AVRIL THORNE
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz

A Kick in the Pants for Personality Psychology

The Cult of Personality Testing.
By Annie Murphy Paul. New York: Free Press, 2004. vi + 302 pp. Paper, $14.00.

Once upon a time, a professor told me not to fault a Volkswagen for not being a Cadillac. His point was that users of personality tests sometimes fault the test for not doing things that the test doesn't claim to do. For example, some people think that personality tests should be able to X-ray a person's fundamental desires, capacities, and flaws. Annie Murphy Paul, journalist and author of the bestselling book The Cult of Personality Testing, chastises a wide array of personality tests, including the Rorschach, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Big Five, for not being good X-rays of personality. In particular, she thinks personality tests should help us educate our children, manage our companies, and understand ourselves. If Paul had taken my mentor's advice, she wouldn't have written this book because such claims miscast the intentions of these tests. Nonetheless, Paul has sold a lot of books, so apparently many people find this book compelling.