The Sparrow and the Lion
Sometimes, it’s a fool’s role to be a fool.
Overview:
The topic: Psychometric surveys based on Factor Analysis are ubiquitous. Such esoteric such tests may even mandate your medical options with some MDs.
The cause: Unnecessary anguish expressed in online comments for a course on personality bother me. That course titled Discovering Personality relies on the Big Five Personality Traits survey by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson et al.
The stages:
First, we’ll start with a behind-the-scenes view of surveys in words you can use with a grade-school child.
Then, we’ll look at the use and misuse of such tests, including actual online comments.
I’ll end by offering a few reflections and suggestions about the online resource by Peterson, Higgins, and Pihl.
Astronomy, astrology, what difference does it make?
Our ancestors crossed seas and deserts by reading the stars in the night sky. Stable night sky constellations with a predictable course were paramount. The latter are artifacts due to our inability to see depth in the night sky with our naked eyes. They are the Chinese shadow puppets that the Cosmos play upon the Earth.
And, like the night sky has too many stars, so do psychometric surveys have too many questions to discuss with a client. So those questions are “reframed” as a manageable number of “virtual” questions, mind constellations. The test scores are the “imaginary” answers to those virtual questions. The configurations are, more often than not, score ranges from high to low. But I worked with ratios of scores also.
Ultimately, a correlation is not a digested thought; it’s an open question.
Indeed, a psychometric survey’s value is less in its answers than in the questions it raises.
For example, imagine a School Counselor telling little Johnny he is a Good Hearted ™ little boy. Perhaps that’s not true, but Johnny accepts the praise at face value and keeps being the usual school bully. Johnny might also ask himself what his days would be like if he were genuinely good-hearted. That choice might lead to a positive change in his education. Who would worry when Johnny gets different scores from the same test years later? Has he not traveled from one seacoast to another?
It’s a red flag when a survey author warns against repeating a test.
No one cares when a sparrow poops on the sidewalk; but beware when a lion does the same.
And that leads us to the flip side of little Johnny’s story. The school counselor informs him that he is morally inferior and an unlovable dreg of society. What, then, are Johnny’s choices?
Unfortunately, that version isn’t all fictional.
Who on Earth would want a mandated Woke Big Five Personality Traits survey?
Some comments on the Discovering Personality course’s lesson on Conscientiousness concern me. For example, one student asked what advantage a low conscientiousness score might confer. Here are two antipodal replies that I leave for you to decide.
“Yes. As a hiring manager, it’s easier to narrow down the list of people to interview by removing all those low enough in consciousness to be unemployable, as Fran eluded to.”
“I feel this so deeply. Just took the test and scored moderately low on conscientiousness/industriousness and it’s hit me. I’ve been a high achiever all my life, am a premed at Harvard currently applying to MD/PhD programs, and I’ve wanted to be a physician for over a decade for how much I care about people and want to spend my life serving. I’m so confused.”
The confusion stems from a conflation of personality with character in the written explanation for low scorers. The authors assert that low conscientiousness scores come from people:
“whose friends can’t trust to help them move,”
“who are completely unconcerned with cleaning, moral purity and achievement,”
“who tend to be almost completely free of guilt, shame, self-disgust and self-contempt,”
“who do not consider duty as a virtue or an obligation,”
“who will not even work hard if directly and continually pushed by outside forces (supervisors, spouses, friends, parents),”
“who can be exceptionally skilled at wasting time and slacking off and justifying it.”
Hitler had a few choice names for such people; Roms and Jews come to mind.
On the other hand, high scorers are efficient, ambitious, value-driven, and good employees.
Now, the word factory comes to mind.
It’s a craftsman’s mark to track the value of his work.
Twenty times on the loom, put back your work.
When I was born the World was still round, and human bonds kept us from falling. So, from that perspective, I respectfully propose to Dr. Peterson & colleagues two possible corrections.
First, let a panel of writers to review the survey’s synopses for any personality biases as well as any conflation of personality with character.
Second, reach out to students who have expressed anguish in their comments. Those who paid money wanted to improve their lives, not be dragged in the mud. That is just good customer service.
My third recommendation is a wish that Dr. Peterson would consider the potential cultural damage caused by magical thinking in psychometric testing.
Sincerely,
Joel Malard, Ph.D. McGill Univesity
Juido LLC, CA
