THE BUSINESS OF TESTING

Every year, the American Psychological Association (APA) holds a convention. It’s quite an event. Thousands of psychologists take over most of the downtown hotels in a major city such as San Francisco, Boston, or Washington, DC, for a week of meetings, symposia, and cocktail parties. The biggest attraction is always the exhibit hall, where dozens of high-tech, artistically designed booths fill a room that seems to go on for acres. These booths are set up, at great expense, by several kinds of companies. One group is textbook publishers; all the tools of advertising are applied to the task of convincing college professors like me to get their students to read (and buy) books such as the one you are reading right now. Another group is manufacturers of videos and various, sometimes peculiar gadgets for therapy and research. Yet another group is psychological testers. Their booths often distribute free samples that include not only personality and ability tests, but also shopping bags, notebooks, and even beach umbrellas. These freebies prominently display the logo of their corporate sponsor: the Psychological Corporation, Consulting Psychologists Press, the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, and so on.

You don’t have to go to the APA convention to get a free “personality test.” On North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, on the Boston Common, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and at Covent Garden in London, I have been given brightly colored brochures that ask, in huge letters, “Are you curious about yourself? Free personality test enclosed.” Inside is something that looks like a conventional personality test, with 200 questions to be answered True or False. (One item reads, “Having settled an argument out do you continue to feel disgruntled for a while?”) But, as it turns out, the test is really a recruitment pitch. If you take it and go for your “free evaluation”—which I do not recommend—you will be told two things. First, you are all messed up. Second, the people who gave you the test have the cure: You need to join a certain “church” that can provide the techniques (and even the strange electrical equipment) needed to pinpoint and fix your problems.

A comic shows men in a gym. Two men and a referee are in the boxing ring, and two men are watching the boxers fight. The text reads, “He looks very promising – but let’s see how he does on the written test.” — “He looks very promising—but let’s see how he does on the written test.”

The personality testers at the APA convention and those who hand out free so-called personality tests on North Michigan Avenue have a surprising amount in common. Both seek new customers, and both use all the techniques of advertising, including free samples, to acquire them. The tests they distribute look superficially alike. And both groups exploit a nearly universal desire to know more about personality. The brochure labeled “Are you curious about yourself?” asks a pretty irresistible question. The more staid tests distributed at the APA convention likewise offer an intriguing promise of finding out something about your own or somebody else’s personality that might be interesting, important, or useful.

Below the surface, however, they are not the same. The tests peddled at the APA convention are, for the most part, well-validated instruments useful for many purposes. The ones being pushed at tourist destinations around the world are frauds and potentially dangerous. But you cannot tell which is which just by looking at them. You need to know something about how personality tests and assessments are constructed, how they work, and how they can fail. So, let’s take a closer look.