Personality assessments have been around a long time and are the provenance of fully discredited physiognomy, phrenology and eugenics. They became popular after making employees take polygraph (Lie detector) tests – another discredited technology and multiplied faster than the Covid virus in a crowded bar as modern management became a legitimate study focus. All have a number of challenges, the core being that both the completion of the assessment and its evaluation are subjective processes and should be viewed mostly as descriptive tools. They can be helpful in generating self awareness in an individual.
Additional Resources
- What is a Personality Test? – VeryWelMind
- What Personality Tests Really Deliver – The New Yorker
- How Accurate Are Personality Tests? – Scientific American