The problem with personality tests

Robert Spillane

Macquarie Graduate School of Management professor of management Robert Spillane says personality tests are discriminatory, unreliable, invalid, and cannot predict work performance. Photo: Michele Mossop

Twenty managers at a training session are confronted by a psychologist who measures their personality. A manager who resists is labelled a “difficult personality”. His colleagues meekly submit to the test and are ordered to wear their results on their shirts. Another manager considers suing those who subjected him to psychological indignities.

A survey of 8000 Australians found that 44 per cent regarded psychometric tests as “too invasive”, which they are. Yet a survey of Australian human resource managers revealed that 69 per cent endorsed personality tests as valuable management tools.

The search for consistent personality traits has been strikingly unsuccessful.

While self-descriptions are reasonably consistent over short periods, they change dramatically across social settings. It is unsurprising, therefore, that efforts to predict work performance from personality tests have been a spectacular failure. And have been for more than 80 years.

In the 1920s, “people sorting instruments” were designed to meet the needs of big business. And they, in turn, became big business.

One company used “people-sorters” to discover whether job applicants’ wives dominated family decisions because such men would be “easy to manage”. Others used them to identify trade union sympathisers.

The favoured test was the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale. “Normal-cycloids” were assumed to be good salespeople; “normal-autistics” were good accountants. The challenge was to find the right cog for the machine.

The idea that a person’s personality should “fit” a particular job shifts responsibility from work performance to a lack of harmony between employee and organisation.

Isabel Myers read about the scale in a 1942 Reader’s Digestand it changed her life. By entering the people-sorting business, Myers believed she could create world peace. Inspired by an eccentric reading of Carl Jung’s mysticism, she developed a test that allegedly measured such traits as “intuition” and “feeling”.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has achieved cult status. It is now the world’s most popular test, according to its guardians: more than 2.5 million people take the test each year.

It is used by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies to “facilitate teamwork”. It appeals to many managers, educationists and counsellors because, with its anaemically positive tone, it conforms to the politically correct 21st century workplace, despite the fact that as many as three-quarters of people achieve a different personality type when tested again. And it is easily faked.

In The Organization Man, William Whyte told readers how to cheat on personality tests. To prepare for a test one should repeat to oneself: “I loved my parents; I like things the way they are; I never worry much about anything; I don’t care for classical music or books; I love my wife and children; I don’t let them interfere with company work.” This should ensure a good “fit” with the values of testers.

After rehearsing these arguments for 40 years, I conclude that personality tests are discriminatory, unreliable, invalid, and cannot predict work performance.

As there is no way validly to determine “fit”, unstated criteria, such as getting on with the boss, are brought into play. In our postmodern world of feelings, disagreeing with the boss, or indeed anyone, is widely regarded as a sign of low “emotional intelligence”, which leads to another round of personality testing, counselling and further invasions of privacy.

American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz defined personality tests as hocus-pocus used by psychologists to prove that they are brilliant and their clients are stupid. The widespread acceptance of personality tests suggests that this claim is not without foundation.

Robert Spillane is professor of management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Sydney, and the author of The Rise of Psychomanagement in Australia.

The Australian Financial Review