Personality testing has become a widespread field. There are many existing tests offering different personality models. You, yourself, might have found some tests that you found terrifyingly accurate or, on the contrary, that you grew skeptical of. This article will help you either understand how you could get such a feeling of accuracy or, respectively, help justify your skepticism. In either case, knowledge is power, and arming yourself with awareness of the biases presented below can enhance your critical thinking.

Low-quality tests rely on three biases to trick people into believing their results. They are some of the key ingredients to the publicized claims: “I can’t believe how accurate it is.” Unfortunately, people’s feeling about a test accuracy is not a reliable measure of its validity. Official horoscopes and mediums also regularly use those biases as they also need to appear more accurate than what they actually are.

Why am I telling you about them as a personality platform founder myself? Because Personas don’t need them to make you feel like it delivers value, and fundamentally because I want to help people, not pretend to. The goal is to empower you to detect those biases, notably when you read your results.

Let’s dive into how they work and how to handle them.

1) Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values

There are multiple types of confirmation bias: biased search for confirmatory information, biased interpretation of information, and biased recall of information. Biased interpretation is the most impactful when one reads their personality results.

One of the most striking examples of biased interpretation is an American study that showed identic fictional research to opponents and proponents of the death penalty. Not only did the evidence increased polarization instead of reducing it (each side cherry-picking the bits that were supportive of their beliefs), it showed that people have much higher standards for what is against their stance. Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment rated results and procedures that confirmed their beliefs more convincing and probative.

One can see how it affects personality testing. Users have a preconceived idea of themselves and seek it into results they get, hence the feeling of “accuracy.” Should the picture depicted by the test not confirm such beliefs, they will tend to become highly critical of it. Reversedly, they will tend to accept results without much skepticism should the results be comfortable.

And no, being smart (using SAT as a proxy) doesn’t prevent you from suffering from confirmation bias

2) Pygmalion bias

When expectations influence people performance, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies.

Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor. After multiple bad experiences with women, he became more and more misogynistic. Soon enough, he decided to devote himself to celibate and its art. As often in greek stories, the tables turn. Pygmalion ends up sculpting a woman so beautiful, so pure, that he progressively falls in love with the statue. He ends up praying to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, for a bride exactly like his ivory girl. Upon coming home, he kisses the statue that comes to life under his lips. The projection became reality.

Expectations (internal and external) influence us. We internalize labels and tend to behave accordingly to them. It then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. This bias is dangerous with personality tests, especially with “types” as they give easy “boxes” that people can fall into and start behaving according to the box. This is not bad if a manager is looking for a tool to organize his teams into “roles,” but it is harmful if the purpose and claimed intent are to reveal who people are.

3) Barnum effect

When individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, yet which are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

The Barnum effect is widely used by psychics, horoscopes, magicians, palm readers, and crystal ball gazers when they convince people that their description of them is highly special and unique and could never apply to anyone else.

Here are some illustrative statements:

• Sometimes you give too much effort to projects that don’t work out
• Although you do have some weaknesses, you try very hard to overcome them and be a better person.
• Sometimes you can be loud, outgoing, and a people person, but other times you can be quiet, shy, and reserved
• You have an intense desire to get people to accept and like you

An additional study shows that people being given personality feedback on computers rated almost as accurate bogus results (71%) as real ones (76%). This bias is a strong case for why people’s feelings of the accuracy of a test about themselves is not a great measure of the quality of the test.

Conclusion

It’s not because the candy tastes good that it’s healthy for you.

People’s personalities are complex and subtle, and so is the study of it. It requires nuance, energy, and a degree of uncertainty. Of course, you can choose a simple, quick, and labeling test and eat the candy. It will make you feel good and give you a momentary rush, but it won’t accomplish much in the long run, but instead could harm you in ways you won’t notice. Or you can decide to invest in yourself, eat healthily and reap the rewards over time, even though the initial bites are not as pleasant or as digestible. That is the goal of Personas, to deliver long-lasting value to people by revealing who they truly are. But how confidently do so, knowing of the three biases above? While it is impossible to cancel their effect altogether, it is possible to mitigate them.

The first way is by design. Personas uses the existing Big Five model (because no internal R&D team is going to beat 60 years of open academic research around the world). The Big Five, also known as OCEAN or the five-factor model(FFM), delivers nuanced and score-based results.

1. As simple labels can trigger the pygmalion effect, a score-based system makes self-fulfilling prophecies less likely. It encourages the users to not think in discrete boxes when picturing themselves or others, but more as shades in a continuum.
2. Because the Big Five does not provide those one size fits all boxes or labels, results are customized to the user, as they should be. Instead of having, e.g., four discrete types (which is a deficient number to generalize billions of people) with blanket statements, the Big Five results provide five traits and 30 facets, all scored on a continuum. Such results deliver only relevant information to the user. This helps mitigate the Barnum effect.
3. By offering 360 degrees testing and multiple perspectives, Personas allows users to challenge their preconceived ideas. Doing so helps reduce the existing confirmation biases of the user.

The second way is by increasing awareness of the user about said biases, hence this article. The more you are aware of them, the more you can detect them.

So if you’re interested in genuinely scientific, valid, extensive, and reliable testing of your personality, have a look at Personas! And if you are interested in how it works or might be skeptical, check the bibliography. As said earlier, we want to help, educate and empower users.

Have a beautiful day,

Thibault
Personas Director

As usual here’s the Infographic for you to use and share, as a summary: