What are those psychological tests asking for? And how do I deliver?

May 25, 2018 2:10 PM

I've taken two of them, one for a large hotel chain and one for the Post Office, and apparently I fail miserably.

I just try to answer them honestly, but I get perplexed because they are so black and white. Anyway, I fail. I understand that they repeat the same question over and over in different forms to confuse the test-taker, but either I'm really not paying attention or ... what? I'm a smart person with morals, so what's happening here?

posted by intrepid_simpleton to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

I'm not sure we can answer without any clues about which or what kind of test you're referring to.

Also, the purpose of repeated items (or the same question asked in slightly different ways) is generally not to "confuse" the test-taker, but to check that they're not faking - it's a type of "lie scale", and it's designed to check that you're responding consistently, which is harder to do if you're lying.
posted by Cheese Monster at 2:30 PM on May 25, 2018 [11 favorites]

I'm assuming you're talking about those 40-something question corporate ethics tests. If you keep in mind that these things are designed by and for faceless corporate bureaucracies who love zero-tolerance policies, the strategy becomes clear: You are a perfect drone. You have never had an impure thought. No you have never stolen anything, not even a passing glance. No, you have never ever harbored a single negative emotion about a customer or boss. Of course you would immediately and gladly report a coworker for taking an extra twelve seconds on their lunch break. Of course you would be thrilled to cancel your vacation to work overtime on Christmas Day. You will flawlessly and unquestionably uphold every company practice, no matter how impractical. You are an obedient robot.

It's all bullshit, but even one or two "wrong" answers, no matter how honest or realistic, will blacklist you, or at least score you underneath everybody who knows how to fib strategically. Don't feel bad about it, feel bad about the computerized hiring process that tries to filter human beings through a dumb quiz.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:34 PM on May 25, 2018 [30 favorites]

See also Ghostride the Whip's comment from a 2014 post:

So my wife worked retail for about a decade but was legendarily incapable of passing the psychological screening to make sure you're not a thief because she was too honest. Like she'd say she "sometimes" thought about not showing up for work because who doesn't think like that every now and then? So then the manager would call her up and tell her they REALLY WANTED to hire her but she must've CLICKED THE WRONG ANSWER ACCIDENTALLY and so would need to take the psych screening again.

So naturally she'd have me do it and I'd go BEEP BOOP I AM A PERFECT DRONE BEEP BOOP and she'd magically pass and get hired.

I was always amused, though, that it was possible to fail the test for being too honest.

posted by Rhaomi at 2:38 PM on May 25, 2018 [21 favorites]

Response by poster: I don't know the name of the test or I would tell you.
posted by intrepid_simpleton at 2:40 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, there are the tests to try to screen out who's going to fake a workman's comp injury or steal or sell drugs at work or whatever, and there are pretty different tests about management styles depending on what kind of positions you're applying for.

They don't want your smarts or morals for the first kind, they just want you to follow the rules blindly and fink on your coworkers. (I have taken the other kind of test once and apparently flunked, so no advice there.)
posted by momus_window at 2:45 PM on May 25, 2018

Even if you don't know the test names, if you knew what they said they were designed to measure it would be helpful. You implied they were integrity tests, which can be tricky. At the lower levels, like for hourly positions, the integrity test used is generally an off-the-shelf test that the company purchases, administers, scores, and "interprets" based on a scale provided by the test publisher. For those types of integrity tests, corporate automatons are most likely to pass. For higher level positions, though, the integrity tests are usually of a higher quality and are interpreted by someone with actual qualifications, like with a master's degree, and is an employee of the test publisher. There is considerably more nuance, and often even some judgment involved, in interpreting the results. For those tests, scrupulous honesty in answering, even to the point of admitting some less-than-fully-pure thoughts, is most likely to result in a "pass".
posted by DrGail at 2:52 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

For my dad's entire adult life he's had a small employment consulting business, and a large part of what he does is to create tests like the one you're describing. ("They're not tests, they're assessments!" He'd say.) His clients are always huge corporations who want to hire like 5,000 of the exact same job. In my dad's case, at least, here's how those tests work:

1. The company tells him what they want to optimize for. Might be retention, or "loss prevention" (avoiding hiring employees who steal inventory), or whatever else.

2. He goes into his binders of items (individual questions) and puts together an assessment of between 40 and 100 items that have been well-validated in the past for whatever trait is being optimized.

3. The preliminary assessment is given to a bunch of current employees of the job being hired for.

4. Supervisor evaluations are collected for all of the current employees taking the preliminary assessment.

5. The individual items are validated against the supervisor evaluations. If most "good" employees answered a given item a given way, that's a good item for this particular assessment. Ditto if most "bad" employees answered a given item a given way. An item has double-good validity if "good" employees answered it consistently one way and "bad" employees consistently gave a different answer.

6. The items with the highest validity are collected into the final assessment, which is then given to job candidates.

So you can see that at least in the case of my dad's tests, the "right" answer is determined empirically and may not always be the one you'd think. I remember him pointing out to me examples of where the "perfect drone" answer was not the most correct one, for what it's worth. But I'm sure that not every company uses questionnaires developed by this method.
posted by The Minotaur at 3:10 PM on May 25, 2018 [14 favorites]

The brutal honesty works when you're being tested for security clearance. I can not believe the things I've told security clearance interviewers flat out and still been passed. So lie and play the corporate thing. The serious tests (IMHO) are compatible with brutal honesty.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:51 PM on May 26, 2018