And maybe it even does, for the task that it’s designed for. The problem is, the task they designed their system for isn’t the task they thought they designed it for. What they’re actually testing for is couples unlikely to get divorced, but they never actually made any effort at finding people who should have gotten married in the first place. It would, in fact, be interesting to see the results if some matchmaking company were to actually try to do what eHarmony claims.
At my school we’re reading this book by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham for our professional development course. Chapter seven deals directly with this issue, and Willingham says pretty clearly that the tests which were given to students did not correctly sort students into categories in any meaningful way. In fact, he’s skeptical that any test could produce useful divisions of the sort that educators were hoping for.
ITR, VARK is used in my department to develop the pathology curriculum for veterinary students.
I know I study the way they say I should study for my “category”. And it definitely, in a way, makes sense to me why sometimes I have trouble communicating with others. I suck at visual learning, but others can’t comprehend a thing unless there is a figure attached, which I hate to provide because I can’t understand it.
I was given one once (after I’d been hired), and I wasn’t particularly interested in taking the time to fill it out. So I looked at the alignment of the bubbles on the answer sheet, and just randomly answered in a way that would make my personality 100% “neutral.” They saw that, and made me do it again, but do you think they were ever going to take any answers from me seriously after that?
As I noted in my opening clause, I am not persuaded that such tests work. However, my point was that I doubt that the tests were actually evaluated and discarded by educators and that it is much more likely that they were employed in a half-assed (undefunded) manner and then dropped in favor of the next fad.
I was given one once (after I’d been hired), and I wasn’t particularly interested in taking the time to fill it out. So I looked at the alignment of the bubbles on the answer sheet, and just randomly answered in a way that would make my personality 100% “neutral.” They saw that, and made me do it again, but do you think they were ever going to take any answers from me seriously after that?
Well one argument for job assessment is that simply by removing the unstructured interview as the primary primary decision point you pretty much improve things automatically. This is based on the supposed finding that job performance can be inversely correlated to job interview performance for many professions.
Which makes some sense in that the people getting the most practise in job interviews are the ones changing around a fair bit.
If the tests actually offer useful information as well, its just gravy.
Otara
to sort of expand on what Alessan is saying here: the social sciences have yet to produce anything even remotely near the predictive results of actual scientific rigor. the best they do is provide statistical analysis of moving targets. assuming there could be some “compatibility” test, based in actual science, is simply asking too much.
as a bit of an example, consider that there are at least two different approaches to marriage. in one, the loving couple believes that they’ve each met the person with whom they couldn’t spend the rest of their lives without. human preferences are incredibly difficult to predict, and certainly no self-reporting could achieve an adequate result. if it could, this wouldn’t be a discussion.
in another approach, people are paired and expected to work toward a happy marriage. there is an effort placed on ensuring compatibility; it is not expected at the outset. what could our woeful ability to predict human behavior say about the chances at success for these sorts of marriages?
and what set of tests could achieve adequate predictive results given that there are many different approaches than those named here, and that most everyone on the planet who even considers getting married uses some indeterminate hybrid of any number of them?
i contend that it simply can’t be done. and, as was said earlier, don’t be too hard on intuition.
Relationships aren’t about objective measures, so testing how someone matches up objectively isn’t necessarily giving all that much information. The real question is: Does this person make me want to figure out some way to run over myself with my own car? There are people who on paper don’t make me want to do that but who in person have me diagramming it.
It wouldn’t help one bit.
People in love are amazing at willfully ignoring big blinding red flags. Most people who are going into something with the wrong person can see it a mile away- and they simply refuse to see it. In truth a lot of traits that make for an attractive sex partner make for a horrible life partner. But that realization isn’t going to make that initial attractive any bit weaker.
I think it would help in the most egregious cases. The amen clinic can discover a great deal about people using functional MRI and other brain scan technologies. If I’d had my ex-fiancee tested there, I’d likely have learned that he was without normal function in sympathy and bonding. That might have clued me in that I was getting involved with a sociopath. Now, whether I would, in the throes of “love” have ignored that is open for debate.
It’s certain that he took a Myers-briggs type test and that I was horrified by the result. It just didn’t gel with the person I knew, so I put it down to the test being wrong. Turns out the man he represented himself to be was the fake, and the type-testing was accurate.
Intuition isn’t perfect, though. Lots of battered and cheated-on women learn that the hard way.
That’s not to say that science is any better…
I’m not a fan of the idea that people can either be in love or think, not both. It’s very possible to do both, though most people might not.
I think many battered and cheated on women AND men ignored their intuition. The danger signs are often there, but US culture romanticizes some pretty ugly behavior at times. Oh, if he’s possessive and violent, it means he really really cares, etc.
Of course it is very possible, and if your goal is a steady long-lasting marriage that’d be smart. But I think most people secretly have other goals, which they chose by their actions even if they mouth different words. And I don’t think this has to be a bad thing- I think there are perfectly valid and good models for relationships besides “We are going to love each other for ever and ever and that’s that.” Every relationship doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to provide what it is the people involved are looking for.
I definitely agree with that. But I took from your earlier comment that you thought people weren’t modeling any sort of healthy relationship for themselves, they were just getting carried away by hormones and the like.
There are damn few tests that can mimic the real-life scenarios that stress marriages.
If you’ve grown up in a comfortable middle-class home, there’s no set of questions that can accurately judge how you’ll react if you or your spouse becomes unemployed, cutting your household income in half, forcing you to make choices you never even thought about.
If you have a child, there’s no way to tell how two people will react to the demands of a third, all-demanding, totally dependent person in the house, especially if the child has health problems that could require constant management for the rest of your life.
How would you predict how you’d react if your spouse one day said, “I have the job opportunity of a lifetime, but I have to spend 5 years in Elbonia?” Or if your spouse developed a drug or alcohol addiction, was crippled in a car accident, or suffered a paralyzing stroke a year after you were married?
While I completely agree that there’s no way to know precisely how each of these things would go down, isn’t a lot of how we handle stress due to our basic, inherent, character?
I, for example, am very easily stressed but I am also stubborn as hell, so I don’t give up easily (maybe not easily enough) when the going gets tough. That’s my nature. People who know me know my nature. Isn’t that predictive?
I am trying to figure out how you can get horrifying results from a Myers-Briggs type test. It sounds like being horrified to realize that your honey is a Scorpio instead of a Virgo.
This, absolutely this.
Pick a time when you are both weakened and wanting control. Then, see how you mesh. Other good tests include: Moving a big piece of furniture up, or down, stairs. Taking a drive of fourteen hours or more and being sick,simultaneously.
If you can get along and work together, in those times, you probably can make it in the long term.
If someone presents themselves as one thing and tests as something completely different, I could see that setting off alarms.