The import­ance of self-knowledge has been acknow­ledged through the ages and across cul­tures. A vis­itor to the temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece was com­manded to “Know Thy­self” and Chinese philo­sopher Lao Tzu wrote that “self-knowledge is enlightenment”.

Self-knowledge is dif­fer­ent from know­ledge of the object­ive world. It is, by defin­i­tion, sub­ject­ive and is thus not eas­ily obtained. Sig­mund Freud and Carl Rogers, two of the most influ­en­tial psy­cho­ther­ap­ists of the last cen­tury, the­or­ised that people have a hid­den per­son­al­ity of which they are not aware. It is this hid­den, sub­con­scious, nature of per­son­al­ity that cre­ates epi­stem­o­lo­gical hurdles and makes self-knowledge a dif­fi­cult to obtain treasure.

Many dif­fer­ent psy­cho­met­ric tests have been developed to determ­ine a subject’s per­son­al­ity or other aspects of the self. These types of  tests are used in clin­ical set­tings and research, but are also widely used for recruit­ment and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment. The Forer Work­style Pref­er­ence test has been developed by Hypo­thet­icorp to provide a bet­ter insight on how per­son­al­ity affects work­style pref­er­ences. The test­ing mech­an­ism is based on the work by Amer­ican psy­cho­lo­gist Ber­tram Forer and work on per­son­al­ity dynam­ics by Swiss philo­soph­ical psy­cho­lo­gist Carl Gustav Jung.^1.

Traits

This test is struc­tured in accord­ance with trait the­ory, which can be defined as habitual pat­terns of beha­viour, thought and emo­tion. Traits are rel­at­ively stable over time, dif­fer among indi­vidu­als and influ­ence beha­viour. This is the reason per­son­al­ity trait test­ing is so pop­u­lar in man­age­ment, which is essence is aimed at influ­en­cing the beha­viour of either con­sumers or employ­ees. Within the Forer sys­tem five major traits are defined, being:

• Energy ℠
• Intel­lect (EA)
• Per­spect­ive (FG)
• Activ­ity (IO)
• Amity (*)

Each of these traits is closely related to an aspect f per­son­al­ity sali­ent in pro­fes­sional cir­cum­stances. Pref­er­ences within one trait are meas­ured with the ques­tion­naire and for each trait two dia­met­ric­ally opposed pref­er­ences are defined that make up the even­tual Forer Work­style Invent­ory, as can be seen in Fig­ure 1 below.

Energy

Energy relates to the time and speed, i.e. the effi­ciency at which people under­take tasks. The two pref­er­ences within the energy trait are:

• Mara­thon­ist: Work per­sist­ently to achieve great things over the long term.
• Sprinter: Can can be relied upon to get the job done very quickly.

Intel­lect

This trait is a pre­dictor of men­tal pref­er­ences. Some people are very know­ledge­able in one artic­u­lar area while oth­ers are more gen­eric thinkers and use first prin­ciples to find solu­tions. The two pref­er­ences within the intel­lect trait are:

• Expert: Bring great depth of expert­ise to the organisation.
• Ana­lyst: Val­ued for their abil­ity to find use­ful solu­tions among chaos.

Per­spect­ive

Per­spect­ive relates to people’s abil­ity to con­cen­trate on one task or prefer mul­ti­task­ing. The two pref­er­ences within the per­spect­ive trait are:

• Focal: Abil­ity to focus know­ledge and effort with great intensity.
• Gen­eral: Author­it­at­ive breadth of know­ledge that is val­ued by others.

Activ­ity

The Activ­ity dimen­sion or trait relates to the role people nat­ur­ally take in a group work situ­ation. The two pref­er­ences within the activ­ity trait are:

• Imple­mentor: The per­son in your organ­iz­a­tion that people look to to get the job done.
• Organ­iser: Lead­er­ship and prob­lem solv­ing skills on any project.

Amity

The clos­ing aspect of the invent­ory is amity, or the abil­ity of people to relate to each other and form friend­ships. Amity is indic­ated by attach­ing a Star to the invent­ory. People with a star attached to their work­style invent­ory are friendly and sup­port­ive team mem­ber with a good sense of humour. They are people with a higher level of col­lect­ive val­ues and are able to empath­ise more strongly with their colleagues.

