Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests

HBO 2021

Highlighting the Intersection Between Science and Communication

Amy Locklin

SUMMARY OVERVIEW (THAT DOESN’T GIVE AWAY TOO MUCH):

This HBO documentary co-mingles unfolding stories and expert views: the Myers-Briggs founders who were a mother and daughter team; a woman who researches their archives; a bipolar young man who was hazed and phased out by AI personality screening, who makes a sad choice; a charismatic, artsy man who blogs about Myers-Briggs types and later the Big 5, doing skits and talking to the camera directly; a classroom of urban people of color who are being coached to handle this kind of employment screening with an appropriate mindset filter; and a team of lawyers who go to Washington to make an important case.

Throughout the film, the two dominant personality tests pervading AI hiring today are defined and examined, including for their harmful biases.

THIRD MOST SURPRISING THING:

In a Carl Jung interview segment, he argues that we need to study human consciousness because people are the source of all coming evil.

SECOND MOST SURPRISING THING:

The mother of the originators’ team was a fiction writer before becoming an arguable type of social Darwinist. Her first novel won an award but her second was hard for the Myers-Briggs historian to find, probably because of its plot. The story follows a white Southern family who kill themselves because they fear they each have one drop of African American blood.

FIRST MOST SURPRISING THING CAN BE FOUND IN THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY

ONE REVISION THE REVIEWER MIGHT SUGGEST:

I would change the word Dark in the title. I don’t like using dark words with negative connotations because I think they run the risk of reinforcing negative implicit bias. Why does dark imagery have to be bad? To me, dangerous is a better word choice, even though it’s an abstract concept rather than an image. Sometimes literal words work better.

REVIEWER’S INTEREST:

I became fascinated with Myers-Briggs and its two female founders twenty years ago. I thought liking the test so much was just me, rather than the epidemic of misuse in personal and professional situations it has become. Someone recently told me it was bullshit and I didn’t know what she meant until I saw this documentary. I was also still puzzled by my first AI job interview.

I initially took the Myers-Briggs test at work and decided I was ENTJ. Years later, my mother reminded me I’m actually an introvert and in addition I realized at home I’m definitely more P than J.

More importantly, while I knew that standards of patriarchy were unfair to women, in part because they often communicate differently than men, I didn’t realize that ableism was much more pervasive and damning to a wider range of individuals.

LARGER IMPLICATIONS:

Persona shows that most people forget they have a different personality at work when they take these AI interview tests. Misguiding test takers is just one drawback of using personality screening in automated interviews. I had no idea Myers-Briggs has trended so invasively and unjustly.

We need to prepare people take these tests with a workplace mindset. Honesty is important, but we aren’t the same people in the privacy of our own homes.

Furthermore, we need to understand that people are adaptable and ideally become more well integrated throughout their lives. Over-investing in a fixed idea of ourselves as a personality type can have severely restricting consequences, even while these tests can be used in moderation for private self-inquiry and personal growth.

Most importantly, because AIs are created by people, if we agree with Jung, logically they can be as dangerous as we can.