More on those voodoo psychological tests

There's an interesting discussion over at Slashdot about those quasi-scientific psychological profile tests. It started with a discussion of a takedown request for a blogger who'd posted the first 75 of 567 questions (with answers) to one of those tests, then quickly branched out into a discussion of the tests themselves:

unlametheweak: The sad thing is that people who lie on the test (and are consistent about it) are the ones that are going to get hired.

Take for example, "It would be better if almost all laws were thrown away". Now considering that this test is for the police force, it's obvious that the Human Resource types aren't interested in hiring a civil Libertarian, however purely philosophical he is in his beliefs.

"I do not always tell the truth"

If you answer "False" to this (like I would), then you would also be weeded out as a liar. Because well, most people lie most of the time, and according to the HR types, if you don't admit to lying then you are just a dishonest liar.

Greyfox: I always lie, therefore I would have to answer "false" to "I do not always tell the truth."
Why do I get the feeling that other than that one question their test would show me to be a model employee?

Thelasko: . . . I suggest that anyone who has to work in an organization that uses these types of tests read The Organization Man by William H. Whyte. . . . I will reproduce here a couple of paragraphs from the "How to Cheat on Personality Tests" chapter:

"By and large, however, your safety lies in getting a score somewhere between the 40th and 60th percentiles, which is to say, you should try to answer as if you were like everyone else is supposed to be. This is not always too easy to figure out, of course, and this is one of the reasons why I will go into some detail in the following paragraphs on the principal types of questions. When in doubt, however, there are two general rules you can follow: (1) When asked for word associations or comments about the world, give the most convential, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible. (2) To settle the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself:

a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more
b) I like things pretty well the way they are
c) I never worry much about anything
d) I don't care for books or music much
e) I love my wife and children
f) I don't let them get in the way of company work"

You know what is the saddest about these personality tests? This guide to cheating on them was written just a few years after the basic ones became popular (they were developed in the 20's and 30's, came into use and were standardized (and also statistically tested and proven worthless) in the bureaucracy of WWII, and The Organization Man was published in '56), but the cheat guide works perfectly well even for tests developed long after the cheat guide was written.

I posted something on this back in January.