Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [415]
In 1991 a task force of the American Psychological Association, after making an exhaustive two-year study of honesty tests, concluded that the publishers of many tests offer no substantiation of their validity and utility. The association therefore strongly urged employers not to use such tests. But for the few tests for which information was available, the task force found:
The preponderance of the evidence is supportive of their predictive validity…To the extent that evidence is available, it is consistent with the idea that these tests reflect aspects of personal integrity and dependability, or trustworthiness.56
Later studies by the APA and other sources again found that some integrity tests have respectable levels of validity and that others do not. The would-be employee who is asked to take an integrity test is at risk of being incorrectly rated dishonest.
Emotional stability testing: In November 1989 a man named Sibi Soroka, who had applied for the job of security officer at a Target Store in California and been required to take two tests, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory, filed suit against Target’s owner, the Dayton Hudson Corporation, charging invasion of privacy. The tests (discussed in an earlier chapter), have many purposes, among them to screen out emotionally unstable applicants for “safety sensitive” positions such as police officer, airline pilot, and nuclear plant operator. They include hundreds of items, some touching on religion (“My soul sometimes leaves my body,” “I feel sure there is only one true religion”) and some on sex (“I wish I were not bothered by thoughts about sex,” “I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex”).
Soroka complained that he had been upset by the tests, which had invaded his privacy. He asked for a preliminary injunction preventing Target from using the results or continuing such testing. His lawsuit made headlines; there had been many privacy-invasion suits over drug testing in employment settings, but the claim that standard personality tests used in employment screening were an invasion of privacy broke new ground. The court denied Soroka’s request for a preliminary injunction but an appeals court granted it. That court did not rule out all such testing but only whatever contained unjustifiably invasive items, like those pertaining to sex and religion. In 1993 Target Stores reached a $1.3 million settlement with Soroka and other plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in Alameda Superior Court, though Target admitted no legal wrongdoing.57
Soroka’s case established a beachhead in the attack against personnel testing. Other recent suits have attacked it on the grounds of defamation and the inflicting of emotional distress. The borderline between the justifiable use of testing and its misuse is being redrawn; where it will finally lie, one cannot now be sure.
Covert Persuasion: Advertising and Propaganda
“Nothing in life is more pervasive than persuasion,” wrote psychologist Eleanor Siegel in the APS Observer some years ago, adding:
Nearly every social interaction between humans—and between members of many nonhuman primate species—has a strong element of persuasion. Knowledge about the psychological processes that affect people’s decision making therefore carries tremendous positive potential.58
And tremendous negative potential. Until the modern era, human beings who sought to persuade others to believe in their gods, make love, or sell them goods for less than the announced price did