Personality Tests: Decoding the Double-Edged Sword
- Jonathan Law
- Feb 14, 2024
- 7 min read
Unveiling the Subjectivity of Personality Tests: A Critical Examination
The Appeal and Controversy of Personality Tests
As personality tests and profiles remain popular in both personal and professional spheres, used by individuals, organizations, and even dating websites, a growing discourse questions the objectivity underlying these assessments. Proponents appreciate them for their structured method of unraveling individuals and illuminating personal and professional advancement. Critics, on the other hand, challenge their validity due to their layers of cultural biases, question formulation, and inherent subjectivity.
These tests claim to provide valuable insight into an individual's personality, strengths, weaknesses, and potential career paths. But do personality tests actually produce less objectivity? Ultimately, are they helpful or are they hurtful?
The Case For Personality Tests
Personality tests shine an x-ray on an individual's traits and behaviors, encouraging self-awareness and aiding in personal and professional development. By understanding their own strengths, weaknesses, and preferences, individuals can make informed decisions about their careers, relationships, and personal growth goals. These assessments also offer guidance in career planning, helping individuals align their aspirations with their inherent abilities and motivations. Additionally, personality tests can facilitate effective team dynamics by promoting understanding and collaboration among team members, thus enhancing communication and productivity within organizations.
Personality tests also serve as tools in recruitment and selection processes, enabling employers to identify candidates who possess the necessary qualities for success in specific roles and organizational cultures. By evaluating candidates' personality traits, employers can make more informed hiring decisions, leading to improved job performance and employee satisfaction.
Beyond career-related applications, personality tests support personal development efforts by providing individuals with opportunities to reflect on their behaviors and set meaningful goals for self-improvement, ultimately contributing to their overall well-being and fulfillment.
The first modern personality test was developed by the U.S. Army during World War I to identify soldiers prone to panicking on the battlefield. The Woodworth Personal Data Sheet aimed to screen out individuals likely to experience shellshock with questions like, “Do you often have the feeling of suffocating?” and “Did you ever think you had lost your manhood?”
Other tests followed, but the most famous assessment was introduced in 1943, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Based on the theories of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the MBTI was developed by Katharine Briggs, and her daughter, Isabel Myers, neither of whom had formal training in psychology. Despite being the subject of much criticism, the test has enduring popularity.
The Most Common Tests in The Business World
Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator stands as one of the most prevalent personality assessments in use today. As per its publisher, many Fortune 100 companies use it for initial candidate evaluations to gauge the compatibility of potential hires with a company's culture. Utilizing four dichotomies—Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving—the MBTI categorizes individuals into 16 distinct types.
DISC Assessment focuses on four primary behavioral traits: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. DiSC is particularly useful for understanding communication styles and workplace behaviors.
The Big Five Personality Traits, also known as the Five Factor Model, measures five key dimensions of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
The SHK Occupational Personality Questionnaire is crafted to ascertain how certain behaviors might impact a candidate's job performance. It outlines both strengths and weaknesses, making it interesting for comparing candidates as it generates tailored results for each individual using standardized scoring.
A meta-analysis of 114 studies found that personality tests can be useful for predicting job performance, but the effect size was small.[1] The study also found that personality tests were more valid for predicting job performance in certain occupations, such as sales and customer service.
A case study by the University of California, Berkeley found that personality tests can be helpful for team building and conflict resolution. The study found that teams that used personality tests to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses were more cohesive and productive.[2]
But are we putting too much faith in these tests? Are these profiles excluding candidates who could bring just enough friction to light a bonfire of innovation? Many psychologists now agree that human personality can be reduced to the “big five” fundamental traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Research has shown that these traits are remarkably universal, capable of describing personalities in people from more than 50 cultures. As a result, many modern personality tests assess these traits along a continuum — for example, from extreme extraversion to extreme introversion and everything in between.
Most of the more than 2,000 types of personality tests available lack rigorous scientific validation. But even assuming a particular test is capable of giving accurate results, here are a few reasons you should think twice about using a personality assessment for hiring purposes:
The Case Against Personality Tests
One major criticism of personality tests is that they often lack objectivity. Many tests rely on self-reporting, which means that individuals can consciously or unconsciously bias their answers an idealized or aspirational version of themselves. For example, they might strongly agree with the statement, “I am a leader,” despite never having been one because they feel they’ve never been given the opportunity. This can lead to inaccurate results and a distorted view of one's personality. Even taking the same test on different days can yield different profile results. Sleep, nutrition, stress, relationships, money, and mood have all been shown to impact the way a respondent answers questions.
