Personality testing is an industry the way astrology or dream analysis is an industry: slippery, often underground, hard to monitor or measure. I say 'appear' because - today as when I wrote the book - verifiable numbers on the use of such tests are hard to come by.
Personality tests appear to be more popular than ever. Personality tests are neither valid nor reliable, I argued, and we should stop using them - especially for making decisions that affect the course of people's lives, like workplace hiring and promotion.īut if I thought that my book, The Cult of Personality Testing, would lead to change in the world, I was keenly mistaken. Twelve years ago, I tried to drive a stake into the heart of the personality-testing industry.
