The Sorting Hat ~ Hidden Brain

You could be great you know, its all in your head… — Sorting Hat

The Sorting Hat is one of the key characters in the “Harry Potter” series. It is primarily introduced to us when the new first year students are divided into the four houses namely: — Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. The Sorting Hat is placed on their head and it decides which house suits them best. For some students the hat barely touches their head and it shouts out its decision, whereas for others it takes some time to come to a conclusion. This classification of what house the children are alloted gives a deeper insight into their minds.

Hence, the question — “What is your house” — poses a deeper question on what kind of person are you, which inturn asks you to reflect on what type of personality do you have. We all have an inner desire to find our tribe, our people. The categories we look to find ourselves are endless from a cat person to a dog person, from a morning person to a nocturnal one…

One notion which has emerged from the potrayal of the Sorting Hat is the concept of “Personality Tests”. The goals of these personality tests can range from categorising people based on their colour preference, some might help you choose the best career option, whereas others might just help you find love. The list is endless. There was also a time when these personality classifications were being used by the scientists to blatantly classify people based on their race. They categorised Asians as meek or timid, Africans as animalistic and Europeans as ambitious.

These tests are found by large masses to be a fun and intriguing way to gain insights about themselves, but it is these tests which can also lead to serious consequences. One of the personality tests is the MBTI Personality Test. It helps people to understand which career suits them best based on their personality types. however there are some who feel that these personality tests can be deeply destructive. Many have experience the wrong uses of these tests such as:

• Deciding who should get a promotion and who should be fired from their job.
• Creating a self doubt on the people who took the tests.
• Stating wrong facts about the person, which can change his /her whole life.

There have been 2 cases of such poor use of the tests, one was where a man who was promoted to the post of Technical Director took the MBTI test, he recieved the classification of INFJ, this caused his peers to doubt him, they stopped trusting his decisions and so did he. Being the Techinical Director he was supposed to be orgnised and creative, however, his personality type said otherwise.

Another such case included a women who worked in the Private Animal Emergency Center. Her job includes extremely stressfull calls and requires a lot of energy to go through the day. She and her collegues took a personality test given by “Culture Index”- It included simple questions like listing out adjectives your collegues use to describe you. They were ranked on 7 categories and she got the poorest rank. It claimed to state that she had very less energy and would require constant breaks during the day. This was completely opposite to what she was, and she considered it being very insulting and ridiculous.

These cases provide a view on how important these tests are becoming to become as a way of hiring candidates…

The theory of the MBTI test was first introduced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Isabel Myers and Catherine Cook Briggs, turned the MBTI theory into a test. MBTI is not held in high regard by many of the top psychologists. Adam Grand, a professor of Psychology and Management in the University of Pennsylvania said that when he first took the MBTI test, he recieved the personality outcome of INTJ, however when he took the test again, he recieved the ESFP personality, which was the complete opposite of his earlier result. This led him to question the reliability and validity of the test.

Alan Hammer — the former chairman of MBTI also believes that MBTI should not be used as a mode to hire or fire people from their jobs.

MBTI test has been very appealing to me from the very beginning and even though it has helped me understand myself a little bit better and has been a fun way to learn more about myself, I have tried my best to not delve deep into this topic. It can become the cause of you seeing everything keeping the MBTI in the perspective. Even though it helps the person to understand themselves and the employers to understand the deep characteristics of the people they are looking to take in, I still do not consider MBTI to be a category in the selection or rejection process of an employee. It only reflects to a part of the individual’s personality trait, grouping them as disorganised or creative based on a few questions is just not ideal.

Sources: