PSI Tutor: Academic Mentor

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Personality tests are quite common in the workplace throughout the industrialised world. The 21st century workforce requires skilled professionals, even for labor intensive roles. Managers and employees are accountable to each other and wider society, as well as the environment in general, to meet the needs and expectations of these and to ensure their safety, respect and meaningful duty.

Freud seemed to have very rigid views about personality. He spoke of newborns as “blank slates” upon which almost any determining pattern of behaviours, thoughts and emotions could be inscribed. Clinical psychologist Don Bannister is quoted over at Changing Minds as describing Freud in highly visual and instructive terms:

“…basically a battlefield. He is a dark-cellar in which a well-bred spinster lady (the superego) and a sex-crazed monkey (the id) are forever engaged in mortal combat, the struggle being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk (the ego).”

Projective tests such as the Rorschach were intended to reveal the course of this battle. However, the tests are highly subjective, dependent on interpretations by the therapist and have low reliability and validity. I think it likely that any projective test will only be helpful to the person using it to learn about their own personal language and interpretations of events. It seems logical to me that a person could get the most from projective tests by informing themselves about the knowledge embedded in the stories, symbols and patterns of behaviour from other cultures.

Myth making starts within the soul.

A very funny story was posted by Kim Jones (2006) that highlights the inherent inadequacy of a psychometric test to measure a person as a whole.

… Prof Glenn Ellenbourg of New York … profiling the personality of a corpse using a test that gave credit for non-responses, found the cadaver had an IQ of 45 - and was likely to enjoy a good measure of popularity round the office.

Tests, such as those in the workforce to determine adequate personality matching with job tasks and expected outcomes, can be used in unrealistic ways. Though, designed with care and used with the understanding that a life is not cast in stone, they can indicate a person’s tendency to navigate their life along particular patterns. This in itself can lead to better communication between people, as realisation of how others will perceive and respond, in general, to a situation can be enlightening at best, and save on frustration at the least.

Development of psychometric tests is an extension of everyday observations and comments made by people to each other every day. Systematic measurement and peer-reviewed analysis is a lot like noting the behaviours of others having a gossip over a cuppa with friends, though at a more academic level. The most obvious difference is that systematic measurement and analysis is meant to enhance objectivity and to reveal “truths” that are not biased by personal opinions and experiences. It’s surprising to me that many of us do not have more sophisticated methods for evaluating the personalities of others.

They have such potential for creating a dynamic inter-personal space of discovery, adventure and understanding.

For example, Jones notes that an often untold story in a world of tests and theories dominated by male opions; the Myers-Briggs was designed by a woman who was a stay-at-home mum.  Katherine Briggs created an instrument (grounded in Jungian theory) for use in the workplace of organisations larger than the home…

…[so] the 20 years Katharine Briggs, a Washington DC housewife, spent studying Jungian theory in order to understand what her daughter Isabel saw in her boyfriend, Clarence Myers - which is how the Myers-Briggs tests came about (See. You didn’t know that, did you?) - were pretty much wasted on us.

Seeing as Isabel and Clarence later married, I think it can be safely assumed that Katherine Briggs found her system of categorisation and explanation helpful in deciding if this bloke was suitable for her daughter. I think I will take a leaf out of her book and take a look at how I interpret others, and perhaps even design my own system of classification. Better communication is always a good motivator for me do something

If you designed a system of personality assessment, or simply wrote out the method you use now, what would it look like? what psychological approach would it resemble? and how reliable/valid do you think it would be?

Further Reading

Discover Your Archetypes

About the MBTI

Employee Recruitment

Strategy and Society