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Showing posts from August, 2016

What, So What, and Now What with Reporting Natural and Demonstrated Behaviors

Personality assessments ask individuals to identify the behaviors that are typical of them.  Often, individuals are asked to rate the degree a behavior or descriptor is “true” of his or her behavior.  Sometimes, individuals are asked to select between two behaviors or descriptors in an “either / or”  or “true, not true” response fashion.  All of these assessments are assuming the individual experiences his or her behavior as consistent regardless of context. In the last decade, with the mounting evidence that context matters in behavior and that it dramatically impacts a sense of identity, these assessments are ignoring both the science and the everyday experience of the individuals taking the inventories.  The practical way this emerges when interpreting personality tools is when a participant looks at his or her report and says, “but this isn’t how I am at home.”  Or, “I completed this assessment with work in mind.”   The consequence of this feeling that the results are only