Personality Tests - Discrimination against the nuerodiverse

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Posting from my iPhone, so bear with grammatical errors if there are any.

I'm sure many of you have agonized in filling out applications, not for the application itself, but, for the personality test that inevitably follows. It has been my understanding, over the past many years, that such tests are designed to bring in extroverted individuals free of mental affliction even though they claim it to be for "personality fits".

Im sure many of you have spent countless amounts of time making sure each question had been given as nuerotypical of a response as possible in order just to get that interview. I have answered them truthfully in the past and when I spoke to the hiring manager in the days following, I was told I had "failed the personality test". How much of a load of BS is that?

I view them as a form of neurodiverse-discrimination because the questions are aimed at weeding out those that may be of sound mind, but have difficulties in certain unrelated job aspects. Have any of you had issues with these things before?

The only people who pass them are sociopaths, liars, and people who are abnormally cheerful and outgoing.

Yeah, it singles out people who are introverted. If you're extroverted those tests are great. As long as you can do small talk who cares about skills.

I'd ask "Are you telling me I haven't got a personality?"

Yes, those kinds of tests are extremely discriminatory and somebody could make themselves a fortune dragging some big corporation into court and suing them for intentionally screening out people with Autism.

I failed to get a job once because some twit asked me "How do you generally get along with coworkers?" and I answered honestly "I get along with most people just fine - of course you're always going to encounter the occasional curmudgeon who doesn't get along with anybody."

I could tell by the expression on her face (hey, I'm not supposed to be able to do that) that the interview was over right then. The answer she wanted was "I'm a people person! I've never met anybody I couldn't get along with!"

Which of course would have been a complete and total bullsh*t lie, no matter who it came from. Even Richard Simmons got into a fight with someone on an airplane once and nobody is more cheerful than Richard Simmons.

On my Chrome web browser, a Google search for "Rotatori Obiakor Burkhardt MMPI" lists the book "Autism and Developmental Disabilities: Current Practices and Issues", by Anthony F. Rotatori, Festus E. Obiakor, and Sandra Burkhardt (November 2008), pages 96-97, which briefly examines the MMPI-2 score profiles of neurotypical adults matched to ASD participants in terms of age, gender, and IQ (at books-dot-google).

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) often reveals profiles taken as significant in characterizing various impairments. Most of my experience with the MMPI involved university studies and student field internships, and with myself involving the profiles of temporal lobe epilepsy on the base MMPI scales.

A more detailed article of using profiles developed with the MMPI-2 is usually available at http://www.cnbc.pt/jpmatos/05.%20Johnson.pdf , and on page 7 of the pdf of the profile means and standard deviations across 3 types of impairments against "healthy" controls.

ADS has L scale impact and impacts on more of the MMPI-2 Content Scales. I haven't found any free journal articles going into greater details beyond the free abstracts for the articles (mainly http://asm.sagepub.com/content/12/1/86 ).

Using the MMPI with ASDs probably raises very similar concern of disparate and adverse impact as with the MMPI and other impairments, such as epilepsy and fibromyalgia. The main issue is if the MMPI discriminates in a valid and objective manner with interpretations of the scores and code profiles in the "ratings manuals". With physical impairments, there is significant controversy that the measurement results are not valid and are often not very objective. The criteria for many disorders in the DSM also have problem differentials involving these issues (Psychiatric Manifestations of Neurologic Disease: Where are we headed? by C.G. Lyketsos, MD, MHS, N. Kozauer, MD, and P. V. Rabins, MD, MPH, especially pages 12-13 of the pdf, usually at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687521/ ).

Disparate impacts by employment tests resulting from impairments are prohibited under the USA ADAAA, with very few exceptions. The MMPI is a strong standard that is used to validate many other personality tests, and also to establish discrimination implied with those tests.

For instance, if an employer used a personality test that had a question indirectly asking or implying if I felt suspicious when another person was more friendly than I expected, that test then illegally discriminated against me with that element because of my epilepsy under disparate impact restrictions of the ADAAA.

Tadzio

When I took psychometric testing I didnt feel they wanted to single out introverts. What the recruitment people told me was favoured was

1) A balanced personality

2) A certain type of agreeableness, ie someone who will not rock the boat within the organisation

3) conscientiousness and reliability, ie someone who will do the work well, not bugger off suddenly, will not be late and turn up to work when they should. I lied a lot on the questions pertaining to this, though they didnt realise it. Anyway this is what they seemed to want.


