Personality tests | Tell me who i am

Personality tests are everywhere. On the internet, in social media, in women’s magazines and – much more seriously – in the workplace. When are they relevant? What are their limits ? Our journalist lent herself to the game.

Catherine handfield
Press

In the room, you could hear a fly fly.

We are in the offices of the creative agency LG2, in Montreal, in a team building meeting. Six employees and two directors have just received their “Insights Discovery” profile, a 15-page document. And they read it. Attentively.

“I don’t think I’m wrong in saying it’s the longest minute of silence you’ve ever known!” », Launches the coach organizational Simon Lafortune, who leads the team session.

A few days earlier, these same employees answered 25 questions online. They were asked to rank pairs of characteristics, based on what best describes them in a work environment.

With their responses, the algorithm produced a report for each of them and assigned them one of eight personality types, associated with colors.

Insights Discovery is a psychometric tool based on the theory of psychological types, proposed in 1920 by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. According to this theory, we would all have preferences in our way of perceiving (feeling or intuition) and making decisions (thinking or feeling), as well as attitudes (extroversion or introversion).

Simon Boisvert nods as he reads the summary of his report. We can guess a smile behind his mask. The algorithm describes him as an “inspirer” associated with the color yellow: a sociable and persuasive being who likes to be involved. “It fits with my perception of myself,” he says.

Arnaud Doyon is a “director” characterized by red: determined, competitive, results-oriented. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the group director, Véronique Desroches. Its predominant color? The green. He is a “supporter”, a good ear who facilitates teamwork. She took the same test ten years ago and she likes her progress. “I had boyfriends who understood me less well than that! She says, causing the room to laugh.

Claire Daniel, for her part, obtained a mixture of green and blue (caution, precision, measure). She is also fascinated by the correctness of certain statements in her report. “Like this one,” she said, “she will often be annoyed by those who talk too much. “” Oupelai! », Launches the talkative Simon Boisvert (a yellow, it should be repeated), again making the colleagues laugh.

In the room reigns a beautiful atmosphere. There’s no denying it: people love personality tests. Why ? “Because the thing that people like to talk about the most is them”, answers Johanne Charbonneau straight away, coach professional and co-founder of Harieka Groupe Conseil, which organizes the activity at LG2. The purpose of the meeting, she says, is to get to know each other better and to communicate better.

“Human beings are social animals,” emphasizes Pascal Savard, organizational psychologist and certified human resources advisor. It is really important for us to know our place in the group, our added value, the perception that others have of us. It occupies a very important place in our reflections. ”

Limits

Johanne Charbonneau says it straight away: there can be a perverse effect on personality tests. Hence the importance, she says, of leading this type of meeting to put things in context.

“For example, if I label you as being red, when I enter into a relationship with you, I will not necessarily think of the extremely positive characteristics of this type of personality, but more of the gray areas,” he points out. she. These tests only reflect preferences in specific dimensions of personality, she says, and it would be “reductive” to use them for labeling. the coach Simon Lafortune emphasizes that we have all four colors in ourselves and that our preferences vary over time and depending on the environment.

The importance given to the results of these rapid personality tests has also been the subject of criticism in recent years, both in the media and in books. In particular, we have decried their binary side, while we can very well be both extrovert and introvert, both analytical and emotional.

In his book Personality Isn’t Permanent, published last year, psychologist and author Benjamin Hardy argues that personality testing locks us into tunnel visions of the self, while personality is something that evolves. In The Personality Brokers, published in 2018, author Merve Emre takes a critical look at the foundations of the very popular Myers-Briggs test, also based on Carl Jung’s theory.

“You must always use psychometric tests with nuance and skill,” indicates Martin Cloutier, organizational psychologist and president of Pixonality, a Quebec company specializing in the distribution of psychometric tests. Of course, a personality inventory that you fill out in 15, 20 minutes will try to put people in boxes. But personality is much more nuanced than a box. The important thing, he says, is to use a test for the purpose for which it was designed.

The Insights test, for example, is a communication tool. When it is used in a team development meeting, “it’s interesting,” says organizational psychologist Pascal Savard.

Development and recruitment

In the workplace, the use of psychometric tests goes well beyond the framework of team building meetings.

Whereas 20 years ago, they were first used in selection, the context of labor shortage is changing the situation: today, they are used a lot in employee retention, in development and in career management, lists Martin Cloutier, of Pixonality. Organizations that have a force of attraction also use them in selection, seeing them as a simple and easy to manage assessment tool.

The psychometric tests used for these purposes are much more comprehensive and much more sophisticated than the popular rapid tests. “There is no board of directors that will say: me, I want to hire a red as president. It doesn’t work like that, ”illustrates Martin Cloutier.

Psychometric tests include several categories: personality inventories (extraversion or introversion, agreeableness, adaptability to changes, management of emotions), cognitive tests, inventories of interests, behavioral tests, work simulations, etc.

According to Martin Cloutier, organizations should however qualify the results of psychometric tests of interviewees – which is not always done, he agrees. “Psychometric tests are one element among a set of elements to consider in an application,” he says.

Moreover, notes Pascal Savard, research shows that the job interview can predict job performance much better than personality tests. Why ? Because these tests make it possible to measure the variant between individuals, but not the variant within the individual. “And it is a mistake to think that a person is constant in the way he acts,” he says.

Pascal Savard quotes a study carried out in 2011. It shows that the variation in behavior of a person in relation to a personality trait is due 70% to the fact that this person acts differently according to the context and only 30% to differences. between individuals.

“These tests have a usefulness, but we must be careful not to give them more importance than they should have”, concludes Pascal Savard.

Our journalist’s experience

As part of this report, the author of these lines has taken various personality tests. Account of his experience.

Free personality tests available on the internet abound. It is with them that we begin our exploration of personality tests, we who have not taken any since our subscription to the magazine. Today’s Girls in the 1990s.

A word of caution: unlike personality inventories used by human resource managers, psychologists, and career counselors, these free web-based tests are not scientifically validated.

Without much waiting, therefore, we take three free tests, which are intended to be imitations of the Myers-Briggs test. These tests – very popular on social media – establish our personality type in four letters: E or I (extrovert or introvert), S or N (sensation or intuition), T or F (thought or feeling) and J or P ( judgment or perception).

Truity.com and humanmetrics.com label us as ENFP, describing us as a passionate designer with an infectious enthusiasm for people and new ideas. The 16personnalities.com site is wrong: we would rather be an ISFP, a warm and open-minded artist undoubtedly introverted. Good.

Validated tools

We now move on to validated tools, starting with Insights Discovery, designed to describe our personality type at work. It is the blue and the green that stand out. We are a “coordinator”, focused on introversion and sensation. “Catherine is of a constant and methodical rigor, with great capacities of concentration”, it is written in our report. This is true at work, confirm our superiors, but less at home, estimates our better half, who gently emphasizes our whimsical and messy side. We cannot prove him wrong.

If the report reflects our strengths and weaknesses at work rather well, a few points surprise us, such as a penchant for technique (have we missed our vocation?) And an impatience with people who do not adhere to schedules and procedures ( are we a repressed intransigent?).

Finally, the Pixonality company gives us a set of combined Humance tests: a cognitive test, four personality inventories and a developmental readiness questionnaire. We spend a good two hours there. And we answer them with transparency, even for questions relating to the organization (sometimes failing at home, it must be repeated) and stress management.

The results are normalized. We are placed on scales, which allow us to compare us with the average person.

Our strengths: abstract reasoning skills, conceptual thinking, depth of analysis and interpersonal flexibility. Our weaknesses: a sense of innovation, influence on the group, stress management and… rigor! Strictly speaking, we are talking about respect for rules and procedures, control of files, order and structure. In short, OUR great strength, according to Insights Discovery!

“The tests do not measure the intra-individual variant,” the organizational psychologist Pascal Savard had warned us. And he was absolutely right.