The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves [Hardcover]

Annie Murphy Paul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2004

Millions of people worldwide take personality tests each year to direct their education, to decide on a career, to determine if they'll be hired, to join the armed forces, and to settle legal disputes. Yet, according to award winning psychology writer Annie Murphy Paul, the sheer number of tests administered obscures a simple fact: they don't work. Most personality tests are seriously flawed, and sometimes unequivocally wrong. They fail the field's own standards of validity and reliability. They ask intrusive questions. They produce descriptions of people that are nothing like human beings as they actually are: complicated, contradictory, changeable across time and place. THE CULT OF PERSONALITY documents, for the first time, the disturbing consequences of these tests. Children are being labelled in limiting ways. Businesses and the government are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars every year, only to make ill-informed decisions about hiring and firing. Job seekers are having their privacy invaded and their rights trampled, and our judicial system is being undermined by faulty evidence. Paul's eye-opening chronicle reveals the fascinating history behind a lucrative and largely unregulated business. Captivating, insightful, and sometimes shocking, THE CULT OF PERSONALITY offers an exhilarating trip into the human mind and heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Personality tests are administered to millions of people every year for purposes ranging from career counseling and educational guidance to determining parental fitness in custody battles. But Paul, a former senior editor at Psychology Today, contends that the accuracy of these tests and their diagnostic value have never been convincingly demonstrated; their results are, she says, "often invalid, unreliable, and unfair." This study entertainingly chronicles the often surprising stories behind the creation and promotion of the most popular tests. The Thematic Apperception Test, for example, was developed by the freethinking Harvard psychologist Henry Murray in collaboration with his longtime mistress; its original purpose was to facilitate "deep dives" into the unconscious in search of self-actualization, but today it is used more often by corporations seeking to evaluate job applicants and manipulate consumers. Paul's book is not a closely reasoned assault on the theoretical underpinnings of personality testing (like the critique of IQ testing in books like Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man), but its anecdotal account of how personal quirks, intellectual hubris and institutional biases have shaped the use and misuse of personality tests should lead lay readers to ask hard questions the next time they are invited—or required—to submit to such testing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Paul, mental health journalist and former senior editor at Psychology Today, notes a cyclical pattern in psychologists' devising personality assessments that are widely acclaimed, later debunked, and eventually superseded by the next new tool. She traces the historical roots of personality testing from phrenology in the 1830s to the Rorschach inkblot to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The personalities behind the tests are as fascinating as the tests they devise: Kenneth Clark, who used dolls to show the psychological damage of segregation on black children, fought his own battles with racism; the highly driven Isabel Myers, who borrowed from Carl Jung, brought her own obsessions to the task of developing her now famous test. Paul intersperses history with current uses of, and overreliance on, personality tests to determine everything from child custody and competency to stand trial to school admission and job placement. Paul advises healthy skepticism regarding the efficacy of the tests and advocates for strict confidentiality of their results. A highly accessible and engrossing book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743243560
• ISBN-13: 978-0743243568
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #873,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good book about personality testing and the people who created them, December 27, 2005

By 

Terni Paolo "Solution-Focused Brief Coach" (Milan, Italy; Sacramento, California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (Paperback)

The author takes an interesting perspective: she tells the story of how some of the most widely used today personality tests came into being, by detailing the peculiar histories and quirks of the psychologists who devised them.
Her thesis: "these tests tell you more about the people who conceived them than about the people that are actually tested" comes alive with engaging narratives

Each chapter of the book explores the story of a different test via the dreams and work of their creators.
The psychologists the author considers are: Rorschach (chapter 2), Hathaway (MMPI, chapter 3), Murray (TAT, chapter 4), Myers (Myers - Briggs, chapter 5), Clark & others (pre-verbal tests for children, chapter 6), Cattell, Costa & McCrae ( 16PF & Big5, chapter 7). Chapter 8 is about attempts to map personality in the brain by using fMRI and other technological tools but also about how different from all this a life story, can be - and to do this the author tells the story of Dodge Morgan and his solo sail trip, with some breaks where she mentions the work of Mc Adams on the "life story approach"

It is clear from the very beginning where the author stands.
She is very critical of any attempt so far made of "boxing" the complexities of an individual in strict categories determined by some tests whose validity in most cases is very questionable.
The way she uses language and constructs sentences and chapters makes her narrative partial.
However, her passion does not detract from the soundness of her research, so, after her point of view is factored in, reading her book is a very informative and pleasurable experience.