I think a lot of aspies fall down on the agreeableness thing, in other words I think sometimes employers sense we might not fit well into organisations, and they might think that we might have problems getting along with people, or rub someone up the wrong way or something.

Not only are they discriminatory, but they're a gigantic waste of everybody's time.

Of course they're going to tell you that - they phrase these things very carefully, so they won't get sued for discrimination - even though discriminating is exactly what they're doing. Nobody's going to say they aren't hiring you because of your gender, or your race or your age, but they absolutely do it, all the time.

When you reach middle age and begin experiencing a major health problem, like a heart attack or diabetes, they won't say they're firing you to keep their corporate Health Insurance rates down, they'll call it 'downsizing', but you'll be just as unemployed and just as screwed when you can no longer afford to go to the doctor.

My 0.02€ on this: I do not think anyone is consciously discriminating. OTOH, there IS a lot of BS in the job market, lots of it based on magical thinking of HR employees.

And, meh, the job market is bad for everyone. Even a friend who is so NT that he is version 4.0 (excuse that bad pun) struggles.

Many employers discriminate with full consciousness. My experiences were mainly in California in the 1980's, and State agencies did conduct a few sting operations catching employers not only consciously discriminating, but also engaging in perjury about facts that clearly established the conscious discrimination.

My perspective employers claimed everything from having "musical chairs" amnesia and the inability to reliably count to three repeatedly. Some of them also claimed to have never used the very same applications that they required, and ofter were blatant enough to cite information directly from my apllication and then deny that they had just cited it to the MSPB. Then some of the remarks could be taken as satire, just about like "Oh yeah, your're that wierdo who used the word 'recalcitrant'and had found half-priced parking close by that day. I had to look that word up just after our interview, and I wouldn't park under an off-ramp even for 50% savings. No, I don't remember anything at all about the interview or even meeting with you."

One of the most frequent lines of balderdash my Rehab counselour used was "I've never heard of those types of things happening to anybody, and besides that, don't feel singled out, because those types of things happen to everybody." I was told that such self-contradictory Bulls that "combine succinct style, compacted logic, and a sharp (if blunted) point," were known as "Irish Bulls", such as:
"Don't go near the water till you've learned to swim."
and, "This book fills a badly needed gap."
"Candor and Perversion" by Roger Shattuck (1999, 2000), page 6.

In personality testing, the word discrimination includes the concepts of accuracy and precision of measurements that are the main reasons the tests are used, but, in the USA, the ADAAA makes any such discrimination illegal when used against protected groups, with limited exceptions that also require conscious knowledge of the employer.

Tadzio

I must of did a different test. When I took the test the questions centered around how sociable you were. i.e What are you like at parties? Do you like to gossip? Do you enjoy starting conversations with strangers? Do you enjoy small talk? ect ect I'd say 80% of the test was question about how social you were.

Was it the Unicru test? I gather that that test is ubiquitous these days. Glad I exited the job market before that was around. Ugh.

BTW, for those who have to face that test, I've seen people post answer sets online that resulted in a "pass."

I'm currently applying for jobs and I have to say I really hate these tests. They're a waste of time since I know the answers THEY want. I was fortunate to get a good part-time job before they did those stupid tests. But I learned early on to always think of what the employers want out of the answer, not what you really want to answer. If I answered honestly, no one would ever give me the time of day.

Are you a people person? Yup!
Do you get energy working in a high pressure environment? Oh, I live for it!! !
Do you feel like some people just deserve to die. Of course not. Everyone is god's loving creature (okay, that question is never asked, but you get the idea).

Personality tests...just answer what they want. Once you get employed, become thick and ignore your surroundings and absorb yourself in your work, and pretend you care a little about your coworkers. It has worked for me when I worked so far.

You mean NTs?

Designed by NTs for NTs, I say.

They are definitely discriminatory. I love how at the beginning of the tests, they say there are no right answers. BS! If you're not extroverted, your application goes in the trash.

These tests should be outlawed. The one exception I'd make is for sales jobs....it's a waste of everyone's time for an introvert to do that.

how exactly are you supposed to answer "do you think politicians lie?"? I mean really, what the hell kinda BS question is that?

I get the feeling that they are looking for brain dead morons who will be happy with the menial labor and working poor pay that are part of the job.