There is a new young adult book-turned-movie in theatres and its name is Divergent. Having just watched it last week, although not a fan, I think the background setting of this movie/novel is quite interesting.
Basically, the story depicts a post-apocalyptic world where all people are divided into one of five factions based on their virtues. The five factions are: Abnegation (The Selfless), Erudite (The Intelligent), Dauntless (The Brave), Amity (The Peaceful) and Candor (The Honest). The society relies on this system so that people can be most efficient at their jobs. Erudite is in charge of research and education, Dauntless provides all the soldiers, etc. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that everyone, when they turn sixteen, gets assigned one and only one character strength based on the results of an aptitude test, and then they will decided which of the five factions they will join and devote the rest of their lives to. People are allowed to choose a faction that’s different from their strength, but it is frowned upon and these “divergents” are often ostracized.
Of course, the movie only depicts the exaggerated dystopian future and a societal structure like this is not likely to come true. However, assigning people jobs based on a test result has happened before and it is still happening right now. One of the more famous examples from the past is the Army Alpha and Beta test. These are developed by Robert Yerkes (and others) to evaluate U.S. soldiers’ job assignment and leadership potential based on their intelligence and personality traits.
The Army Beta tests has questions like the ones above, where test takers are supposed to draw or describe what’s missing in the picture. By using pictures of everyday objects (in the military) instead of verbal or written questions, illiterate and foreign military recruits can be assessed as well. Post-hoc analyses have found that although crude, this particular form of intelligence test has some reliability and validity.
It has been almost a century since the Army Alpha and Beta tests were first introduced, and job aptitude tests have improved a lot since that time. The common types of psychological tests involved in employment testing nowadays include, but are not limited to:
- Intelligence tests
- Personality tests
- Cognitive ability tests
- Job-knowledge tests
- Situational judgment tests
- Integrity tests
The aims of intelligence, personality, cognitive ability and integrity tests are self-explanatory, but these are not used very often, in that they can be difficult and/or expensive to administer and, more importantly, selecting candidates based on these factors can easily result in unwanted discrimination lawsuits. The remaining two types of tests are used more frequently, especially the situational judgment tests, where hypothetical but realistic crisis scenarios are given and potential employees will have to describe or act out how they are going to deal with such situations. Job-knowledge tests are administered when it comes to jobs that require a high education level or lots of past experience.
We have come a long way from the early intelligence tests (used to single out the “feeble-minded”) and the Army Alpha/Beta tests. Now, employment testing is slowly but surely evolving into an ethical, reliable and valid way of selecting the best candidate for a job.
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