Ep. 159: The Anti-Worker Pseudo-psychology of Corporate Personality Testing

<div class="DraftEditor-paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="ek9lg" data-offset-key="eu5b6-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eu5b6-0-0"><span data-offset-key="eu5b6-0-0">"Is it a higher compliment to be called a) a person of real feeling, or b) a consistently reasonable person?" "Are you more successful at a) following a carefully worked-out plan, or b) dealing with the unexpected and seeing quickly what should have been done?" "Which word in each pair appeals to you more? a) scheduled, or b) unplanned?"</span></div> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eu5b6-0-0"> </div> </div> <div class="DraftEditor-paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="ek9lg" data-offset-key="8of9s-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="8of9s-0-0"><span data-offset-key= "8of9s-0-0">Questions like these are posed to millions of current and prospective workers and students every year.</span> <span data-offset-key="8of9s-0-0">They come from personality tests, whether the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Clifton StrengthsFinder, or other surveys purporting to assess personality traits and job aptitude. Through a series of tens to hundreds of questions, personality inventories claim to identify qualities like dominance, neuroticism, or introversion, synthesize a user profile, and determine that user’s fitness for a given job.</span></div> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="8of9s-0-0"> </div> </div> <div class="DraftEditor-paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="ek9lg" data-offset-key="5hf0m-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="5hf0m-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5hf0m-0-0">But beneath this ostensibly neutral goal of matching a person with their ideal form of employment lies a much more sinister aim: Identifying and weeding out would-be