Measuring The Mind
[Music]
[Laughter]
well hi everybody
i’m so happy to be with you all today
let me start off by saying that as a
trained psychologist i i really
shouldn’t talk about me let me ask you a
couple of questions
about you first okay so let’s start with
this one
if you were a cheese what kind of cheese
would you be
if you lived at hogwarts which house do
you think would best fit
your personality
let me ask you this if you were a
character in the spongebob squarepants
the universe what spongebob quote best
represents your essence
do you think
so why am i asking you all these
questions well many of you some of you
know the answers
many of you probably don’t there’s
really good news here you could find out
the answers for free
online does anybody know where buzzfeed
of course buzzfeed
hundreds if not thousands of
psychological profiles
and personality profiles are available
to you these days
on buzzfeed my oldest son told me today
he found out that his percent billy
eilish
is 100 which i thought well there’s a
problem there because
you’re not billy eilish right and my
youngest son said he found out today
or a few days ago that he’s zero percent
baby yoda
so you can find out amazing things about
yourself can’t you for free online
at buzzfeed so why am i starting there
well i’m starting there because
these assessments have become incredibly
popular right they’re so appealing
they connect you somehow to the world at
large
but also make you feel special about
yourself there’s something incredible
about these free psychological profiles
but they exist in a much larger context
they exist in a world
called psychometrics psychometrics
put really simply is the measurement of
mental capacity
and mental processes so what’s a really
common
really familiar psychometric instrument
you’ve probably all heard of
well the iq test the intelligence
quotient test
another psychometric many of you in the
audience probably know
the sat another psychometric the
myers-briggs type inventory
and that’s really where i’m gonna focus
today is those psychometric instruments
those
tools that measure those soft things
those things that are really hard to
describe and
potentially even have conversations
about personality
motivators values those things that
we’re inherently interested in buzzfeed
gets this right
there are more and more quizzes
appearing on buzzfeed every day
but there are actually real valid
reputable
psychological instruments that can test
actual
personality traits it can actually be
really helpful in your life
your career your relationships both
personal and professional
decisions that you want to make in your
life right now
there are tools available to you that
can help you well beyond
the world of buzzfeed so i think of it
as
missing pieces to the puzzle of you no
psychometric is ever going to be perfect
we’re all unique people but there are
certain patterns of behavior
that are predictable and that do repeat
and we can understand those things
this is a sample of what some
psychological
profiles look like just three
but it gives you an idea of what a real
tool
will produce for you as opposed to again
what percentage baby yoda are you
or there was another buzz buzzfeed quiz
that said
who is your ideal soulmate celebrity
over
- i don’t know if you want to really
change your life based on that
information
or that data but i would say you may
want to think about how
this kind of data can really impact your
life in lots of different ways
so my first exposure to psychometrics
was in graduate school
i was getting my doctorate in clinical
psychology
and the task was to create a profile
write a narrative
of this patient who i didn’t get to meet
i didn’t get to interview i knew nothing
about
their family history i knew nothing
about their work history or
relationships
i just had a stack of psychometric data
so these were results from personality
profiles and all sorts of other
profiles i was fairly skeptical at the
time you know is this really going to
generate
a narrative a profile of a living
breathing
human being just a bunch of numbers and
scales
so that was a long time ago for me but
jumped 10 years forward from there
and i found myself working at a large
insurance company
my interests had shifted from clinical
work to
organizational psychology and for those
who don’t know what organizational
psychology is i will tell you
i don’t help people figure out how to
organize their closets or their drawers
it’s really the psychology of
organizations and how organizations
function and how people work
in organizations so here i was at this
large insurance company
suddenly testing very successful sales
people
sales people that sold life insurance
they sold disability insurance they
helped
people in incredible ways and these top
sales people hadn’t made a lot of money
for the company and for themselves
they were at a point in their career
when they were trying to figure out
well do i want to be a sales manager do
i want to be a sales leader
is that the next step for me and as you
could imagine
you don’t necessarily want to put
somebody in that kind of position
who’s going to flame out who’s going to
derail who’s going to lose a lot of
employees
because of certain personality traits or
certain character styles
and so i was tasked with finding those
reputable
valid assessment tools that we could use
to test
very successful sales people to
determine
was it likely that they were going to be
decent managers was it likely they were
going to be good sales leaders in the
future
and so that’s what we did and we got
wonderful data that compared them
to successful sales leaders and sales
managers not only around the us
but also around the world there was one
person in particular that i worked with
that i want to mention uh and the reason
i want to mention him was
again had done very very well up until
this point as a sales professional
very ambitious person and his test
results came back they were amazing
ambitious driven strategic thinking
level-headed not impulsive at all very
very sociable
these all mapped to being a really good
sales manager and a really good sales
leader
but there was one scale that came back
that was problematic
he had really low empathy so
what does that mean low empathy in
relationships it could mean
you might say things that other people
take offense to a little too easily and
a little too quickly
you’re not able to kind of step into
other people’s shoes
that well you might insult people
without realizing it
and as a manager when you’re trying to
develop and retain employees
