PERSONA: THE DARK TRUTH BEHIND PERSONALITY TESTS
US, 2021, 85 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Tim Travers Hawkins.
This is a documentary about psychological tests, especially in the United States. Its subtitle suggests sinister aspects.
The principal focus is on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, established by two Americans, mother and daughter, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers. It is based on Personality Types by Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, (with visual quotes from him in the film).
There are some cautionary remarks to be made. They are being made in this review by a practitioner of the MBT I for almost 4 decades.
The first caution is about the use of the word “test�. Although this is said by sympathetic talking heads in this film, not necessarily heard by the filmmakers or others, the MBTI is an Indicator, never considered a psychological test. Its questionnaire is not geared towards exploring mental health. Nor is it, as criticised by a number of characters throughout the film, to be used as criterion for job applications or job employment. To do so is an abuse of the Indicator. Rather, this is just one focus on personality. There are others which are complementary or overlap. (Some of the Talking Heads refer to the questionnaire lightly as a ‘quizz[.)
On the positive side, the story of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers is told verbally, by way of a collection of photos, from home movie clips. This story is generally well explained, backgrounds, the intentions, their experiences, the forming of the first questionnaire during World War II as a contribution to peace and harmony. And, throughout the film, there are quite a number of quotations from Isabel Myers as well as visuals of the indicator, the 16 emerging types.
Also on the positive side, two of Isabel Myers’ granddaughters are interviewed, speak very well of their experience with their grandmother, are able to talk with some insight into the Indicator and its use. There is also an important interview with Richard Thompson, CEO of the Myers Briggs enterprise, who voices accurate information, descriptions, and, very importantly, noting how there has been scrupulous observance of copyright and clarity about the Indicator but that many people, especially in the social media age, have developed “knockoff� often easy to access derivatives which have been employed, not approved by the authorities, by a number of companies for sorting out job applications, acceptance and rejection is. But, that is the nature of anything that is created and enters into a competitive, sometimes exploitative, world.
Another advantage to the documentary is the presence of Frank James, a stand-up comedian who, over the years, has created quite a number of You-Tube? performances illustrating the Indicator and various aspects of the Indicator. He is often very funny. He is often very accurate.
However, Merve Emre, who serves as Executive Producer, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs? and the Birth of Personality Testing, after explanations of the origin of the MBTI, turns against it: Persona is informed by the 2018 book The Personality Brokers by the Oxford University professor Merve Emre, “I wanted to understand how these two women who had no formal training in psychology had come to design the world’s most popular personality test.� (Isabel Myers had…written a wildly racist novel. “You have this woman who, on the one hand, is committed to a certain set of progressive ideals, particularly for her time, and on the other, everything she’s doing is weighed down by a very troubling set of ideologies,� Dr. Emre says in Persona. The test contains traces of her racist, sexist, ableist, and classist ideals.�
It is these accusations that granddaughter, Katherine Hughes, refutes.
While there is consideration of other approaches, including The Big Five, along with information about some tests have been used for hiring and rejecting, the focus on their dark side and use leads to MBTI guilt by association.
In terms of guilt, Personal has a film within the film (or, it might be asked, is the treatment of MBTI a film within the film that is the very sad story of Kyle Behm, a young man with bipolar disorder, interviewed extensively throughout: his personal background, his tests for job applications, his being rejected by the tests, his depression and, tragically, his suicide. And the grief of his father and his moves to lobby for legislation against tests and some applications. The father is interviewed. And with the deep emotions that Kyle’s story elicits, right up to the end of the film, there is emotion against the use of tests for hiring, emotion against the MBTI.
There are people speaking in sympathy with Kyle and his treatment, sequences with a school in New York concerning tests and jobs and, forcefully, with the frankness and directness associated with autism, “Personality tests are by and large constructed to be ableist, to be racist, to be sexist, and to be classist,� says the disability justice advocate Lydia XZ Brown (with her noting her Asian background, her gay sexual orientation). “That’s what happens when you have a test … based on norms devised from college-educated straight white men with no known disabilities. Personality tests are useful for individual people sometimes on journeys of self-discovery. But when they’re used to make decisions by other people affecting someone’s life, they become dangerous tools.�
Information can be found online, many sites quickly noting the documentary with its release on March 4th. In Australia, it screened on Foxtel Showcase on March 17th with many repeats.
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For reading after watching the documentary – headings and quotations from a range of online sites, from HBO to personal sites. Many of the comments come from watching the trailer, responding to HBO publicity material. (The trailer is on YouTube?.)
1. Taking a personality test can provide useful insights into our sense of self, but many may not realize how deeply embedded personality assessments are in everything we do. PERSONA explores the unexpected origin story of America’s great obsession with personality testing, uncovering the intriguing history behind the world-famous Myers-Briggs? Type Indicator, while raising a slew of ethical questions and demonstrating how some personality tests may do more harm than good – like impacting online dating matches or job prospects. This eye-opening documentary reveals the profound ways that ideas about personality have .
Rotten Tomatoes.
