Psychological Testing in the Workplace
Introduction A person’s cognitive ability alone is rarely a good indicator of his or her job performance. Other factors, such as personality and mental stability, are significant as well. Corporations are beginning to notice major benefits in screening out undesirable applicants and employees. How are they able to measure and predict which employees are likely to be undesirable? They use psychological tests. We will begin by looking at the history of workplace testing, then discuss some types of psychological tests, how these tests benefit employers, common testing instruments, institutions that use these tests, and some related limitations and legal concerns.
History of workplace testing It’s hard to put a date on the inception of psychological testing. Who knows, informal means of psychological testing could have been happening between cavemen. But psychological testing in the workplace is a relatively new concept with a traceable history. The first psychological testing occurred in the midst of World War I. Many of the Allied soldiers experienced long-lasting, traumatic symptoms after experiencing enemy bombardment for the first time in their lives. Aware that many of the soldiers were suffering from a sort of “shell shock”, the military decided to commission a test that they could use to identify the soldiers among the American Expeditionary Services who were believed to be emotionally unstable and, therefore, unfit for active combat. The test that resulted from this concern was called the scale of Psychoneurotic Tendencies (PT), developed by Robert S. Woodworth (Gibby & Zickar, 2008, p. 169). Woodworth then adapted this military test for industrial research, renaming the test the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet (WPDS). According to Gibby and Zickar (2008), “The 1924 version of the WPDS assessed personal adjustment via 75 yes/no items; example items included ‘Do you ever get so angry that you see red?’ and ‘Do you get tired of people easily?’”
History of workplace testing It’s hard to put a date on the inception of psychological testing. Who knows, informal means of psychological testing could have been happening between cavemen. But psychological testing in the workplace is a relatively new concept with a traceable history. The first psychological testing occurred in the midst of World War I. Many of the Allied soldiers experienced long-lasting, traumatic symptoms after experiencing enemy bombardment for the first time in their lives. Aware that many of the soldiers were suffering from a sort of “shell shock”, the military decided to commission a test that they could use to identify the soldiers among the American Expeditionary Services who were believed to be emotionally unstable and, therefore, unfit for active combat. The test that resulted from this concern was called the scale of Psychoneurotic Tendencies (PT), developed by Robert S. Woodworth (Gibby & Zickar, 2008, p. 169). Woodworth then adapted this military test for industrial research, renaming the test the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet (WPDS). According to Gibby and Zickar (2008), “The 1924 version of the WPDS assessed personal adjustment via 75 yes/no items; example items included ‘Do you ever get so angry that you see red?’ and ‘Do you get tired of people easily?’”
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