that’s a real problem i think the term
that professional psychologists used at
least at the time for this person was
high achiever and also
so this is actually where i kind of got
hooked on psychometrics
and it wasn’t because we could uncover
because chances are
people in his life kind of already knew
that about him it was because
he completed these questionnaires on his
own he answered all of these questions
by himself
and the test spit back this report that
i was able to present to him and say
look at the results here so what do you
see here
how do you make sense of this what are
we going to do with this information how
is it going to work for
you it wasn’t a subjective i think this
is who you are
it wasn’t people in his life commenting
on his personal traits
it was data that was provided based on
his own responses
to a series of questionnaires so as you
can imagine it’s harder to refute that
data
but it also enables you to really have a
conversation that’s constructive
and the conversation that came about
after that was maybe he needs to hire a
coach
to soften his style a little bit maybe
he needs to pause a little bit more
before talking
or providing difficult feedback to
people maybe he needs to find
a few trusted colleagues who will kind
of nudge him or kick him under the table
or
who will chat with him after he said
something particularly
direct so he can repair some damage in a
relationship
that maybe he’s caused so for me the
value in these tools
is they can provide incredible
information for people
but because they’re being self-generated
the conversations can be
really really fruitful and really really
helpful
now trying to understand the human mind
and
quantify it goes way back so hippocrates
the father
of modern medicine we’re talking about
2500 years ago
this is the first known time when a
human being tried to quantify different
personality styles
and he came up with this theory of the
four biles
or the also known as the four
temperaments and this model actually
still exists to some degree
today but it what it was about was that
we each have these four levels of
liquids in our body and
out of balance it meant that our
personalities might steer
in certain ways rather than kind of be a
complete and balanced and kind of well
person
so that was hippocrates 2500 years ago
but
the first modern use of psychometric
tools was about a hundred years ago
it was world war one uh the military
hired psychologists
of all people to employ personality
testing
for recruits and this is an actual photo
of folks taking something called the
wordsworth
data sheet a questionnaire and the idea
was they wanted to screen out folks that
might have a predisposition
for what we call today ptsd what was
called back then
shell shock and so they used this tool
to screen those folks
off the battlefield we didn’t want to
lose them to shell shock
and the army honestly didn’t want to
have to pay the the very expensive
treatment and long-term care for these
folks
after they came back off the field and
so that’s the first example of kind of
modern psychometrics
being used the really good news is
though in the past 100 years
there’s been a really clear line that’s
developed between tools that measure
psychiatric illness psychiatric
disorders mental illness
and what we call normal personality or
kind of everyday behaviors
and i just want to show you real quickly
three different models that are
incredibly common
they’re used in schools they’re used in
corporations
and they measure traits and
styles that we can’t see but we can
understand and use to predict
behavior the five factor model you may
have heard of also known as the big five
incredibly popular and common and these
are the five traits that it measures
something called the holland theory of
career interest is something that’s been
used for years
on high school campuses and on college
campuses to help people determine
potential career fit with different
roles in different professions
and then lastly the most uh recent
development
in psychometrics for one of the most
recent developments is
emotional intelligence now eq or
emotional intelligence
has been shown to be more predictive of
life satisfaction
and life success than iq believe it or
not so
eq trump’s iq and we can actually
measure
somebody’s eq and they can believe it or
not work on their eq skills
so just three examples of some kind of
underlying models of psychometrics today
that are used in all sorts of uh all
sorts of parts of
different people’s lives so some
concrete examples
think about a relationship that you’re
in a relationship that you’ve been in
think about moving in with that person
maybe marrying that person wouldn’t it
be amazing
to have an instruction manual for who
they are
wouldn’t it be great to have a report
that says okay there are some things
that you know about this person maybe
you don’t know this about this person as
well
but to also have a report that lays out
a language where you and your partner
can really compare who you are
things like okay i’m more conscientious
than you so when it comes to tax time
i’m probably going to be more on top of
that than you that’s the example of a
married couple i suppose or let’s talk
about sociability
my partner is more sociable than me so
what does that really mean well it means
i’m going to maybe want to stay home
more than they will but i’m going to
know that that’s going to really fuel
them
and that’s going to be something that
they find very satisfying so
not only having that data but then also
being able to really just have those
conversations
early on in a relationship can be
incredibly fruitful
i’ve done a lot of work with family
businesses but as you can imagine even
families
going through some kind of psychometric
process can help
understand how different members of a
family are different
think about a father who’s very
stability oriented
long-term oriented don’t rock the boat
slow to change
and a daughter who is very ambitious
driven
crave stimulation and craves change well
they’re going to be
locked in conflict aren’t they
throughout not only her teenage years
but beyond
and this is actually an example of some
clients that i did work with
but once you lay out the psychometrics
for somebody once you say
it’s not about good and bad it’s not
about who’s right and wrong
it’s just about you two are wired
incredibly differently
and what does that do for that
relationship does a couple of amazing
things
it helps each person understand the
other one better
it helps avoid conflict and i would
