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A brief historical overview of theories about human nature (free will) and some modern statistically validated dimensions and measures of personality variables. Personality traits
The Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI) is the foremost employer organisation in Australia. In 1999, it had 14,000 members and provided advice to employers on recruitment selection, productivity and dismissing staff. AHRI no longer exists in the same company structure that it had in 1999 and the new management team is completely different and has close links with Deakin University, thank goodness for Australian workers!
While attending a 3 day AHRI internal staff assessment and training course for about 80 AHRI staff, as the AHRI web editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources and HRmonthly and not a psychologist,
I was shocked and outraged to discover the management abuse of psychological assessment in the workplace.
Under a thin disguise of pretending to celebrate individual differences; AHRI were intent of using psychological testing to find compliant personality types. It was so farcical, at the start of the conference, AHRI managers entered the room singing the old Bing Crosby classic hit song, "You say tomatò, I say tomató, You say potatò, I say patató. This tragic conference heralded the demise of the AHRI management team as it then was. The 1999 conference was a tragedy, It was almost comical, if you could ignore the abuse of workplace psychological personality assessment, ironically, the conference was held within a stones-throw of Luna Park, an amusement park near Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Psychological personality tests were administered and scored by unqualified staff. Some other things the CEO did which concerned me included:
At one round table discussion of nine people with the CEO, we were given the following problem to consider.
This story may relate to King Herod of Judea. The King is leaving for Rome and instructs the gatekeeper. "Do anything at all to stop the Queen leaving the castle". When the Queen ignoring the King's demands leaves the castle, the gatekeeper shoots her dead.
Who is responsible?
Most people are obedient to authority figures, even corrupt ones which was demonstrated by Stanley Milgram's experiments. Only myself and one other staff member out of nine, stated that the gatekeeper was guilty of murder, the CEO did not like our attitude as she suggested that the gatekeeper was just following orders. The CEO was somewhat enraged with me, when I stated that I would not adopt the Neuremburg defence of "Just following orders". The CEO clearly wanted to see which staff members would do her bidding and who would not.
It was an unfair evaluation to make that those staff who would not condone murder ordered by the King, would otherwise not be good employees. Such a recruitment question misused by a manager almost implies that the organisation is unethical and will be asking staff to break the law!
A few minutes after this there was a break and a management team huddle to discuss my attitude. The CEO, asked me a leading question in a sarcastic tone of voice"So, how is the conference going for you". I said, "
I have some ethical concerns about the psyc testing". The CEO told me to leave
immediately and take an early flight home. The remaining staff who I saw many hours later that evening at Sydney airport said that they were told
I'd left, because I couldn't cope with the conference and had personal problems.
I resigned over the weekend and wrote letters of protest to the board of directors,
and the CEO but received no reply. This institute was liquidated 9 months later.
There is a strong correlation between arrogant management attitudes and business failure?
This organisation was recently taken over by a more ethical and benevolent institution,
but don't be intimidated if this CEO comes to your organisation.
In some occupations you might expect, for example, that a stereotyped extrovert could do better in a sales position, but that is not necessarily true. A gentle introvert might just as well suit the position better.
Sometimes one of a minority may be the best employees unaffected by, peer group pressure. The best police in Victoria Australia are the ones willing to stand up to a culture of corruption. The best workers may be the unconventional who do not conform to the worst peer group pressures.
Perhaps in some occupations like police officer or prison-guard, the non-conforming employees might be the best. Good people doing bad acts. The Lucifer effect.
If you are an employer or service provider interested in high standards or maintenance safety, you should deliberately employ some non-conformist individuals as checks on others over-zealous to cut costs at the risk of safety. People want their QANTAS engineers, maintenance crew and pilots to say "No way" to use inferior parts or maintenance cost cutting which threatens lives. These QANTAS staff are protecting your life. "No backthrust on landing" to save fuel! Company rules must be broken if they compromise safety. In fact there is a legal duty of care owed by staff to passengers to use all skill and knowledge possible, even to break company rules to not cause any acts or omissions which could hurt others, whether by negligence or recklessness.
Now QANTAS have banned the taking of pictures by employees. What a safety issue to be outraged about. They are likely to employ compliant personality types who will ensure their business plan succeeds at the expense of high safety standards.
A Boeing engineer Weldon says he was fired by Boeing after a 46-year career because of his persistent complaints about the design of the 787. He claims he represents the view of others at Boeing who were afraid to speak out.
Coles Meyer is a large Australian retail supermarket chain which is intent of using psychological personality testing to find compliant personality types. The Coles recruitment page does not disclose the abuse of psychology to try and find compliant personality types. The Coles Myer Personality test is dressed up as Occupational health and safely, but it asks questions about religious beliefs and attempts to find out if you have an internal or external locus of control and are a compliant personality type. The Coles managers swear by the psychological assessment promoted by vendors who sell them false psychological comfort that you are employing a "personality type" which suits their company.
