The power that a psychological test possesses and its limitation …

Psychological tests are prevalent in many situations and areas such as educational institutes, hospitals, job application processes and in labs for research experiments. In most cases, the tests are used as a tool to help make an important decision. Examples include: acceptance to a university program, hiring to fill a job position, diagnosis or determining a treatment program. So a single psychological test can possess lots of power and influence over the decision maker and especially over the examinee as their future could be in the hands of the test.

However, the psychological test should not replace or be confused with the role of a decision maker, such as a doctor or human resource manager, which is to make a final decision or conclusion. A limitation of a psychological test is that it is only a tool to be used as an aid to the decision making process and cannot make the actual decisions for the test user. A test can be very useful in gathering information about the individual but there are still many factors that can influence results such as personal history, language, personal circumstances, culture and even the length of time since the creation of the test since the test can become obsolete. These factors should not be ignored when administering or interpreting the test and the decision maker should be aware of this limitation of a test- that it should only be used as one source of data and that it cannot be solely used to make any conclusions.

I feel like like there comes a point where people begin to become dependent on some tests and use them passively. In this case, I think it’s important to think of the consequences: what happens if you mis-diagnose someone or give them a wrong treatment because not enough information of their personal history was incorporated in the decision? Or what if the patients current short term circumstance or a current life event wasn’t taken into account but had a big effect on their performance on a cognitive or intelligence test or also affected their score on a depression scale? This could influence the person’s future life forever if their doctor or psychologist were basing a decision mainly from these sorts of tests.

Sometimes it is important to remember to take power into our own hands and not give it all to the results of a psychological test when it comes to making decisions where tests are used.