The com­bin­a­tions of the eight pref­er­ences within the four traits can be expressed as a four by four mat­rix of work work­style pref­er­ence invent­or­ies. The typ­ical pro­fes­sion for each work­style invent­ory are illus­trat­ive of a pro­fes­sion for which these types of pref­er­ences are sali­ent. People in these or sim­ilar pro­fes­sions with match­ing work­style invent­ory are more likely to be suc­cess­ful than any other combination.

Test­ing Algorithm

The test out­comes are based on the point score of each answer to the ques­tion bat­tery. Each of the twentytwo ques­tions meas­ures a tend­ency in one par­tic­u­lar trait using a five point likert scale, which trans­lated into numer­ical val­ues, with “Strongly Dis­agree” assigned the value –2, “Dis­agree” is –1, “Neither Agree nor Dis­agree” is 0, “Agree“equals +1 and finally “Strongly Agree” assigned the value +2.

Cer­tain ques­tions have a ret­ro­grade polar­ity and the value oft he answer is  cor­rec­ted by mul­tiply­ing it with –1 to meas­ure the true tend­ency towards the spe­cific trait. All val­ues for each trait are summed, giv­ing a score in each dimension. This is done to reduce sys­tem­atic response bias caused by yea-saying and nay-saying, which is accep­ted as good norm­at­ive research prac­tice.^2.

The trait scores are dis­played below the invent­ory, for example: SM(2) AE(2) GF(-2) IO(2) STAR(3). Where SM stands for Energy (Sprinter/Marathonist), AE stands for Intel­lect, GF is the Per­spect­ive trait and IO is the Activ­ity trait score. STAR is the score for Amity.

Energy

The energy dimen­sion is meas­ured using a four ques­tion bat­tery of which the second and the last ques­tion have a ret­ro­grade polarity.

• 2.   I’d prefer to work on a long-term project
• 17. I prefer to see lots of small res­ults quickly
• 18. The jour­ney is more import­ant than the destination
• 19. I like to work on small pro­jects that can be com­pleted quickly

The type is determ­ined by the dimen­sion score, which for the energy trait can be between –8 and 8. Val­ues smal­ler than or equal to zero, indic­ate a Sprinter type while val­ues lar­ger than zero indic­ate a Mara­thon­ist type.

Intel­lect

The bat­tery to meas­ure the intel­lect trait con­sists of five ques­tions, of which the first and last have a ret­ro­grade polarity:

• 7.   I’m con­fid­ent that I’m a bet­ter prob­lem solver than most people
• 8.   I often worry about the future
• 10. Learn­ing new skills is more valu­able than using an old one
• 16. I enjoy examin­ing large amounts of data
• 21. I prefer to use my prior know­ledge than to learn a new approach to a problem

The dimen­sion score can range between –10 and 10. Val­ues smal­ler than or equal to zero are typ­ical of Expert type, while val­ues lar­ger than zero are typ­ical for Ana­lyst types.

Per­spect­ive

Per­spect­ive is meas­ured using four ques­tions. Num­ber 4 and 11 are retrograde.

• 3.   I need reg­u­lar updates of everything going on around me
• 4.   Most of what goes on around me is irrel­ev­ant and uninteresting
• 5.   I prefer to work in a small busi­ness rather than a large organisation
• 11. I get excited by the details

This dimen­sion ranges between –8 and 8. Val­ues lower than or equal to zero are assessed as the Focal type, while val­ues lar­ger than zero are typed Gen­eral.

Activ­ity

The activ­ity dimen­sion is meas­ured using four ques­tions of which …

• 1. When I cook I prefer to make it up as a go along rather than fol­low a recipe
• 6. People see me as a leader
• 12. I don’t need a map when I travel
• 20. I prefer to fol­low clear instruc­tions rather than develop new ones

This dimen­sion ranges between –8 and 8. Val­ues lower than or equal to zero are assessed as the Imple­mentor type, while val­ues lar­ger than zero are typed Organ­iser.