I would refuse to do the personality test and look for a more ethical employer.
If you are in a position where you have to do the Coles personality test, be on the lookout for what is called, The Social Desirability Response Set. A list of up to 50 questions will be inserted randomly among other questions to try and determine if you are honest or not. Look for questions like, "I read the newspapers everyday" Possible answers: Always, Mostly, Sometimes, Often, Seldom, Never. Extreme responses such will Always could have you unreasonably judged as a liar. For example, the newspapers are not published on Christmas day, so you must be a liar. This is the sort of extreme literal minded psychology that Coles are using. If you do read the newspaper every-other-day of the year you should put Mostly. Such questions might be disguised and mixed with many others. Beware of questions asking what you about a behaviour that is considered to be socially desirable. It might be a simple question like, "I brush my teeth everyday" Combined with your scores on other Social Desirable response questions, Coles could evaluate you as a liar. Normally I would reserve this information as being confidential for psychologists only, but if psychological testing is to be abused in the workplace by Coles, people should be forewarned.
Hopefully the testing will only be conducted and scored by qualified psychologists, but managers with no psychological training seem to be involved! Will Coles give you a printout of any assessment, what help will the test be to participants? What follow and debriefing will they give prospective candidates for work. What will they do if they discover someone has a borderline personality disorder, what help will they provide? This is a disgraceful abuse of psychology by managers intent on the manipulation of people. What does if matter what personality an employee has if they are ethical and do their job well? The personality assessment is irrelevant to performance in a position. The best indicator of the likely performance of a worker is to check the references from their previous employment.
Coles Meyer are going close, if they have not already tripped over the Racial and Religious Discrimination Act by asking questions about beliefs in an afterlife and heaven and hell, in a job interview! They should also look at their own lack of compliance with the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992. regarding the accessibility of their Coles website which is a disgrace, just like their psychometric recruitment.
Before psychological testing any staff, a responsible psychologist with an individual
rights orientation towards helping people would insist that management signs an agreement
indicating their obligations regarding:
In Victoria Australia, The Bracks/Brumby government has instituted a repressive world's first test for criminality, randomly stopping all traffic and detaining drivers for 10 minutes while they test for illegal drugs using inaccurate saliva tests which require a blood sample is given to confirm any results. This is a zero tolerance test completely unrelated to any impairment to drive.
A few researchers at Swinburne University accepted funding from VicRoads and Victoria Police to conduct a simulated driving experiment on 40 subjects which police and Swinburne used to support the introduction of random drug saliva tests. There was no disclosure of the funding bias of the Swinburne study and no replication of the results by anyone else.
Scientific method has been ignored by a corrupt government and dismissed by researchers at Swinburne University who are more concerned with funding than using valid scientific research methods.
All Australian psychological researchers should be aware of the Code of Conduct of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), Section 2 on Experimental Research ethics. Section F 9. states that, "Members must declare any vested interests in their research including acknowledgement of any funding sources and other interests in the research."
Section G states they should not make, "any statement likely to mislead or deceive." Under the code we have already made complaints to the researchers, but have had no reply from them, leaving the next option of a formal complaint to the Psychologists Registration Board. We will leave our complaint in the hands of the University ethics committe for the moment, we are not sure if they are even members of the Australian Psychological Society, many academics are not members of APS.
A reply from Monash University Ethics Committee 30th June 2005. Unfortunately they only considered the issue of approval for the research and no other matter raised in the webpage on the simulator drug testing research!
Perhaps we should make another complaint to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM)?
Swinburne University has not replied to date, we expect they will probably have the same narrow focus and not consider all the issues we raised about their research funding disclosure or the misleading reporting of their results.
The Committee has considered the issues you raised in the emails.
The Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (the Standing Committee on
Ethics in Research Involving Humans (SCERH)) can confirm that the drug driving
simulator research conducted by researchers at Monash University Accident Research
Centre was approved by SCERH on 16 December 1999 as complying with the then current
National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines.
Drummer's research is conducted under the auspices of the Victorian
Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) and it is therefore outside our area of
responsibility.
The Committee is unable to comment on the other issues raised by you.
They should also have considered University ethics statements and related guidelines from the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans NHMRC, especially regarding the independence of the research from the funding interest.
Section 1.16 of the NHMRC guidelines states that, research must not be undertaken or funded until the Human Research Ethics Committee has granted approval. Did they grant approval for the Swinburne drug simulations? Section 1.18 states that research must be published in a way that permits scrutiny. Almost all of the Swinburne researchers however, fail to mention the funding, which is an essential element for proper scrutiny.
Section 2.21 A researcher must disclose to the HREC the amount and sources or potential sources of funding for the research and must declare any affiliation or financial interest when proposing and when reporting the research.