A few notes:
- Paul tries to put the personality tests in a bad light by pointing out the weird character of their creators and / or the weird circumstances that brought the tests to life; however, that does not tell us anything about the usefulness of a test.
We know the creative process is not linear; we know many great scientists to have been weird, by today's standards (see Newton's interest in the occult, or Einstein's domestic problems, and so on); however strange and peculiar the scientist, that still does not tell us anything about the validity of its creations.
That is to be tested by the slow, imperfect, yet the best we have, scientific method.
Experiment, replication, statistical validation, and so forth...
- I will focus here on the Big5: it is the one I am more familiar with.
Many of her critiques are shared by psychologists administering it.
Many agree that the claims made by its creators are too presumptuous to date.
Many more do not share the optimistic view held by Costa & McCrae that people would not try to "fake good" in the test; in fact, the Italian version of the NEO-PI-R has a Lie Scale
I do agree about being cautious with the lexical hypothesis; this strategy might not unveil the "true" personality - for that, we need more input from neuroscience and neuropsychology (cf. the psychobiological model); however, this is a good way to "talk about" personality, condensing all the meaningful talk that we can do about character by finding out correlations and the essential traits; again, this is not the "true personality" but a way of finding economy in a description.
The same point applies to the critique voiced by McAdams about the usefulness of the model; clearly, knowing the 5 dimensions or sub-dimensions does not exhaust the description of a person, and we do need contingent information; however, the model is a start, a way to group some preliminary observations

I have more radical misgiving about Big 5 and other tests based on questionnaires.
Questionnaires are based on self-reporting, and self-reporting is not reliable - people simply do not know; cf. Wilson (2002) et al.

A way out would be to use observational grids based on the Big 5 during an assessment.
Another way out: on the market some softwares are available that use contextual information to elicit an answer and fuzzy logic to elaborate the anwers.

A few notes on the other tests discussed:
Myers Briggs
I am very critical about the "type" approach, sounds very much like astrology. However, the author has a point about the "aha" experience that comes after taking the test and recognizing / owning parts of oneself. That does not mean that the "type" is right (cf. also Rowland and "cold reading" - a vast majority of people rate as very accurate a description of their character produced after an astrology reading, even if the report is the same for everybody; the trick is to be vague enough - the barnum effect).
The author is right to say that more than a diagnostic t.ool, this, and other "types" tests are therapeutic tools rather than diagnostic ones

No comment on the projective tests.


MMPI
Despite all is misgivings, the approach taken by Hathaway is scienfic.
That should be the right approach: a "normal" population ( but it needs to be statistically validated); a "diagnosed" population (again, here diagnosed by pools of experts, referring to dsm strandards); questions but also activities that can help discriminate.

Overall, a good book and an enjoable read.
To make the most of it, though, and to put the author's comments into perspective, a basic knowledge about the tests discussed is advisable.
Another distinction to be made:
I do agree with the author when she is strongly critical about the use that is being made of some of these tests.
I see the issue from a different perspective, though: here in Europe, or at least in Italy, such an unethical use of testing tools and test results is, at least at present, unthinkable.
So, here I am "pro-personality testing", since there is still too much psychonalytic fog here, but if I were in the US probably my position would be 100% that of Paul.

66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Many important points, but..., October 21, 2004

By 

S. Myers (West Kirby, Wirral United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (Hardcover)

There are many good points in this book. For example, Paul rightly draws attention to the potential misuses of psychometric questionnaires, such as the use (or rather abuse) of the MBTI in recruitment. She rightly highlights the dangers of using psychometric questionnaires to limit and stereotype, and gives very good advice on questions the reader should ask prior to completing one.

