What is a personality test?
A personality assessment test is a tool designed to assess human personality. Personality tests are used to understand the characteristic patterns of feelings, thoughts and behaviors that people reveal in various situations. Such tests can predict how individuals would react and respond in different situations. Personality assessments are valuable tools to measure one’s personality, helping screen applicants for hiring and academic purposes.
Personality assessment tests are of two types: projective tests and self-report inventories.
Projective tests are a method of personality assessment in which the test items are ambiguous – for instance, the Rorschach Inkblot Test. The test items can consist of pictures, words, scenes, ambiguous shapes, incomplete sentences or drawings and abstract images. However, the test-takers need to respond to the test items based on their understanding. Thus, these tests attempt to understand the underlying personality characteristics through candidates’ responses.
Self-report inventories are personality questionnaires that an individual fills out. Self-report tests or objective tests pose questions to the test-takers on personal interests, possible behavioral patterns, values, preferences, etc.
People’s personality traits, including their morals and principles, ideologies, driving factors and disposition, essentially determine their workplace performance. Therefore, personality assessments are the best way to evaluate applicants’ characteristic traits for a specific job role.
Why do we assess personality?
Personality is defined as the stable characteristics of an individual. It determines a person’s behavior, motivations, preferences, etc. Personality conveys everything you need to know about individuals before hiring them – their positive and dark side, values, ability to collaborate with their teammates, whether they will fit in a team or succeed as individual contributors, etc. These detailed insights enhance the importance of assessing personality for organizations.
A valid and reliable personality test will also generate stable scores since personality is largely stable, especially after a certain age. Therefore, an individual should get similar results on multiple occasions in superior quality tests. An individual’s behavior may change via training or exposure to circumstances; however, changes in the core personality are difficult to bring about. Therefore, when an organization selects candidates, it means that their personality aligns with the organization’s culture and demands of the job role.
The science behind personality tests
Personality tests are based on psychological science. They are administered and scored appropriately in accordance with established standardized procedures. The American Psychological Association defines personality assessment as a proficiency in professional psychology that involves administering, scoring and interpreting empirically supported measures of personality traits and styles.
Except for a few personality tests that are heavily influenced by the creators’ subjective feelings, most personality assessments (such as those based on the Big Five Models) follow rigorous scientific protocols. Personality testing methodologies are based on a systematic, scientific study in the field of psychological measurement. Such studies are concerned with creating measures and their scoring, gauging reliability and validity evidence for measures, factor analysis and the analysis of differential item functioning (DIF) across the subgroups.
It stands to reason that the optimal use of personality tests to optimize various aspects of an employee’s life cycle is feasible. These different aspects could be recruitment, Learning & Development, performance review, leadership development, succession planning and high-potential identification. Hence, it is safe to say that a personality test based on psychometric science touches upon various dimensions of human personality.
Dan Barrett, Co-Founder, Pacific Precious Metals, asserts, “The underlying science behind every personality assessment is the elicitation of emotions and the analysis of reactions. They make us manifest an emotion through the questions and record our answers to sketch our personality.”
https://blog.mettl.com/guide/personality-test-assessment/