Amity

Five ques­tions are asked to meas­ure amity, of which only the last one is of ret­ro­grade polarity:

• 9.   I have an above aver­age sense of humour.
• 13. People often tell me that I’m funny
• 14. I often tell jokes
• 15. I don’t laugh out loud very often
• 22. I’m a lot of fun to be around

Of the pos­sible scores between –10 and 10, val­ues lar­ger than zero are assigned a Star to their per­son­al­ity inventory.

Valid­ity

Prob­lem­atic aspect of self admin­istered psy­cho­met­ric test­ing is a high level of inher­ent con­firm­a­tion bias, also known as the ‘Forer Effect’. Am I really a Mara­thon­ist, or do I per­ceive myself to be as such?

The res­ults in this test do not actu­ally reveal any inform­a­tion bey­ond what has been entered by the sub­ject. The res­ults are only a lin­guistic rearrange­ment of the answers. This is con­firmed by recent research that showed that most people are able to guess the out­come of per­son­al­ity tests without actu­ally under­tak­ing them.^3.

Com­pre­hens­ive self-knowledge can thus not be obtained by com­plet­ing sur­veys because they can only reveal the per­ceived self and are not cap­able of unearth­ing the inner (sub­con­scious) self. Psy­cho­met­ric tests, such as the Forer Work­style Invent­ory are only suit­able as a vehicle for intro­spec­tion, provid­ing an entry point for reflect­ing on one’s self. This intro­spec­tion can, how­ever, not occur without life exper­i­ence to reflect on.

Obtain­ing self know­ledge, con­sidered essen­tial for lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, requires some­thing deeper and more sub­stan­tial. As Friedrich Niet­z­sche once proclaimed:

“One’s own for well hid­den for one’s own; and of all treas­ure troves, one’s own is the last to be excavated …”

As our beha­viour is pre­dom­in­ately con­trolled by situ­ational vari­ables, the only way to obtain self-knowledge is life experience.

Only by being exposed to a mul­ti­tude of situ­ations and chal­lenges can we know what our per­son­al­ity actu­ally is. As we gain life exper­i­ence, our inner and per­ceived selves slowly con­verge. Matur­ity is the situ­ation were the inner self and the per­ceived self are almost identical and self-knowledge becomes appar­ent. Even the most care­fully designed per­son­al­ity test can not leapfrog the know­ledge obtained through life exper­i­ence. Carl Gustav Jung, who inspired devel­op­ment of the MBTI recog­nised this when he wrote:

“Any­one who wants to know the human psyche … would be bet­ter advised to aban­don exact sci­ence … and wander with human heart through the world.”

This foray into per­son­al­ity test­ing leaves me to con­clude that no psy­cho­met­ric test can ever replace the full­ness of life exper­i­ence to obtain true self-knowledge. Exper­i­ences such as expos­ing one­self to a chal­len­ging situ­ations, occa­sion­ally explor­ing the bound­ar­ies of mor­al­ity, exper­i­en­cing dif­fer­ent cul­tures or going through emo­tional tur­moil are the only mean­ing­ful ways to gain self-knowledge.

Notes

1. B.R. Forer, (1949) The fal­lacy of per­sonal val­id­a­tion: A classroom demon­stra­tion of gull­ib­il­ity. Journal of Abnor­mal and Social Psy­cho­logy 44(1): 118–123; C.G. Jung (1971), Psy­cho­lo­gical Types. Prin­ceton, New Jer­sey: Prin­ceton Uni­ver­sity Press. [↩]
2. Churchill, G.A. (1979) A paradigm for devel­op­ing bet­ter meas­ures of mar­ket­ing con­structs, Journal of Mar­ket­ing Research, (19): 64–73; Wason, P.J. and Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1972) Psy­cho­logy of Reas­on­ing. Struc­ture and Con­tent, B.T. Bats­ford, Lon­don. [↩]
3. A. Fur­nham, & G. Dis­sou (2007). The rela­tion­ship between self-eatimated and test derived scores of per­son­al­ity and intel­li­gence. Journal of Indi­vidual Dif­fer­ences, 28 (1), 37–44. [↩]