Personality Tests..alluring fantasy
New book by Annie M.Paul The Cult of Personality reveals the truth about personality tests. They are a tool of institutions and don't begin to tell the complexity and richness of our actual selves.
Annie is a Yale graduate and a mental health journalist. The subtitle she uses is, "How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves."
I suggest that, this may be the reason people now are so narrow minded, simplistic to a fault, quarrelsome and without depth. It certainly points to why few people can relate to each other meaningfully. We tend to think of other people in terms of "tidy abstractions instead of real, rumpled human beings, which is a sterile idea for a flesh-and-blood individual."
They make me think of a child's jigsaw puzzle. I, the teacher or company, have a picture of what I want people or children to be and the test is devised to put you in their pieces. If it's not in their picture, that info about you is irrelevant TO THEM.
And, my friends, don't ever forget that. Some tests look for diseases or dysfunction, and they find it because you have to fall into SOME category by the nature of the test.
Being guilty of having designed a test, I would like all to know that phrasing of questions and omissions are keys to
their manipulation....mostly hidden. My Double Bind test was only experimental, very revealing about relationships and opinions of different kinds of therapists, but it was not used to put anyone in a slot.
On page 225, she gives instructions for you..."If a professional psychologist is evaluating you in a situation in which you
are at risk and asks you for responses to ink blots or to incomplete sentences, or for a drawing of anything, walk out of
the psychologist's office." Robyn Dawes says," going through with such an examination creates the danger of having
a serious decision made about you on totally invalid grounds." Read more in her book.
Annie is a Yale graduate and a mental health journalist. The subtitle she uses is, "How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves."
I suggest that, this may be the reason people now are so narrow minded, simplistic to a fault, quarrelsome and without depth. It certainly points to why few people can relate to each other meaningfully. We tend to think of other people in terms of "tidy abstractions instead of real, rumpled human beings, which is a sterile idea for a flesh-and-blood individual."
They make me think of a child's jigsaw puzzle. I, the teacher or company, have a picture of what I want people or children to be and the test is devised to put you in their pieces. If it's not in their picture, that info about you is irrelevant TO THEM.
And, my friends, don't ever forget that. Some tests look for diseases or dysfunction, and they find it because you have to fall into SOME category by the nature of the test.
Being guilty of having designed a test, I would like all to know that phrasing of questions and omissions are keys to
their manipulation....mostly hidden. My Double Bind test was only experimental, very revealing about relationships and opinions of different kinds of therapists, but it was not used to put anyone in a slot.
On page 225, she gives instructions for you..."If a professional psychologist is evaluating you in a situation in which you
are at risk and asks you for responses to ink blots or to incomplete sentences, or for a drawing of anything, walk out of
the psychologist's office." Robyn Dawes says," going through with such an examination creates the danger of having
a serious decision made about you on totally invalid grounds." Read more in her book.
posted by corewell at 9:41 AM
3 Comments:
I'm so glad to have read this post and will try to read the book. Thanks!
Appreciate your input. Thanks for visiting my place.
I've just about finished reading the book and am going to have to blog about it AND your post. The timing on this is more than coincidental.
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