People have and continue to spend thousands of time and money on taking personality
tests. I decided to find out for myself if these personality tests, more specifically The Hartman Color Code personality test. The Hartman Color Code is broken down into 4 different colors. The colors are each motivated by different values. Reds are motivated by power. This personality type as described by The Color Code profile need to look good technically, be right, and be respected. They are strong leaders and love challenges. Blues are motivated by intimacy and need to have integrity and be appreciated. They are focused on quality and creating strong relationships. Whites are motivated by peace. Whites need to be accepted and treated with kindness. They are logical, objective, and tolerant of others. Yellows are motivated by fun and need to be noticed and have fun. They love life, social connections, and being positive and spontaneous. My personal project was to discover if personality truly can be tested or measured and to what extent? I decided to journal each day for a month. Every day I would write a small description on what color I felt I was most motivated by. The four different motives coordinated with their colors; red and power, blue and intimacy, white and peace, and lastly yellow and fun. My prediction was that I would easily be able to record my personality. I estimated that my results from the personality test would be highly similar to my results from this journal experience. I knew that to analyze my results properly that I would need research to match and validate my research.
Literature Reviews
Boundless Phycology
There is different kinds of personality assessments like objective, which stems from responses and is most likely to be free of bias. Another way to measure personality is a system called projective measures. Projective measures rely on “ambiguous stimuli” which is thought bring out certain aspects and characteristics on ones personality possibly unconsciously. Personality tests also have a certain validity to them. Astrology signs are an example of a personality measure that make general statements that easily applicable, causing an individual to believe these vague statements to be true and the measure to be valid as well. This is known as the Forer Effect. Another problem with personality tests is that they are lacking in suffienct scientific evidence to back up the test itself. When a subjects personality is being assessed they can also lie to throw off the accuracy of their results. Employers often use these personality measures to decide on a candidate for a job, that may not even be the best fit. Certain personality tests are used on firefighters, security, and police officers who are required to carry firearms. Personality tests can raise an eyebrow for discrimination in the workplace. Often times, certain cultures and races can fall largely under one category. This leads to discrimination against a group of people, beside culture and race as well. This document also argues that many people cannot fall into a certain category regarding their personality test results.
Personality Tests in Employment Selection. Beau Baez
In this article the Cornell HR review warns employers of how they use personality assessments. Claiming employers need to be careful when using a personality test to measure predicted job performance. There are over 2,500 personality assessments on the market. What this article highlights is the discernment between them and the credibilty of personality assessments. Personality is defined by the way we interact with others and the personality tests are measuring traits that people exhibit. Many argue that personality test should not be regarded
at all, because they can be inaccurate and faked. It is only a matter of when and if. Some personality tests are accurate some of the time, but only in some situations. An academic review shows that only 5% of job performance stems from personality and 95% is not related to personality. This being said personality test are not an accurate way to measure job performance or even predict job performance. This HR review bring emotional intellegience into play. Emotional intellegiance is actually a type of intellegence rather than personality trait. The author of this review claims that emotional intellegence is a more reliable way to predict how a person will perform and act in the workplace. The EQ of a person should always hold more weight than a personality test. Although it is much harder to fake EQ, it can be faked still. EQ assessments, however tend to have a series of irrelevant questions to depict test taking patterns and truly analyze their emotional intellegence.
Color Code
The color code gives a history of personality tests and also what sets them apart from the rest of personality tests, so to claim. The color code describes that since early times humans have been attempting to measure personality and trying to apply it to their lives. In the middle ages Hippocrates gave the world the first personality model. A Greek physician later developed his theory by applying a different temperament for bodily fluids. The following four were pegged as humors; blood, mucus, black bile, and yellow bile. When people had diseases which ever fluid was most prominent was said to be their humor. This personality model had widespread popularity in the middle ages. As medicine progressed throughout the 18th century, knowledge of respitrory and digestive systems debunked this theory. In the late 19th century Wilhmem Wundt was believed to be the first person to make the distinction between the human body and personality. He believed that temperaments were in between changeablitiy and emotionality.
