The Cult of Personality
By Annie Murphy Paul
Some 1,200 employees of Rent-A-Center cashed in three years ago when the company paid a $2 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit. The company's alleged wrongdoing: administering a personality test comprising more than 500 questions, some of them bizarre and seemingly irrelevant, including many that asked about employees' sex lives and religious beliefs.
It has become commonplace for companies to require that job applicants complete such tests as part of the interview process. Exams can even be used to determine which parent gets custody of a child.
Annie Murphy Paul makes the argument in her new book, The Cult of Personality, that we are basing weighty decisions on an imperfect science. Murphy provides an overview of the histories and shortcomings of the major personality tests, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Big Five and projective tests such as the Rorschach inkblots. She also chronicles our fascination with such tests and explores how our reliance on them may impoverish our sense of self rather than enrich it.