But the book also contains some anomalies. Having criticized psychometric tests for lack of validity/reliability, she offers no equivalent research to support many of her claims - eg: that the life story approach she advocates is more effective, or that questionnaires lead us to miseducate, mismanage and misunderstand. And some of her statements - such as "there is no evidence that her sixteen types have any more validity than the twelve signs of the zodiac" - are contradicted by research (there have been many studies into both the MBTI and astrology from which comparisons can be drawn).

I should declare an interest, in that I am the author of a psychometric questionnaire (not mentioned in the book) that is used primarily in team building. That means I am acutely aware of how questionnaires can be misused, and Paul does a good job of drawing our attention to those potential abuses. However, when used properly, questionnaires can also be of value to both the individual and the organization, and my concern about Paul's book is that she may be throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Although Paul rails against psychometrics and advocates the life story approach, my view is that there are benefits and pitfalls of both. In the final chapter, Paul advocates approaching personality questionnaires with caution. That is excellent advice, but I also suggest approaching her book with some caution, so that the reader can arrive at a balanced view of psychometric questionnaires.

89 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid information -- long overdue!, September 26, 2004

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (Hardcover)

I'm not surprised by the hostility of some reviewers. More than any other subject, psychology encourages us to believe, "Everyone's an expert!" And anyone who dares to criticize any variation of Myers-Briggs tests will be seen as attacking motherhood and apple pie. People don't give up illusions lightly.

Among my own career change clients, I am often asked, "Do you have a test that will identify the perfect career for me?" Those who have paid -- often expensively -- for tests inevitably report disillusionment.

Paul has thoroughly researched the origins and scientific quality of several tests that are commonly used to make serious decisions about people. As she says, they're used by parole boards, HR departments, counselors and more. You can be denied custody of your children on the basis of a flawed test. In science, flawed doesn't mean "better than nothing." It means "useless."

Her criticism of the MBTI is right on. Psychometric theory incorporates two ways to evaluate tests -- reliability and validity. Reliability means you'll get consistent results each time you take the test. Yet 47% of test-takers change types when they retake the MBTI. Validity means the test measures what it's supposed to measure, yet there are no objective ways to compare the sixteen types.

And while some test-takers and reviewers claim people get great insights from their test results, Paul demolishes this response. Over fifty years ago, a psychologist gave people a test. He then put together a combination of sentences taken from horoscopes and gave each test-taker the same "results." These people rated accuracy of these "results" an average 4.2 where 5 is highest -- and several scored the accuracy as a perfect 5!

Her dissection of other tests is even scarier. Asked to describe an inkblot, a logical response would be, "It's an inkblot." Interpretation of the Rorschach is problematic. The MMPI was never intended for widespread usage and once again, there's more ideology than science.

Paul explains the attraction of tests. We want quick, easy answer. Myers-Briggs is positive -- something for everyone.
She urges us to be careful when we're asked to take tests that have consequences for our lives, and I think she's right. There's enormous risk that our test results will be misinterpreted and/or misused. That's her real message.

As for individuals, many stimuli can trigger insights. Some are more evocative -- or just more fun -- than others. You can use your horoscope, a hand of tarot cards, pictures from magazines, descriptions of the 16 MBTI profiles, want ads from a newspaper. What's interesting will be the way you respond to these stimuli. It won't be scientific but if you find the exercise helpful, no harm done.

Paul's message is that we're treating these tests or "assessments" as though they have scientific standing, which they do not. We're making life-changing decisions based on these tests. If you're an individual seeking help, some consultants will charge big bucks to help you analyze your test results. Many college courses -- outside the psych department, she emphasizes -- actually incorporate these tests.

Many people won't care if individuals and organizations invest resources and make decisions based on instruments that were prepared in an ad hoc fashion by untrained amateurs. Those people will be furious with anyone who questions their beliefs. But for those who do care about the basis of choice and decision making, and who value the difference between science and pseudo-science, this book more than adequately fills the bill.