Ghost of the dead horse
filling some space
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
- Messages
- 3,553
- MBTI Type
- ENTJ
Personality test results come directly from our answers to the test questions. How do we then answer the test questions? Probably much like any other questions. Something immediately comes to our mind when a question is presented, and then we may proceed on it consciously.
Now, "biases" mean that something shady is happening in the "immediate" part. There's things like question substitution, where we replace a difficult question with another.
For example, "Am I an organized person?" might become "Did I put my pencils to the drawer?" for someone. Another person might replace it with "Do I appear in meetings on time?"
Then there's phenomena like availability heuristic. Some situations come more readily to the mind than the others. These easily thought-of situations form the base group for comparison in our counscious effort of answering the question. Maybe we've experienced those situations a lot, or maybe we've read a lot about them.
For example, "Do you appreciate art?" might become "Do I appreciate art more than my spouse who never goes to the art exhibitions?" for someone, and "Am I annoyed by those art students at my local café" for someone else. In both situations, the answer is further adjusted by the people in question.
This is sad, as a personality test would be more valuable if it measured more than what kind of company the person keeps. For that we would require multiple different persons to score us, or the use of less error-prone questions in the questionaire.
If a test promises to tell you how extroverted you are and the test asks YOU how extroverted you are, the test isn't doing it's job. The test maker should go through the trouble to find out questions that are somewhat reliable on a population level, not only on my or your circle of acquintances.
Now, "biases" mean that something shady is happening in the "immediate" part. There's things like question substitution, where we replace a difficult question with another.
For example, "Am I an organized person?" might become "Did I put my pencils to the drawer?" for someone. Another person might replace it with "Do I appear in meetings on time?"
Then there's phenomena like availability heuristic. Some situations come more readily to the mind than the others. These easily thought-of situations form the base group for comparison in our counscious effort of answering the question. Maybe we've experienced those situations a lot, or maybe we've read a lot about them.
For example, "Do you appreciate art?" might become "Do I appreciate art more than my spouse who never goes to the art exhibitions?" for someone, and "Am I annoyed by those art students at my local café" for someone else. In both situations, the answer is further adjusted by the people in question.
This is sad, as a personality test would be more valuable if it measured more than what kind of company the person keeps. For that we would require multiple different persons to score us, or the use of less error-prone questions in the questionaire.
If a test promises to tell you how extroverted you are and the test asks YOU how extroverted you are, the test isn't doing it's job. The test maker should go through the trouble to find out questions that are somewhat reliable on a population level, not only on my or your circle of acquintances.