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me_irl
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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Hey, Organizational Psychologist here, we are the people who make tests like this. I'll try and provide a brief explanation. Let me first preface that the one in the meme is not a legit one and we dont use IQ as a metric in any cognitive ability testing. We do use cognitive ability testing and these tests are actually somewhat good for selection but they aren't the end all be all. If you would like this is deeply discussed in this review by Sackett et al (2022): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-17327-001
If you want to see a legitimate cognitive ability test, the one I'm most familiar with on the commercial market is by wonderlic: https://wonderlic.com/
Cognitive ability tests unfortunately have a number of issues and as you see from the comments a lot of confusion surrounding them (also the canonical post is hilarious as they are way overboard with their testing imo):
An important thing for you or anyone else to consider is that these tests aren't meant to be used in isolation and overall they only explain a fraction of your potential job performance. Selection is hard, its one of the most studied parts of my field but it's basically an armsrace that has no end. If anyone would like to know more on the science, feel free to reach out.
I dislike organizational psychologists. The whole field. Every time a problematic hr department does something problematic using 'researched methods', the researchers all cry foul and say 'that's not how you're supposed to implement <policy/test>!' But do you not see your own role in legitimizing this behavior? All the research into how to run a happier bee colony is going to be used to justify mistreatment and discrimination by bad actors. Every test and every policy can be maligned, and providing citations just makes that easier. The research field is itself a tool for maintaining capital.
I don't disagree. I detest the use of my science as a means to control people for capitalist interest. The reality however is that regardless of the captualists, it would be a shame if we didn't understand how humans worked together.
Almost all the research we do indicates that the actions of the current economic system are harmful. Humans need to work less, have reasons to do things outside of money, have separations between their spheres of life, live with the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and belonging met. If you ever support things like DEI or equal opportunity for workers, those are practices championed by IO psychologist.
We are no more captured by the capitalists as the chemist making a drung to save lives sold for the cost of a house, the doctor working 80 hours while his patients debts mount, or the computer scientist who wanted to build great things but can't afford rent if his paycheck wasn't from Lockheed martain.
I try my best to pull my science in a humanist direction. We are scientists, we can discover, we can advocate, but we can't prevent people from twisting reality to their whim.
Edit: I'm sorry, I regret posting this. I was in a bad mood, and you are not personally at fault for capitalism being evil, it was stupid and tasteless to belittle your career. You seem like a good person and you didn't deserve it.
None of the advances in workers rights or DEI have been due to psychologists convincing CEOs with facts and logic. You are confusing your role with that of a union, a civil rights lawyer, or a political activist and you are rewriting the history of hard fought victories as merely scientific breakthroughs in operating efficiency.
The difference is, those on the outside and the bottom want to challenge existing power structures, while you are advising managers how best to maintain those structures.
This is literally illegal where I live. There's a few exceptions like airline pilot, police or firefighter, but besides that it's considered discrimination.
Which isn't surprising to me. I personally am not a fan of cognitive ability testing because of that exact problem. There is too much adverse impact to justify it. A simple structural behavioural interview gets you about the same predictive power with far fewer drawbacks.
It makes sense to have specific skill, ability and knowledge tests as appropriate. Like having a written and road test to get a driver license.
But these overall comprehensive "personality" or "cognitive" tests are blatently unethical.
You are correct, especially about personality. Personality is a very very complex multidimensional construct. The only way we can sort of say someone has a specific stable personality is through a statistical mechanism called latent profile analysis. Even then, that is for figuring out general profiles in the population, not the individual.
What we typically do is look at either personality facets or profiles and do experiments to see how they moderate or mediate different effects such as job performance, well being, turnover intentions, etc.
If you want to look at the best scientifically valid personality assessment I'd suggest the HEXACO. There is no bullshit astrology, it's all just psychology and math.
Yes exactly. I forgot to mention that.
It's not that hard. People in your field just make up a bunch of shit that over complicates it and gets in the way to justify their existence. Anyone halfway decent at hiring can interview a candidate and have a decent idea of if they're a good fit or not.
That's completely and totally false. Please read the cited meta analysis, which is directly on that topic. What you proposed is literally the worst means of conducting selection outside of flipping a coin.
Literally everyone I ever hired performed almost exactly as I expected them to, but whatever guess I should have been flipping coins.
This test says I'm going to be a stellar quarterback.
Haha, don't worry, we all make fun of them for pushing super hard with the NFL