When applicants are required to undergo personality assessments as part of the hiring process, there's a significant temptation to misrepresent their true selves. While experts agree that this is prevalent, there's divergence in opinion regarding its scale and consequences. While most research suggests that between 30% and 50% of applicants distort their responses, a study conducted amidst the recent financial recession revealed an astonishing 82%.[3]
Additionally, the interpretation of personality test results is often subjective. Different psychologists and organizations may use different criteria to interpret the same test results, leading to varying conclusions and recommendations. This lack of standardization can undermine the objectivity and reliability of personality tests.
A case study by the Harvard Business Review highlighted the problems with using personality tests for hiring decisions. The study found that personality tests were not predictive of job performance and could lead to discrimination against certain personality types. The meta-analysis cited earlier, examining the big five traits revealed that conscientiousness emerged as the most reliable predictor, with correlations ranging from 0.20 to 0.23 across diverse occupations. This suggests that conscientiousness can account for approximately 20% of the difference between high and low performers, leaving the remaining 80% attributed to undisclosed factors. Notably, across various professions, other personality traits fared even worse as predictors of performance.
References to Cultural Biases
Numerous studies, such as those conducted by McCrae and Costa (1997) and Church et al. (2013), shed light on the cultural biases embedded in personality tests. These biases can distort results, leading to an incomplete and sometimes inaccurate portrayal of an individual's traits. Among these are language and cultural nuances. Personality tests are often developed and normed in specific cultural contexts, which can lead to language and cultural biases. For instance, certain personality traits may be described using terms that have different connotations or meanings across cultures. What is considered assertive in one culture may be viewed as aggressive in another. This discrepancy can influence how individuals respond to test items and ultimately affect the accuracy of the results. This does not always point to differences in nationalities, even disparities in East Coast and West Coast cultures within the United States may impact results.
Research by Wood et al. (2010) and Marcus et al. (2015) reveals that individuals may unconsciously conform to personality test results, shaping their self-perception to align with predefined categories. This phenomenon raises concerns about the authenticity of self-discovery through these tests.
The work of Sue et al. (2007) and Williams and Levant (2017) delves into the potential harm of personality tests in perpetuating stereotypes.[4] By categorizing individuals into narrow archetypes, these assessments may inadvertently reinforce societal expectations, undermining the rich diversity inherent in human personalities. Using personality test results as a way to calibrate the fit of applicants to “company culture” can decrease cognitive diversity. Research consistently shows that diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones, and diversity of personality is no exception.
Furthermore, personality tests oppose the concept of a growth mindset, which emphasizes the belief that skills are not innate but can be developed with effort and time. Over-reliance on personality tests in hiring processes may lead to the exclusion of candidates who may not excel naturally in certain areas but possess the potential to become high achievers through growth and development.
Helpful or Hurtful?
Whether personality tests are helpful or hurtful is a matter of debate. Proponents argue that these tests make their organizations stronger by improving team building, talent identification, conflict resolution, and leadership development.
However, critics argue that personality tests can be misleading and harmful. Inaccurate results can lead individuals to make poor decisions about their careers, relationships, and life choices. Additionally, personality tests can be used to discriminate against individuals based on their personality traits, leading to unfair treatment in employment, education, and other areas.
The Call for Caution
Acknowledging the limitations uncovered by research and case studies, many favor a cautious approach to using personality tests. Recognizing the subjective nature of these assessments, they propose employing them as tools for initial self-reflection rather than as absolute truths.
Conclusion
In the realm of personality tests, the line between helpfulness and harm is intricate and contingent on a multitude of factors. While personality tests can provide valuable insights into an individual's personality, it is important to recognize their limitations and potential for bias. Ultimately, the question of whether personality tests are helpful or hurtful depends on how they are used and interpreted.
When used responsibly and in conjunction with other assessment methods, personality tests can be a valuable tool for self-discovery, personal growth, and organizational development. However, when used carelessly or for discriminatory purposes, personality tests can have negative consequences for individuals and society as a whole, especially when used for high-stakes decisions such as hiring and clinical diagnosis. At Sync7, we use them, but only with specific guardrails.
STATISTICS
* According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 58% of organizations use personality tests for hiring decisions.
* A study by the American Psychological Association found that 75% of psychologists believe that personality tests can be useful for clinical diagnosis and treatment.
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