argue it helps people
especially in families kind of
appreciate those differences
instead of going to war over them
now colleges have been using
psychometric tools for years
as well in career searches for sure so
if you go to a career counseling
center chances are you have access to
something called the strong interest
inventory
and that’s a career assessment tool but
colleges have also started using
assessment tools
with first-year roommates makes sense
right help them understand each other a
little bit more
avoid tension avoid conflict but have a
conversation early on about ways in
which
you’re different professional sports
teams have used them
to help understand who their athletes
are what their personality strengths and
weaknesses are
and then also how to put teams together
but it doesn’t have to be a sports team
for psychometrics to really be valuable
psychometrics can be valuable
in any team and in any group where
people are working towards
a common goal i want to tell you about
a specific area of my work that i just
really
enjoy and it relates to the use of
psychometrics
in teams for the past several years i’ve
been a judge at a business case
competition in vermont so for those who
don’t know about case competitions
uh teams of three or four students from
universities all around the country or
all around the world
will converge on a host university for a
day or a few days or a week
and they have to in this competition
analyze business cases
understand what’s going on in the
business and these are generally written
cases
um come up with what their questions are
come up with an analysis
and then they have to present it to a
panel of judges
in a matter of hours generally now
what’s amazing about this is these teams
of students
often don’t know each other they were
put together because the university said
oh these are great students
and we think they will represent our
university well
but within the course of a month they’re
prepping for a case competition which is
an incredibly high stress environment
and they they’ve barely met so
this past december i worked with a team
in panama
and three people exactly that situation
they had never met before
two of them had been in a class but
didn’t do any projects together
and here they were about to prep for
this international case competition
in vermont and they didn’t know each
other so you can imagine the stress that
goes into that very quickly they have to
kind of come together and figure out
how to work together so i put them
through a psychometric instrument you
may know this instrument that’s on the
slide right now the disk
profile it’s a behavioral style profile
now these aren’t their results but this
is what it looks like when you plot a
team or a group
on the disk and you can have
conversations about again ways in which
people are the same
ways in which people are different in
this particular case
for this case competition team one of
the students very exuberant vivacious
articulate
we talked about her being kind of the
person to lead off the presentation to
the judges
somebody else much more analytical she
was going to be the person to do the
case analysis and present a very
thorough
very comprehensive analysis of a case
and then the third person he was much
more of a
kind of stable don’t rock the boat kind
of like the father i was talking about
earlier
and he was kind of the hub for the group
he really helped
make sure they stayed on target on task
on time
and those were the roles that they
decided to take on based on what the
data
said the data resonated with how they
saw themselves and were able to very
early on
have a conversation about about how they
can use it to their best interest
and this is them accepting their award a
few weeks ago
in vermont at the university of vermont
grossman school of business
three students in the middle that came
in first place
now moving forward psychometrics has a
lot that
i’m excited about some of which is just
the impact of big data on being able to
crunch all sorts of variables
in terms of understanding who people are
but also
problem in the near future we’re going
to see companies that
don’t ask you to fill out questionnaires
but just
using ai monitor you with some kind of
camera
watch your response to verb to either
verbal stimuli
or visual stimuli and see your what your
hands do
see what your expressions are on your
face and then generate personality
profiles
based on that information there’s also a
movement towards
what they call the gamification of
psychological assessment
which is again you’re not filling out
questionnaires anymore about yourself
you’re participating in a video game and
so the science behind that is really
tracking
how you’re going through that game what
decisions you’re making how quickly
you’re moving
whether it’s a virtual reality
environment or a more traditional
video game so those are some of the
things that are right on the horizon and
some companies have already started
experimenting with these alternate ways
of gathering this data
so pretty exciting stuff but i think
it’s important
before jumping ahead to the future and
before thinking about how potentially
every job that you apply for is going to
have some kind of
ai-based screening tool that you’ll have
to submit yourself to
thinking about right now in your life
from all the examples that i gave you
are you a member of a team are you a
member of a group are you in a
relationship personal or professional
are you wondering about your own kind of
career decisions and life path
are you going through some kind of
transition where really taking a step
back and just
thinking about who you are how you’re
wired what your values are
where that could really be valuable to
you so i’d really like to leave you with
that today the
the field of psychometrics is never
going to be 100 100
precise it’s always going to be evolving
human beings are far too complex
for us to be able to say we can put all
of your information in a report
but i really do encourage you to think
about valid reputable psychometrics as
being able to impact your life
in a really positive way today now it
would be remiss
of me if i did not leave you with some
additional information
we’ve talked a lot about various tools
we’ve talked a lot about applications
but
what i think probably you’re most
interested in is
the following which is i would be
american cheese i would live in
ravenclaw and as it turns out the
spongebob quote
that best represents who i am is you
don’t need a license to drive a sandwich
thank you all very much for your time