Thanks, Mark. It’s great you brought this up, because while I do outline in the first couple paragraphs some valid reasons for thinking personality profiling might be a good idea for assembling teams and finding good worker-task fit, I did not specifically cover your point. Grateful I can now.

Yes, personality tests may strive to add objectivity to a subjective practice of pigeonholing. But striving isn’t enough. There are no good data that show personality tests actually achieve objectivity. Nor should we be surprised in their failure to do so given that all these tests are based on purely subjective input. Therefore, instead of adding objectivity, these tests simply perpetuate what is (as you have mentioned) a common and (as you have not mentioned) unfortunate practice.

The risks and damages of personality tests for the individual are clear. The burden of proof therefore lies with those that purport their benefit, many of whom by the way, make their living on propping up the personality profiling industry through myth and pseudoscience.

Beyond the psychological risk, and my central thesis that personality profiling is a major distraction from where our focus really needs to be, let me also state plainly that these tests are, like pigeonholing is, intellectually lazy.

Fitzgerald reminded us that “reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”

He’s dead accurate that keeping an open mind can be hard (perhaps infinitely so). But reserving judgement is actually one thing worth striving for.