Clearly in the many examples above and in the public media, Swinburne and Monash researchers have not disclosed the possible funding bias at all, when reporting the research. This limits any possible scrutiny. We were not aware of the VicRoads funding, until William McKendrie from Road Safety Enforcement Technology stated that it was their, "specifically commissioned driver simulator studies."
The researchers seem to not even pay lip-service to disclosure of the funding, misleading everyone who has a right to scrutinise their research being used by law enforcement. In public media interviews, like the Catalyst interview with Prof. Drummond, Dr. Swan and Katherine Tzambazis, they say nothing at all about the funding.
"Such guidelines become more important as the sources of funding and number of researchers multiply."
International ethics statements are also relevant for any best practice consideration. A new draft code of ethical conduct for scientific publishing, is in development.
The funding of the Swinburne Drug driving simulator research has many implications for the academics conducting the study. They should consider some of the answers to the funding questions being addressed at the 2005 conference on Biomedical publications, such topics as:
The Statistical and Methodological Content, conflict of interests, Relation of Funding Source, Methodological Quality, and Study Outcome in Bipolar Disorder Drug Reports, Authors' Financial Ties With Pharmaceutical Companies, Conflict of Interest Management, Conflict of Interest Disclosure Policies, Constraints on Academic Freedom in Industry-Initiated Clinical Trials.
BIO Statement of Ethical Principles. The Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks has left for an American Biotechnology conference in Philadelphia. We hope he can learn something about ethical academic research.
In particular he should attend the lecture on where bioethics meets the law on 23rd June. Biojudiciary Project Roundtable and also the FDA101 lecture on Drug Evaluation and Research on June 25th.
Preventing police corruption in the early recruitment and training stages
Work colleagues can easily corrupt many if not most individuals. Good people doing bad acts, the Lucifer Effect. A video from the Stanford experiment.
Sometimes in a security or policing position, you might consider recruiting staff who have the will to resist the corruption of their colleagues. Those who can resist the corruption might have an internal locus of control, they are self motivated and not as easily influenced by their peers.
The bravest and most honest Australian Victorian police have been vilified by a culture of corruption by the majority of corrupt Victorian Police. Instead of being congratulated and thanked for doing an honest job, the isolated honest police have been vilified and even bashed by their peers as being "dirty rats". "I am happy that someone has finally acknowledged these issues of ostracism and resentment faced by a number of Ceja (internal affairs) investigators", said Sergeant Bill Patten.
In such positions it is important to recruit individuals who can stand up to such extreme pressure, unfortunately the real heroes in Victoria police have not been thanked or supported by the government, police command or the police union.
The compliant weak personality types should be weeded out in the early stages. At the Police training academy among the fresh faced recruits, plant half-a-dozen trusted graduates to behave as if they are also new recruits. Give them a special certificate from the Chief Commissioner to allow the possession of a small quantity of drugs for training purposes. Let them mingle with the new recruits and be seen to be consuming drugs. Let them encourage others to participate with them in illegal activity. Find out which new recruits have no internal locus-of-control to resist the dishonest element they will encounter in Victoria Police.
Send the deficient recruits on their way. Perhaps there is a way to do this online before police academy training begins? Vancouver police recruitment is going online in a virtual reality simulator, second life.
The Recruitment of Police
Law enforcement is definitely a growth industry. Thousands of the unemployed are being given Security training courses to work as guards for a few bob an hour. ASIO are recruiting 900 new staff. Who wants to work as a police officer trying to catch the immoral, unethical and insane? What sort of personality aspires to wield the authority of the law over the bad immoral and insane?
Run you mouse over items for more information.
Current Rewards: Drugs money sex and firepower ergo many police are corrupt Deterrents required: Swiftness and certainty of detection via: A Standing Royal Commission 150 million a year
Standard routine Police Integrity testing annual cycle
Sting operations to test suspect individual police honesty
Audit arrest and conviction rates for evidence of corruption
Recruitment and Training
Victoria Police use four main entry criteria:
Probity checks on past criminal activity.
Agility fitness testing.
Medical suitability drug testing.
Interviews with the police selection panel.
Currently Victoria Police reject one-third of applicants as being unsuitable for the police force. Perhaps the figure should be higher?
Police recruitment could perform more testing to ensure well balanced personalities are recruited which would ultimately benefit the public as well as the level of professional standards in the force. They could perform ethical personality assessments to help guide them in selecting the best recruits. Socially desired response set testing
Use lie detector testing for some more senior positions
Do background checks on past behaviour not just convictions
Questioning applicants on peer pressure stereotyping and ethics
Recruit some highly educated social sciences graduates
Each applicant should be interviewed by an experienced psychologist
The Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI) is the foremost employer organisation in Australia. In 1999, it had 14,000 members and provided advice to employers on recruitment selection, productivity and dismissing staff. AHRI no longer exists in the same company structure that it had in 1999 and the new management team is completely different and has close links with Deakin University, thank goodness for Australian workers! 
