Today is again from the Book: Four Temperaments by Martin and Deidre Bobgan
Why All the
Deception?
Why are people—even Christians—running after
personality inventories, temperament tests, and spiritual
gifts inventories? Here are a few possible reasons.
1. The Barnum Effect.
Research reveals that individuals are very prone
to accept the most general character descriptions as
being specifically applicable to themselves. The term
given to this phenomenon is the Barnum Effect,
named after P. T. Barnum, who believed that a good
circus had “a little something for everybody.” Even
though the descriptions or descriptive terms in the
inventories, typologies, and tests apply equally well
to other people, individuals are gullible enough to
believe they are unique to themselves. Of course, this
is exactly what happens with the horoscope, palm
reading, and crystal ball gazing. This is known in
research literature as the illusion of uniqueness and
occurs at least for positive traits.1
In his article “Acceptance of Personality Test
Results,” Philippe Thiriart asks, “Is the accuracy of
the results of a personality test an important factor
in its acceptance by a psychologist’s client?” After
conducting an experiment and evaluating the results,
Thiriart says:
These findings indicate that people are more
willing to accept socially desirable statements
about themselves than those that are scientifically
accurate. The findings also suggest
why many people easily accept statements
about their personality that come from astrologers
and palm readers.2
2. Promotion by Popular Christians.The personality inventories, temperament
typologies, and tests of spiritual gifts are often
promoted by well-known Christians. H. Norman
Wright promotes the TJTA; Larry Burkett, Ken Voges,
and Ron Braund promote the PPS; Tim LaHaye and
Florence Littauer promote the four temperaments
along with their own temperament tests; and many
in the church endorse the MBTI. The promoters’ popularity
tends to cancel discernment by the user. After
all, if H. Norman Wright promotes the TJTA it must
be great. Also, these promoters so often do it with such
infectious enthusiasm. Unfortunately infectious
enthusiasm by a popular Christian for such products
is enough to overcome any reluctance.
3. Customer Enthusiasm.
The National Research Council warns against
personal experience and testimonials and says these
“are not regarded as an acceptable alternative to
rigorous scientific evidence.” The Council goes on to
say:
Even when they have high face validity, such
personal beliefs are not trustworthy as
evidence. They often fail to consider the full
range of factors that may be responsible for an
observed effect. Personal versions of reality,
which are essentially private, are especially
antithetical to science, which is a fundamentally
public enterprise.3
Personal experiences and testimonials, as important
as they are to individuals expressing them, do
not constitute scientific proof. LaHaye, Littauer, Voges
and Braund all have personal experiences and testimonials
to support their promotion of what they do;
however, they lack scientific proof.
In his book The Inflated Self, Dr. David Myers says
this about personality tests:
People’s believing horoscope data about themselves
in the same way as personality test data,
and their being most receptive to personality
test feedback on tests that have the lowest
actual validity, raises some disconcerting
implications for psychiatry and clinical
psychology. Regardless of whether a particular
diagnosis has any validity, the recipient is
likely to stand in awe of it, especially after
expending effort and money to receive it.4
There is a tendency to support a system in which
one has invested time and money, even if the money
is only the cost of a book. Unfortunately, the test user
who becomes committed is the main source of others
being enticed. The enthusiastic user becomes the
enthusiastic promoter, often merely parroting the
enthusiasm of the original promoter. It may be that
the real Barnum Effect is Barnum’s comment,
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
4. The Illusion of Efficacy.
How do these popular Christians get to be such
believers in the first place? Myers tells how the illusion
of efficacy happens in psychotherapy:
In experimental studies, therapists have
tended to take credit for good outcomes, but
not for poor outcomes. Hence, the clinician may
surmise, “I helped Mr. X get better. But, despite
my help, Mrs. Y got worse.”5
Because it is natural to take credit for success and to
avoid blame for failure, an “illusion of efficacy” occurs.
Another facet of the illusion of efficacy is described
by Myers. He says:
Since people tend to seek help when things
have hit bottom, any activity that is then
undertaken may seem to be effective—both to
the client and the therapist.6
The illusion of efficacy is so strong in the area of
personality inventories that even when tests are
known to lack proper validity, people will still use
them because they still think they work. Once a
person takes a test for a counselor, for instance, the
counselor will look at the person through test results
and will also look for and remember any confirming
evidence.
After we spoke on testing at a conference and had
mentioned our concerns with the Personal Profile
System, an individual who had used the test for years
told us that it was immaterial to him whether the
test was valid or not. However, he said that he would
be concerned if there were any connection between
the PPS and the horoscope.
While we agree that his major concern should be
its relationship to the horoscope, his additional
concern should have been its validity. It sounded as if
it didn’t matter to him how invalid the test was as
long as it wasn’t related to the horoscope. Nevertheless,
truth is too important to Christianity to ignore
the validity of a testing instrument being used by
Christians on Christians.
Summing up, “taking credit for good outcomes” and
people improving supposedly after taking a test that
gives them a new revelation, we see the power of the
illusion of efficacy, which results in support for tests
that should be rejected.
