Oh… I guess I AM the type of person who would get this test result…
We have all been in situations where we have taken a psychological test and have been slightly surprised with the results. However, it always seems to be the case that a few moments later, we internalize them, begin to believe them, and eventually act according to them.
WHY?
Ever since the field of psychological testing was launched, it has always been aimed at having both high reliability and high validity. Reliability is the overall consistency of a measure, while validity is the extent to which the measurement corresponds to what it claims to be measuring in the real world. Most of the well studied standardized tests do seem to achieve both high validity and high reliability. However, no matter how reliable and valid a psychological test is, one can never measure an abstract construct with 100% accuracy. Therefore, it is expected that whenever we receive results regarding measurements related to our own behavior, we tend to question a few aspects of them.
Since complete validity is not realistically achievable, we have to consider the implications of receiving inaccurate results. In my opinion, a major consequence of having inaccurate test results is the realization of a phenomenon commonly discussed in social psychology: the self-fulfilling prophecy. It is the tendency for people to act in ways that directly or indirectly elicit the very behavior they expect to happen from others.
Examples of previous research conducted on psychological tests and self-fulfilling prophecies include one where elementary school teachers were told that a new IQ test can identify “intellectual blooming” and that some of their students were identified as late bloomers. They were told that these late bloomers would eventually have substantial gains in their IQs over the course of the school year. In reality there was no special test to measure intellectual blooming; students had simply been administered a typical IQ test and were subsequently randomly assigned as late bloomers regardless of their IQ result. At the end of the semester, the labeled “late bloomers” had indeed significantly higher IQs than the others. So telling a teacher that a student is a late bloomer made the teacher indirectly focus on the student more which eventually led to the improvement of the student’s IQ score.
Therefore, the idea that self-fulfilling prophecies can occur when receiving misleading test results is not that far fetched. For example, after taking a personality test, one could receive news indicating “You are an introverted person who is not comfortable with being around people”. That person will come to realize that “Yeah... I guess I am introverted”; and will be willing to stay at home more often since he would feel that it is part of his personality. In turn, surrounding people will begin to interact with that person as an introvert and revert from asking him to go to social events.
We must therefore be extremely cautious in creating psychological tests, aiming to make them as valid as possible. However, since we can never achieve perfect testing, it might be beneficial to include results that lean more towards positive outcomes. Thus if a person receives the results, he/she would alter his/her existing behavior towards a more positive and beneficial one by virtue of the self-fulfilling prophecy. If we take this concept one step further, creating psychological tests which provide only positive results and administering them to certain people, may even be the solution to several social problems such as low self-esteem, increased rates of depression, increased rates of divorce etc.
Who knew that the power of psychological tests could be limitless?
