For at least the last 30 years, many of Corporate America's biggest names have required that potential hires and, in some cases, established employees submit to cognitive and personality tests. Now, the trend is filtering down to smaller outfits. Administered either in-house or by specialty outsource firms tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Learning Styles Inventory (LSI), Emotional Competence Inventory, and many others are becoming increasingly familiar to job-seekers.

While tests that purport to measure a subject's innate approach to learning, conflict style, and emotional intelligence can be helpful, management psychologist Ben Dattner, of Dattner Consulting in New York City, warns that it is a mistake to regard their findings as oracular insights. As he explained recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein, putting the focus on individual dispositions while ignoring situational factors is likely to perpetuate fundamental management errors and worsen workplace problems. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow:

Q: What kinds of tests are being used in the workplace these days and how popular are they?
A: According to an article in the December, 2003, issue of Workforce Management, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator alone is administered over 2.5 million times every year. There are thousands of other tests on the market, and estimates of the number of employees who take them each year for purposes of both selection and development range in the millions.

Some of these tests are "self-report" formats, based on multiple-choice tests. Others are "360 degree" and are based on quantitative ratings by oneself and others. Some are paper and pencil, others are administered online, and some are offered in either format. The most popular tests place people into categories, including Myers-Briggs, the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, and the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument.

Q: Why are small-business owners going to the time and expense of administering these tests?
A: Personality and style tests are currently being used for executive coaching, career counseling, conflict resolution, team development, organizational development, to predict "fit" in mergers and acquisitions, negotiation training, and sales training. I believe employers are using them because most of them are short and easy to administer and the results are often easier for people to accept than are the results of more-validated tests, like the 434-item California Psychological Inventory, which tends to be quite lengthy and time consuming.

For example, the results of a test called NEO PI-R, which is based on the most well-supported model of personality, the "big five" model (conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion), might tell you that you are lazy, unfriendly, neurotic, closed-minded and withdrawn. And the 360-degree Emotional Competence Inventory might tell you that your boss, peers, and subordinates rated you as unempathic, lacking emotional self-awareness, and demonstrating poor relationship- and conflict-management skills. However, the more popular tests place people into nonevaluative categories. For example, people with the same Myers-Briggs "type" can be either stellar performers or criminally insane.

Q: How truly useful are the most popular tests?
A: Research evidence about these tests is mixed. In most cases, a barely significant proportion of variance can be accounted for by these tests. This is related to a broader debate in psychology about the relative importance of "person" versus "situation."

Ample research has shown that organizations are "strong" situations, and that situational variables -- like, for instance, the demands of a person's role, incentive structures, team norms, and organizational culture -- are much better predictors of behavior than are individual attributes. In order to add explanatory value, tests should explain the impact of personality or style on behavior, and also the impact of behavior on performance. Establishing the link between personality or style and behavior is difficult enough -- many studies are unable to establish any link between personality or style and actual performance.

And, of course, the flip side of the popularity and simplicity of these self-report tests is that they are easy to fake. It is quite easy to tailor your answers so that you can appear however you want to appear. In fact, some people are even savvy enough to try to mimic certain "types" on the Myers-Briggs. Additionally, by providing an "objective" and nonevaluative reference for personality and style, some of these tests provide good rationalizations and excuses for one's shortcomings when circumstances cannot be blamed. For example, one can blame a messy desk or missed deadlines on the fact that one is a "P" -- or a "perceiver" in Myers-Briggs terminology.

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