Personality and IQ Testing

Use of Personality and IQ Testing

Personality and IQ testing uses samples of your behavior to assess things such as your cognitive abilities and emotional intelligence to give you an IQ score or rate your personality.The use of pre employment personality and IQ testing has grown across the world since the growth in terrorist incidents to ensure prospective employees have a personality that fits into the organizational culture.

IQ testing measures your intelligence and is often used in conjunction with personality tests as part of the screening process when you apply for a job or university entrance. Personality and IQ testing give employers and educational institutions insight into your ability to learn or perform the job function you apply for.

Personality Testing Explained

Personality tests are multiple choice questionnaires where your answers indicate your preferences to a cross section of things that determine your personality type. Your personality is the set of characteristics and thought patterns that make you an individual.

Personality tests measure your personality traits according to different scales and patterns developed for this reason. The Myers Briggs tests are one of the most popular personality tests and have developed patterns to define differently personality types, such as:

• EI – Extrovert versus Introvert

• TF – Thinking versus Feeling

• SN – Sensing versus Intuiting

• JP – Judging versus Perceiving

Another popular personality test is the Big Five personality test and they measure your personality based on the following:

• Extrovert versus Introvert

• Agreeable versus Disagreeable

• Emotional Stability versus Reacting Emotionally

• Conscientious versus Spontaneous

• Open-mindedness versus Traditional Mindset

A personality test will have one of two formats:

• Your choice of answer will be to strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree with statements on the questionnaire.

• Or, the questionnaire will require a choice of either always, sometimes, or never as answers to its questions.

IQ Testing Explained

IQ tests have numerous subcategories built into the test to measure your intelligence across a range of abilities such as spatial, verbal, logic, and mathematical skills. IQ testing classifies your intelligence rather than your personality.There is still much debate about intelligence and, in general, it is defined as alertness, the ability to think in an abstract manner, originality, cognitive skills, commonsense, creativity, adaptability, and productiveness.

What IQ testing cannot measure includes musicality, nonacademic talents, interpersonal skills, and manual dexterity.

IQ testing was invented by Alfred Binet to identify children with special needs in schools, for example, children who needed help learning reading and writing.

An IQ test arrives at your score by dividing your mental age using your chronological age. The result is multiplied by 100 to get your score. This process is explained using the Bell Curve:

Your IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100

Your mental age is derived from the age group the IQ test was designed for. All tests are designed for specific age groups. For example, if you are 25 and complete a test designed for people in the 30-year-old age bracket then your mental age is 30.

IQ = (30/25) x 100 = 120

It is possible that your IQ may deviate standard for 15 points, the either way.General explanations of IQ test scores admit that IQ test ratings are subject to vary 5 points every week. The psychologists have discovered that mood, anxiety, stress, environment, education, culture and abode may influence IQ test rating variably.

It is interesting to note that people are scoring better and better with every passing day.

What is the reason?

Are they growing more intelligent? Or

Are they getting more familiar to the IQ testing mechanism?

Personality and IQ Testing Comparison

IQ testing gives you insight into your ability to learn and pursue the goals you have in your life successfully. Personality testing gives you an insight into the way you see the world and how you may react in different situations.

Both personality and IQ testing are useful for prospective employers to ascertain if job applicants have what it takes to perform successfully within the job function, as well as being able to fit into the organizational culture.

Personality and IQ testing have become the norm as part of the screening process used by most organizations, along with the traditional methods of resumes, face-to-face interviews, and referee checks to help them make more informed choices about their staff.

With rising costs and globalization, employers are more focused on finding the right people for their organizations the first time round because hiring the wrong staff is very costly.