, we took that further into understanding how we could observe other people's behaviors to try to empathize that they may have a different working style than you do, and that their working style isn't necessarily 'wrong' but 'different'.

At the time, I was a bit skeptical of some of the conceits of the training -- e.g., "very social style is evenly distributed in an organization". Like, no, even in the room I was in, I was the only "driver" and in a room full mostly of accountants, it was not a surprise to see more analytical types.

That being said, now, that I am in a group at work which is full of hard hard hard drivers, I feel that (1) holy CRAP I am not a driver; definitely way more in the analytical quadrant, but (2) I know how to "flex" to meet what the driver boss and coworkers want, or to "flex" to translate for non-driver team mates. Now I *get* why their working styles chafes against mine.

But I *wish* more groups would have trainings like this, so I could say something like, "Hey, I don't have the same working style as you! That doesn't mean my work is wrong!"

I find a LOT of coworkers suffer with feedback they get. They say things that really point out they just don't get the boss's viewpoint. "Does BOSS not like me because of x?" and I as an analytical person (analytical - task oriented) am just thinking that the BOSS (driver, also task oriented) literally doesn't care about niceties and whatever. They only care about the results. They don't register on a personal "how do I feel about this person?" (and neither do I). For the BOSS, it's just: did this person provide x result 5 minutes from when I asked for it? (For me, it's more like: has this person analyzed all the data, even if it took them 3 weeks?)

And so, the major takeaway is that any critique doesn't say anything about someone as a person (or even as a professional) other than the fact that people with different social styles may fail to live up to each other's expectation, if they aren't aware about the other social styles.

...I don't get the idea that runs through a lot of comments about lying on the tests, or trying to answer in a way that the "boss" is expecting. Part of what makes these sorts of tests valuable to me is that it gives me a sense for what ways of working are intuitive and fulfilling to me, vs what ways of working are draining to me. I believe *any* personality type or working style or social style or color or whatever CAN be effective or successful at anything (because as someone who has now been put in selling roles, managing roles, etc., I realize that these are requiring working styles that don't feel as intuitive to me as someone who just wants to dig in data, and all of these roles are vital). So, the value of these tests is to realize that for ME, trying to be a hard driver or trying to be amiable or expressive is exhausting at the core of my being. I like to have the freedom to be aware to say, "Hey, i can choose to flex to this, or not." I waver between whether I want to learn to flex, or whether I want to just learn how to delegate and collaborate with coworkers who fill in the gaps that I have.

...

(in a related sense, I actually love the enneagram. i also love going deep into the functional analysis of MBTI that most surface level discussions ignore. I don't get the forer effect stuff that a lot of people talk about -- for me, I am not afraid of saying if something doesn't sound like me or not, and I do not see myself equally in every type. I get that it's just self-reflection, but as a 4w5 INFP, I am very self-absorbed lie that.)
posted by subversiveasset at 4:19 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


My local Jordan Peterson wanna-be and (fortunately) now-former colleague studied personality, apparently....

In my experience, as someone has spent almost the entire second half of his life around research psychologists, personality as a subject area mostly attracts two kinds of people: Stats geeks and racists and there tends to be some overlap between the two. The other field big on personality measurement is Industrial/Organizational psychology. These tend not to be overt racists but they do tend to be what I think of as "Quantabee Bosses" and as a lefty I live by the rule that a boss is a boss is a boss and I'll trust their research just as much as I trust a boss to have my best interests at heart.
posted by srboisvert at 7:21 AM on March 9, 2021 [5 favorites]


subversivasset, my friend, you are in a profession that people recognize as a real job. I lie and pick answers a hypothetical boss would like because retail as a job market has no respect for the humanity of its workers, and does not appreciate differences in work styles. We don't get to delegate or flex anything, or ask for understanding when our methods don't agree with those that our bosses demand. We lie because we want to work so we can eat, and we won't be permitted to do that if our results don't describe a cheery, outgoing self-starter who works well under pressure and gets along great with a team.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 10:50 AM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]


I really want to start replying "Well, of course, as a Gemini, I don't generate reliable results from tests like Myers-Briggs." If we're going to play horoscope, why not go all in.
posted by Karmakaze at 9:15 AM on March 12, 2021 [2 favorites]


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