Psychomanagement: An Australian Affair by Robert Spillane

Author:Robert Spillane [Spillane, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: GOKO Publishing
Published: 2017-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

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THE PERSONALITY CULT

Personality: what poorly motivated people have to fall back on.

Apart from the hundreds of definitions of personality, there are thousands of personality traits to be found in a dictionary. For decades, personality psychologists have been constructing tests to measure these traits. The results are analysed statistically by factor analysis, which groups the results into clusters. Each cluster represents a number of traits which are statistically, though by no means perfectly, related to each other, such as ‘active’ and ‘impulsive’. Psychologists frequently and acrimoniously disagree about which form of factor analysis is appropriate and what the factors should be called.

Factor analysts are normally not even expected to show that the measure provided by their factors is reliable, despite the fact that many scales derived from this procedure are anything but reliable. Since factor analysis is a technique used to reduce a large number of correlated items to a few factors which are indicative of the number of dimensions involved, one would like to believe that factor analysts could agree on the number of factors involved in personality. But they cannot. Some personality psychologists have staked their reputations on sixteen or more factors while others, notably Hans Eysenck, preferred a more parsimonious solution.

Personality traits are measured by adding individuals’ answers to questions which purport to assess behavioural themes and by which individuals are compared to others in a group. Particular traits are then reduced to personality factors which are classification systems, even though they are treated as inner causes of behaviour. So a person works hard because of ‘ambition’ or gains the support of others because of ‘sociability’. Yet all that is available by way of evidence is the behaviour from which the trait was inferred.

The popularity of personality tests suggests that psycho- managers do not regard performance as the ultimate test of management. Or, to put it another way, the traditional test of management has been compromised by psychomanagers and psychologists since personality is, according to empirical evidence spanning more than half a century, unrelated to work performance. These findings, endlessly replicated, should lead to the rational conclusion that personality tests can make no contribution to management. But the opposite, irrational conclusion, prevails.

Despite the logical and empirical problems that dominate the field, psychomanagers continue to pay psychologists to measure personality traits, and subject individuals to psycho- metric tests in the belief, or hope, that the elusive relationship between performance and personality will be found. Some psychomanagers accept the lack of relationship between personality and performance but argue that personality tests enable them to make decisions about the ‘fit’ between individual and organisation. But since personality and performance are unrelated, decisions about ‘organisational fit’ are based on prejudices, stereotypes and caricatures. One still hears psychomanagers claim that extraverts make better sales representatives than do introverts, individuals with low anxiety are more productive than those with high anxiety, high levels of emotional intelligence predict success in management, and so on. There is no empirical evidence to support any of these assumptions.

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