2. A documentary exploring the history and growing dangers surrounding the seemingly innocuous Myers–Briggs? personality test.
medium.com
3. But as the decades have gone on the purpose of the Myers–Briggs? test and others like it has changed. What started as a self-help tool useful for analyzing your personal beliefs, aspirations, and challenges has morphed into a new way to sort people both in the workplace and in their dating lives. Persona will seek to explore a number of ethical questions about our society’s reliance on these tests and if they’re actually creating another class of people to be discriminated against.
decider.com
4. Persona is informed by the 2018 book The Personality Brokers by the Oxford University professor Merve Emre – also one of the documentary’s executive producers – which traces the history of the two women who created the namesake Myers-Briggs? instrument. “I wanted to understand how these two women who had no formal training in psychology had come to design the world’s most popular personality test. Emre says in the film.
5. Ultimately Hawkins hopes the film will make us all approach things like personality tests with a more critical eye. “We’re often drawn to systems that seem to explain the world in a way that’s simple and seems to be neutral, but I would always want people to be wary and to think about where these instruments come from. All of these instruments have a past, and if you really delve into them, you can start to find out things about why they exist that might make you uncomfortable.�
6. “Personality tests are by and large constructed to be ableist, to be racist, to be sexist, and to be classist,� says the disability justice advocate Lydia XZ Brown. “That’s what happens when you have a test … based on norms devised from college-educated straight white men with no known disabilities. Personality tests are useful for individual people sometimes on journeys of self-discovery. But when they’re used to make decisions by other people affecting someone’s life, they become dangerous tools.�
The Guardian
7. Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests offers a glimpse of quiz dystopia. (Mashable)
“Persona� argues convincingly that it’s time to stop personality tests.
"Persona" explores the dark history of personality tests like Myers-Briggs? — and how they're used to oppress (salon.com)
8. Exploring the unexpected origins of America's obsession with personality testing, this documentary takes a look at the profound ways that ideas about personality have formed the world around us.
IMDb synopsis
9. One of the documentary’s pivotal moments is the inevitable milkshake ducking of Isabel Briggs Myers, one of the co-authors of the Myers-Briggs? assessment. Long story short: She was a white supremacist who believed people with lower IQs were incapable of self-perception and designed her first tests based on the idea that men and women have different natural aptitudes. That triple punch of racism, ableism, and sexism isn’t surprising considering the state of pop psychology in the early 20th century, but Persona brings up this revelation only to drop it a few moments later for one of its many disparate narratives about personality testing. Alexis Nedd on mashable.com
10. Tim Travers Hawkins’s doc takes a deep dive into how the personality test evolved from a way to self-identify into a “dangerous tool� in the hands of the powerful.
11. “It’s being used to make decisions about who’s worthy and who’s unworthy,� an interview subject say in the trailer.
deadline.com
12. “The Myers-Briggs? Company has for decades taken a public stance against using the MBTI® tool for hiring or selection,� a spokesperson from the company told Refinery29 in a statement. “We do know that Isabel and Katharine created the MBTI with the intention of bridging differences and bringing people together.�
13. (Isabel Myers had…written a wildly racist novel. “You have this woman who, on the one hand, is committed to a certain set of progressive ideals, particularly for her time, and on the other, everything she’s doing is weighed down by a very troubling set of ideologies,� Dr. Emre says in Persona. The test contains traces of her racist, sexist, ableist, and classist ideals, Dr. Emre says.
14. Molly Longman, refinery 29.com
15. Persona leaves room for the idea that Myers-Briggs? and tests like it can be used on an individual level to further our personal journeys and to help us understand ourselves.
Molly Longman
16. But Persona, from HBO Max and CNN Films, exposes a piece of information about Isabel Briggs Myers that calls all of her work into question, according to Merve Emre, an associate professor of English literature at Oxford University and author of the book The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs? and the Birth of Personality Testing…..But while researching her book, Emre came across a startling find: Briggs Myers wrote a little-known second installment called Give Me Death that Emre describes as “a really horrifyingly racist novel.� “I was completely stunned to realize that Isabel was a successful novelist before she designed the Type Indicator, and in the late 1920s, she had written a mystery novel,� Emre said in Persona. “And then I realize that she had written a second novel, but that novel wasn’t advertised anywhere on the website. It was very difficult to track down in any mainstream library, and when I finally found it and I read it, I understood why — because that novel features the same team of detectives, only this time they’re investigating a series of suicides that take place among an old aristocratic, Southern family. And it turns out that the reason the members of this family are committing suicide is because they believe they have a single drop of African-American? blood in their veins.�
Emre felt “betrayed� while reading it, she said.
“Because you have this woman who, on the one hand, is committed to a certain set of progressive ideals, particularly for her time — and on the other hand, everything she’s doing is weighed down by a very, very troubling set of ideologies,� Emre continued.
“It was really telling to me how Isabel’s prejudices, which it would be very easy to dismiss as being of her time, were not of her time. They were of our present, and they continue to be used today to sustain the powers of the dominant classes.�
moviemaker.com
17. But Bri ggs Myers’ granddaughter, Kathleen Hughes, says her grandmother has been misunderstood.
“Merve Emre came out with a book The Personality Brokers — she made some assumptions and implied some things I don’t even want to repeat because I found them so profoundly offensive,� Hughes said in Persona. “Isabel did care deeply about preventing another Hitler, about intolerance. And I think her primary focus was to appreciate your own uniqueness and being able to appreciate people who are different.�
On the Myers Briggs website, there is a page dedicated to explaining that “All types are equal,� and that no type is better than another: “The goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type.�
