Do I have a Personality?

D and I both took the Stanton Survey this week.  This is an extremely bizarre set of questions, designed to measure one's integrity.  It consists of a number of belief statements that are a variation on this theme:  "true or false: most people are dishonest."   When I handed it in yesterday, I said, well, this either proves I'm incredibly naive or I'm a liar.  Because I basically said, over and over, "My real name is Pollyanna, and I believe there is good in EVeryone, I invented the Glad Game and I am so glad glad glad to have the opportunity to work a low-paying job."  We have yet to know if D passed it, but apparently I did:  I go in for training next week.

Of course, I've taken numerous personality tests over the years.  The Keirsey is bizarre, too.  Sometimes I am an introvert, sometimes an extrovert; sometimes Sensing, sometimes Feeling, sometimes Judging, sometimes....you get the picture.  In 2006, I saved one of the tests:  it said my temperament is that of an "idealist."  Er, really?  Perhaps only an idealist could have passed the Stanton Survey.

I have taken a number of joke personality tests which seem to have just as much validity as these pseudo-scientific ones.  I have discovered which Jane Austen and Middle Earth characters I am, for example.  (Not that I can remember them;  I think I was Elizabeth Bennett, but I also think I loaded the dice for that one.  Lord knows I didn't want to be Fanny Price.)  And then there's this smiley face made up of words:  the first four words you notice describe you.    I am lovely, honest, lazy, and dramatic.   Well, yes.

But really, what is it about these tests that is so seductive?  Just as interviews are a poor substitute for working with someone, the tests are a poor substitute for a good interview process.  While I understand the need for an interview (you can't work with everyone before you hire them,) I'm not clear that there is a need for the test.  The theory seems to be that no one can be trusted to figure out another person.  This is a skill mankind should have honed through the ages, a basic survival tactic.  What happened to it?  And, why do we trust these random tests over a one-on-one interaction?  Why do we take the tests for our own amusement and bemusement?  Are we really such strangers to ourselves that we need someone else to interpret our behaviors?

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout describes the shorthand the adults use to interpret each other.  All Bufords Walk Like That, The Truth is Not In the Merryweathers, etc etc.  There, generations of observations are coming into play.  But in our overcrowded cities, we don't have that tool.  We have networks instead, and those operate on a very superficial level.  Maybe that's why we feel so insecure in our people-judging skills, and are desperate to find someone else to do the job for us.

The Stanton Survey was devised in 1964, when I was 5 years old.  That's close to 50 years of experience with weeding out potential problems.   It's hard to believe that it really works, but surely a company wouldn't fork over the money if it didn't have positive results.  After all, it passed me, and we all know I'm a monster of integrity.

Except when it comes to answering personality quizzes.