The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves

Every one of the students has the same thick book before her, A Primer for Rorschach Interpretation.

The Rorschach routinely “overpathologizes” healthy people, Wood and the others maintain, making them seem much more dysfunctional than they really are.

The test’s numerous detractors charge that the Rorschach—originally designed for use with psychiatric patients but now frequently given to normal people—“overpathologizes,”

validity”—that is, when the Rorschach reports that a test taker is depressive, or narcissistic, or overly dependent, that person is quite likely not to exhibit those traits at all.

What’s Wrong With the Rorschach?, written with M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott Lilienfeld, and Howard Garb and released in 2003.

James Wood, a University of Texas psychology professor who would soon emerge as the Rorschach’s leading detractor, and two coauthors published a highly critical article in the respected journal Psychological Science. “Basic issues regarding the reliability and validity of the Comprehensive System have not been resolved,”

Today it’s administered to an estimated 15 million Americans each year, in spite of the fact that it features invasive questions about test takers’ sex lives and bathroom habits.

“I make no apology” for relying on such loosely compiled data, insists Exner.

and is used by 89 of the companies in the Fortune 100.