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Appendix HOW TO CHEAT ON PERSONALITY TESTS THE important thing to recognize is that you don't win a good score: you avoid a bad one. What a bad score would be depends upon the particular profile the company in question intends to measure you against, and this varies according to companies and according to the type of work. Your score is usually rendered in terms of your percentile rating-that is, how you answer questions in relation to how other people have answered them. Sometimes it is perfectly all right for you to score in the 8oth or goth percentile; if you are being tested, for example, to see if you would make a good chemist, a score indicating that you are likely to be more reflective than ninety out of a hundred adults might not harm you and might even do you some good. By and large, however, your safety lies in getting a score somewhere between the 4oth and 6oth percentiles, which is to say, you should try to answer as if you were like everybody else is supposed to be. This is not always too easy to figure out, of course, and this is one of the reasons why I will go into some detail in the following paragraphs on the principal types of questions. When in doubt, however, there are two general rules you can follow: (1) When asked for word associations or comments about the world, give the most conventional, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible. (z) To settle on the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself: a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more. b) I like things pretty well the way they are. c) I never worry much about anything. d) I don't care for books or music much. e) I love my wife and children. f) I don't let them get in the way of company work. Now to specifics. The first five questions in the composite test are examples of the ordinary, garden variety of self-report questions.1 Gen1 Leading Tests of this type include: The Personality Inventory by Robert G. Bernreuter. Published by The Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. Copyright 1935 by The Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. 405 406 THE OHGANIZATION MAN erally speaking, they are designed to reveal your degree of introversion or extroversion, your stability, and such. While it is true that in these "inventory" types of tests there is not a right or wrong answer to any one question, cumulatively you can get yourself into a lot of trouble if you are not wary. "Have you enjoyed reading books as much as having company in?" "Do you sometimes feel self-conscious?"-You can easily see what is being asked for here. Stay in character. The trick is to mediate yourself a score as near the norm as possible without departing too far from your own true self. It won't necessarily hurt you, for example, to say that you have enjoyed reading books as much as having company in. It will hurt you, however, to answer every such question in that vein if you are, in fact, the kind that does enjoy books and a measure of solitude. Strive for the happy mean; on one hand, recognize that a display of too much introversion, a desire for reflection, or sensitivity is to be avoided. On the other hand, don't overcompensate. If you try too hard to deny these qualities in yourself , you'll end so far on the other end of the scale as to be rated excessively insensitive or extroverted. If you are somewhat introverted, 125 questions; measures several different things at once; scoring keys available for neurotic tendency; self-sufficiency; introversion-extroversion; dominancesubmission ; self-confidence; sociability. Thurstone Temperament Schedule by L. L. Thurstone. Copyright 1949 by L. L. Thurstone. Published by Science Research Associates, Chicago, Ill. 140 questions. Measures, at once, seven areas of temperament: to wit, degree to which one is active, vigorous, impulsive, dominant, stable, sociable, reflective. "The primary aim of the Thurstone Temperament Schedule . . • is to evaluate an individual in terms of his relatively permanent temperament traits. One of the values of the schedule is that it helps provide an objective pattern, or profile , of personal traits which you can use to predict probable success or failure in a particular situation." Minnesota T-S-E Inventory by M. Catherine...

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