Personality test

I stumbled upon one of my old(er) personality tests, which I took at a XML course back some years ago when I was unemployed. And I got to thinking about how easy it is to actually just answer the tests on how you want the result to come out.

“But you are supposed to be truthful” I hear as a response… well, yeah, but there is a thing called context.

There is a context of how you want to present yourself, and there is the context – or actually often lack of – in the questions of said test.

The context you function in, decides the outcome you want out of the test. So despite I’m a major introvert when it comes to my personal life, then when I am in specific settings, I want to present myself as an extrovert. This means that if I am taking one of these personality tests – I’ll try to deduct what kind of persona I want to “show” and I’ll answer given that context. This means that if I’m being tested in a situation where I feel being an extrovert is more advantageous then otherwise, I’ll score high in that aspect... that is the context.
It is in my view easy to read these tests, and if you just put some care into it, you can form the result pretty much as you want, and nobody will be the wiser. Underhanded, perhaps, but I think most everybody does it to some degree, whether they'll admit it or not. Some people change their behaviour given who's around them for example, and that is the same.

Another issue with many of these tests is that they lack context in the questions. If one then look at many of the questions some of these tests present, then it is quite clear that the questions also revolve around a hypothetical situation, however it is impossible – in my opinion – to answer truthful on a hypothetical situation without knowing the context: “Do you work well with others”, well duh … that depends fully on who the others are. If it is slackers who do not want to put in any effort but just reap the rewards, then no. But that is difficult to answer.
And such things are in my view fundamental flaws with all these personality type tests, and that is why I have difficulty understanding many institutions focus on such tests. Many of the statements I’ve read over the years from companies utilizing such tests in an application situation, excuse a focus on them with the argument that it is the only way a company can get to “know” the person before hiring him – and my response usually is that, well they do not get to know the applicant. They only get to know the persona the applicant wants to present. And even if the person answers “truthful” without attempting to fit into the context of taking the test – the result is rather useless because the context of the questions themselves are mostly lacking (or understated) and thus can’t count for anything in real life.

My guess is that it is just easier to group and box people up if they think the results are quantifiable that easy. But ….. outside fun party tricks, I do not see anything useful in them.


Just to mention, the test I fell over was a Jung type personal test, and I scored INTP.

(cross post with my website's own blog)