Physcology was developed much more during the twentieth century and the science of personality became intriguing. The color code describes other personality tests and compares them to their own claiming that they are different from the other personality test because they base theirs off of motives rather than behaviors. It is hard to evaluate and change behaviors, so going deeper into the core motive can help us understand why we do it instead of what we do.
How Reliable Are Personality Tests. Dana Wilkie
Dana Wilkie warns employers of the legal risk, faking results, and inaccuracy they may take run into when they use personality measures. Using personality profiles can strongly benefit an employer and their hiring process. Many people will fake their answers on a personality test. Ways that employers can create consistency is by asking questions that will require quick answers showing correlation or fault in a candidate’s answers. She also advises that employers wait to give personality tests until they are down to a small list of interviewees. Lastly she warns of the legal risk involved with these assessments. These assessments can point out disabilities and mental illness through certain questions. One assessment given stated the following and noticed that they can highligh a disibility or mental illness. “People do a lot things that make you angry. There is no use in having close friends; they always let you down. Many people can not be trusted. You are unsure of what to say when you meet someone.” The ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability. This could get an employer in serious trouble, when they did not mean it.
What do personality tests really reveal? Dori Meinert
Meinhert begins her writing discussing the accuracy of the tests. She emphasizes that not all of the tests were created equal. The Myer Briggs test, one of the most popular tests of all, should not be used in the hiring process. This test can be easily swayed by stressful life events and easily faked by applicants to answer to what they think the employer wants. Not always are these results show what employers are looking for or even need in their workplaces. How employers can find the strongest tests that will measure personality are ones that measure traits that will not change over time. They will give the same results if taken a second time. Do your homework, make sure these tests have a history of showing and predicting job performance. In 2012 and 2013 an Atlana attorney named Roland Behm filed a discrimination complaint with his son who got rejected for a job after taking a personality test that showed signs of his bipolar disorder. This case would prevent employers from using almost no personality tests at all. To legally exclude a person with a disability an employer needs to show that they will be a risk to the safety in the workplace. People’s behavior can also change over time and basing employment off of a personality test is not the best way to predict job performance.
Methods
In my journal every day, I had to decided I felt my driving core motive was. It was difficult at first to measure my motives and to find just one to label. When I felt I had a productive day and was getting a lot of things done, I would label it as a red day or power day. I felt the most power driven those days. On blue days, I would base my journal off of if I wanted to be close to the people who mean the most to me. If I was more emotional or sad, I would put those under blue days as well. Since blues tend to be more prone to depression. On white days when I was feeling ‘peaceful’, I usually would avoid hurting other people feelings and avoid conflict. Yellow days I based off if I wanted to have fun and do little to no productive activities
that day. Some days I would feel more than one motive that was driving me that day. I had both white and blue driving me. Normally I would write down some of the decisions I made through out the day, what I was feeling, and how others reacted to me. After doing so I would say for example “Today was a blue day, because I felt like I wanted to make better relationships with the people around me, even though I avoid conflict, I felt more intimate today”. This could be another personality measure within itself.
Results
The results from this journaling experience out of 28 days were 9 white days, 9 blue days, 6 yellow days, and 4 red days. The results did not follow the color code results closely. My results from the color code test were 23 white, 14 blue, 5 yellow, and 0 red. The order was still correct, but the numbers did not differ between each other at all.
Discussion/Conclusion
Personality tests are a tale as old as time. From early times human beings have been attempting to measure personality. In recent years, personality tests have regained their popularity. I learned however, that personality tests are not as reliable as society thinks they are. It is important to be careful when taking personality tests. Taking personality tests into too much considersation when an employer is in the hiring process can hurt their company, employees, and their candidates. There are plenty of inaccurate personality tests, but there are also some resourceful tests. The biggest take away from this project, is how to spot a useful personality test that can help benefit yourself and others. Looking at the background of the personality test and how it was made, who it was made by, when it was made. Making sure a personality test has
science to back up its test is also key. I also had to remind myself that that personality test are only a resource to help me and they do not define who I am or what I am capable of.