Purpose
A personality test describes a person’s character based upon a persons life, behavior thoughts, and feelings. Employers consider the personality tests as a way of gauging if a person they are considering hiring is stable, honest, and a good fit for the company.
History
The earliest known personality test was created by Hippocrates, the man who is known as the Father Of Medicine due to his many scientific and medical discoveries over 400 years ago that are still practiced today. He is believed to have recorded the first known personality model known as Hippocrates Theory which bases the four personality types on the amount of body fluid in an person. This theory was expanded upon by the Greek physician Galen who believed that a predominance of blood in a person led him to be cheerful and strong. While a predominance of mucus led him to have an indifferent and slow personality. Dominant black bile on the other hand indicated a depressed personality. More yellow bile meant a violent and strong personality.
The first modern personality test was the Woodworth Personal data sheet, which was first used in 1919, it was designed to help the United States Army screen recruits who might get shell shock. In the early 20th century personality tests were used more because it became a huge interest in employment hiring when the field of psychology took off. Many different tests emerged, some attempting to identify specific characteristics, while others’ tried to identify personality as a whole.
Types
There are too many different types of personality tests to list them all but some of the most well known are:
- The Rorschach inkblot test was introduced in 1921 as a way to determine personality by using abstract inkblots.
- The Thematic Apperception Test was commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services in the 1930s to identify personalities that might be turned by enemy intelligence.
- The Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory was published in 1942 to help in assessing psychopathology in a clinical setting.
- Myers- Briggs Type Indicator is a 16-type indicator of Carl Jung’s Psychological Types, developed during World War II.
- The Insights Discovery Test based on Carl Jung’s psychiatry and an update of Hippocrates’ “four Humors,” which exists today as the Four Temperaments.
The 16 Personality Factors (16PF) test was developed in 1946 by Raymond Cattell and has become popular in business. In 1963 W.T. Norman suggested that only five factors would be sufficient. In 1981 a group reviewing available personality tests decided that most of the tests which held promise seemed to measure a subset of five common traits, as Norman had previously claimed. These five personality traits or the five-factor model is common in business-oriented personality tests. Other personality tests include the NEO – PI, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaires, the Abika Test and Swedish Universities Scales of Personality.
Personality Tests
Traits
The following are generally considered to be the main traits found in a personality test. These Five Personality Tests are very common in business-oriented personality tests today and these traits also correlate to each other and the personality traits are also dependent, which means that a score on one will predict, to some degree, how you will score on certain other ones.
The main types are Extroversion, Emotional Stability, Orderliness, Accommodation, and Intellect, these are the primary personality types; the interaction of these in each person shows’ their overall personality profile.
- Extroversion – Social and Reserved type-Social types feel at ease interacting with to others. Reserved types are uncomfortable or disinterested with social interaction.
- Emotional Stability – Moody and calm type, Moody types are prone to moodiness and calm types maintain level emotions.
- Orderliness – Organized and Unstructured type, Organized types are focused and unstructured types are scattered.
- Accommodation – Accommodating and Egocentric type-Accommodating types live for other’s and egocentric types live for themselves.
- Intellect – Non-curious and Inquisitive type-Non-curious types are less intellectually driven and Inquisitive types are insatiable in their quest to know more. All people have all of these traits but everyone has a different level of each, there is usually a dominant trait in all of us, personality tests can find out and help us to make ourselves more even or realize our faults.
Scoring
Personality tests can be scored using different techniques such as they can be scored using a dimensional or a typological approach. Dimensional approach such as measures of the Big 5 see personality as a set of continuous dimensions that individuals differ on. Typological approaches such as the Myer-Briggs test emphasize discrete categorical types that individuals fall into. Most psychological researchers acknowledge that the dimensional approach is more accurate, although as judged by the popularity of the Myer-Briggs test typological approaches have substantial appeal as a self-development tool.
Argument Against
Critics have raised issues about the ethics of administering personality tests, especially for non-clinical uses. Because a problem of a personality test is that the users of the test only find it accurate because of the subjective validation involved. This is where the person only acknowledges the information that applies to them. Some psychologists dismiss the whole idea of personality, considering a lot of behavior to be content specific.
This idea is supported by the fact that personality often does not predict behavior in specific content, but more research has showed than when behavior is shown across content, that personality can be a good predictor of behavior. A lot of psychologists now acknowledge that both social and individual difference factors influence behavior. The debate is currently more around the importance of these actors and how they interact than anything else.
A problem with personality tests is that people can fix their responses to get the wanted outcome. This happens in a lot of employment tests especially where important decisions are being made and there is a reason to impress future employers. The timing of responses on electronically administered tests is a way to catch this faking.Faking is the biggest problem employers have about using personality tests through the hiring process. These concerns are real and happen often. Job applicants are taking more tests all the time, and are learning the correct answers, they want to pass the test and get the job offer and are making the answers fit the test not themselves. This doesn’t surprise anyone especially since this is difficult economic times and people have to do what they have to do to get by and survive.
To get the most from the utilization of tests, the employer needs to become skilled in test administration and interpretation.While most personality tests are made to be self administered, some tests are given by others. The meaning of personality test scores are hard to interpret. For this reason a lot of effort is made by the people who create personality tests so that there are norms to compare with when interpreting a persons test scores. Mostly these norms include percentile ranks, z scores, sten scores, and other forms of standardized scores.
In conclusion Personality tests are a help to companies to ensure that they hire the best fit for their company at this time but the personality tests will have to keep ahead of the people that need a job because people are quick learners and needing a job because of low finances is a fast way to get people to cheat the tests to ensure they will get hired, also the tests are not completely accurate and some have shown false interpretations and didn’t match the person personality at all, these tests are great but I would never use them as a single complete hiring decision.
References
Vernon, Mark. Philosophy and Life Article HR E-lerts by Business and Legal Reports. (2003).