5. Illusory Correlation.
Myers says:
Our confusion concerning correlation-causation
is often compounded by our susceptibility
to perceiving correlation where none exists.
When we expect to see significant relationships,
we easily misperceive random events as
significantly related.7
He also says that “experiments indicate that
people easily misperceive random events as confirming
their beliefs.”8 If we have a certain label on ourselves
and expect to behave in a certain way, our
expectations will interpret our actions to conform to
the label and therefore confirm it.
6. Self-Deception.The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
(Jeremiah 17:9). Research does support the selfdeception
of individuals. We know that it is very
common for people to distort reality and to have very
inaccurate perceptions of themselves, their world
(environment), and the future. Dr. Shelley Taylor’s
Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the
Healthy Mind documents research that demonstrates
how individuals are deceived about themselves, their
environments, and their futures. Much of this selfdeception
can so easily be carried over into personality
inventories, temperament tests, and spiritual gifts
inventories.
This is not a matter of faking; it is a matter of
communicating our own self-deceptions while filling
out the inventory or taking the test. For example, a
person may think of himself as a great leader and
aspire for leadership in a church. He takes a test for
spiritual gifts and would naturally communicate this
on the test. However, in reality he might be the worst
possible choice as a leader. But once having communicated
his self-deception on the test and finding a
confirmation there, he becomes an ardent test
promoter.
7. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.Dr. Robert Merton, in his book Social Theory and
Social Structure, conceptualized the self-fulfilling
prophecy.9 Merton says the self-fulfilling prophecy
occurs when “a false definition of [a] situation evokes
a new behavior which makes the original conception
come true.” In other words, we tend to act in ways
consistent with our expectations, even if they are not
accurate.
Len Sandler, in an article on the self-fulfilling
prophecy, says:
It boils down to this: Consciously or not, we tip
people off as to what our expectations are. We
exhibit thousands of cues, some as subtle as
the tilting of heads, the raising of eyebrows or
the dilation of nostrils, but most are much more
obvious. And people pick up on those cues. The
concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy can be
summarized in five key principles:1. We form certain expectations of people or
events.
2. We communicate those expectations with
various cues.
3. People tend to respond to these cues by
adjusting their behavior to match them.
4. The result is that the original expectation
becomes true.
5. This creates a circle of self-fulfilling prophecies.
10
Parents can easily fall into the trap of eliciting
certain behavior from their children by expecting
them to act in a certain way. For instance, a mother
may have been told that her little boy is a perfect
Choleric according to a test. She may consequently
expect aggressive behavior. Every child displays some
aggressive behavior, but since his mother has tagged
him as Choleric, she is overly sensitized to any
aggressive behavior. She may think she is handling
the situation well by accepting aggressiveness,
because she expects his angry outbursts. But, she may
well be encouraging them through both her expectation
and her subtle acceptance of that behavior now
that she “understands” his temperament. If she
doesn’t already have a little Choleric, she will create
one.
8. Illusory Thinking.Fallacious thinking is something we are all
involved in, and it’s generally easier to catch someone
else at it than ourselves. Knowing our attitude
about personality testing, a man spoke with us about
some consulting he had done for the local police
department in that city. He said he had tested 100
successful policemen to see what commonality existed.
He then set up a personality profile based upon the
results. New police force applicants whose profiles
were similar to those of the successful policemen were
admitted to police training; those with dissimilar
profiles were rejected.
He asked what we thought of
what he did and we explained to him the following
problems:
1. The test provides a snapshot of what the policemen
were like at the point of success rather
than what these same men’s profiles may have
looked like when they originally applied for police
training.
2. No double blind study had been set up to let in
a group of men who did not fit the profile. They
should admit such a group and then check their
future success and compare it with those who did
fit the profile and were accepted.
3. The commonality or profile of successful policemen
may be a commonality of weaknesses
rather than strengths. Their strengths may be so
individual and different from one another that no
profile could capture them.
4. Self-fulfilling prophecy could be involved here.
9. Numerolatry.
Many people are involved in a sort of numerolatry
(number worship). If a test utilizes numbers and
numerical profiles, it is assumed that it must therefore
be scientific and valid. The use of numbers, mathematics,
statistics, correlations, and measures of significance
do not mean that the end result (a test score)
is valid. Few people realize that even when a test has
been shown to be statistically significant, that the
statistical significance is often so small that it is really
insignificant.
While the lack of validity should silence the zealous
Christian promoters of personality inventories
and temperament tests, it hasn’t even dampened their
enthusiasm. Promotion and use of such inventories
and tests is a testimony to the naivete and negligence
of many Christians.
Notes
Chapter 11: Why All the Deception?
1. David G. Myers. The Inflated Self. New York: The
Seabury Press, 1980, p. 102.
2. Philippe Thiriart. “Acceptance of Personality Test
Results,” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 15, No. 2, Winter
1991, p. 161.
3. National Research Council. Enhancing Human
Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques. Daniel
Druckman and John A. Swets, eds. Washington, DC:
National Academy Press, 1988, p. 17.
4. Myers, op. cit., p. 101.
5. Ibid., p. 136.
6. Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment