Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journa~ VoL 8, No. 1, 1995
Book Review Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life. By F. Allan Hanson. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993, 378 pp.
In Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life, anthropologist F. Allan Hanson questions the development and purposes of testing in American society, and cautions against our ready submission to drug, honesty, selection, and vocational interest tests. According to his macro perspective, tests are instruments of social control that expose us even as they portray us as series of scores and results, rather than as whole individuals. To Hanson, "a test is a representational technique applied by an agency to an individual with the intention of gathering information" (p. 18). In particular, he distinguishes between two types of tests: authenticity tests are used to determine if a person is who or what he or she claims to be, and qualifying tests are for assessing a person's suitability for accomplishing a particular set of tasks or objectives. Hanson writes eloquently and colorfully. For example, he provides an engrossing account of authenticity tests in folklore (the Excalibur legend and the princessand-the-pea story) and history (centuries of witch trials). Likewise, he relates the evolution of qualifying tests from ttieir origin in imperial China to the current debate about the SAT. The book is thus accessible and provocative to lay readers as well as scholars, for whom Hanson generously supplies footnotes referencing the social science theory he adopts to construct his arguments. In particular, his case against all types of tests depends heavily on Foucault's (1979) notion of the disciplinary technology of power, according to which society controls people's behavior through constant monitoring. Hanson's discussion of lie-detection (a type of authenticity test) effectively illustrates his premise that tests are mechanisms of social surveillance that produce the very information about individuals they are supposed to measure. He deftly describes how manipulative polygraph examiners can draw confessions from testtakers that have nothing to do with their current circumstances. According to Hanson, individuals undergoing a polygraph test may become so nervous about a past indiscretion--which, albeit irrelevant to their competence to perform, they would prefer to keep from their (prospective) employer----that a false positive test result may emerge. Only after they confess the secret to their examiner do they score a "clean" chart. Hanson reports that polygraph testing has greatly declined since the 75 0892-7545/95/0300-0075507.50,9© 1995 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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passing of the Employee Polygraph Protection Act in 1988. He hastens to add, however, that it is quickly being replaced by written integrity tests that either directly ask individuals if they have ever lied, stolen, etc., or assess their attitudes so as to determine indirectly their predilection towards dishonesty. Similarly, Hanson draws heavily from his earlier work (Hanson, 1988) to provide a persuasive depiction of drug testing, another kind of authenticity test, as a means of social control. Observing that drug abuse is today what witchcraft was earlier in our nation's history, he traces the growth of workplace drug testing as a response to a crisis that may be more perceived than real. He asserts that organizations test employees randomly or periodically with the intention of preventing them from ever engaging in drug use. Although he condones testing in cases where individuals are suspected of drug abuse, he astutely recognizes that "the stepped-up observation procedures connected with a for-cause policy of drug testing also serve to extend the general surveillance so essential in a disciplinary technology of power" (p. 167). In comparison with his arguments against authenticity tests, however, Hanson's treatment of qualifying tests, including intelligence and aptitude tests, as well as vocational interest inventories, is less compelling. He does comment perceptively that "testing, as a selective gate-keeping device, results in the priority of potential over performance" (p. 289); and his point reminding readers that intelligence as measured by a test is a socially determined construct, rather than a reality, is well taken (if familiar). Yet, his criticism of qualifying tests borders on self-indulgence when he attributes to them a variety of social woes. Not only does he condemn school examinations for detracting from students' intellectual curiosity, but he uses a selected hodgepodge of the research about ethnic and class differences on standardized tests to blame these tests for inequality of opportunity and fascist eugenics campaigns. He laments that one's life prospects are cursed or blessed as a result of scores on aptitude and interest tests; but individuals' (artistic, athletic, cognitive, mechanical, musical, spatial, etc.) proclivities, even if not calibrated precisely according to a standardized scale, would still likely have an important bearing on their future. Additionally, Hanson lambastes employment decisions based upon general intelligence or aptitude tests, which he asserts are often used more for their ease of administration than for their relevance. His criticism comes too late, however, as more appropriate tests have already been (and are continuing to be) constructed. In keeping with conceptions of multiple types of intelligence (see Gardner, 1983; Sternberg, 1985), each of which could be meaningfully assessed, there has been a good deal of research on the use of highly skill-specific selection instruments (see, for example, Atwater, 1992; Bolton & Brookings, 1993; Landy, 1992; 1993). In fact, Hanson is not fully versed in the work of psychologists. Moreover, although he claims that testing is a product of American society and its institutions, his book subtly attacks the psychological establishment for its role in creating and administering tests. His discussion of attitudes toward drug testing glaringly omits the germane industrial/organizational literature (see, for example, Crant & Bateman, 1990; Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 1987; Konovsky & Cropanzano, 1991; Murphy, Thornton, & Prue, 1991; Murphy, Thornton, & Reynolds, 1990; Stone & Kotch, 1989); and his simplistic distinction between organizational psychologists and voca-
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tional/counseling psychologists is inaccurate. (He depicts the former as caring primarily about the needs of the employer and the latter as caring primarily about the needs of the employed, but both as misguided perpetrators of testing.) Further, his discussion of qualifying tests does not mention the use of job samples or organization- and job-specific simulations (such as in-basket and group exercises), rather than the pencil-and-paper qualifying tests he decries. Yet, such selection methods, in addition to affording greater predictive validity, provide the face validity important to test-takers. (Rynes and Connerley, 1993, for example, reported that job applicants favor selection methods they deem job-relevant.) Hanson's anthropological approach is fundamentally different from that of psychologists, who view objective tests as potentially more accurate and helpful than clinical judgment for making appropriate decisions about people. As Dahlstrom explains, after all, "fallibility in the judgments made by humans about fellow humans is one of the primary reasons that psychological tests have been developed and applied in ever-increasing numbers over the past century" (1993, p. 393). To bolster his case about the broader, social implications of testing, Hanson apparently believes he must claim a//tests provide suspect information of our attributes. In doing so, however, he misses a prime opportunity to address a central problem of testing---using tests that are not valid. A key concern with any test is whether it measures what it is supposed to be measuring, and Hanson's own definition of tests as mere representations gets at the very notion of validity; if the information-yielding representation is unfaithful, the test is flawed. Indeed, the flimsy validity of lie detector test is a primary reason why they have nearly been squelched, while other tests thrive. As Hanson so clearly demonstrates, the polygraph examination clearly allows room for subjectivity, inasmuch as the examiner can exert a huge impact on both the production and interpretation of the chart. Likewise, Hanson alludes to the questionable validity of drug testing. He points out, as have others (see, e.g., Axel, 1990; Lundberger, 1986; Morgan, 1987), that drug tests do not indicate impairment, and that even if the person/s impaired at the time of the test, by the time the test result is interpreted, any impaired behavior will already have had its negative effect. Instead of proposing validity as a requirement for tests, Hanson concludes that all tests are invalid because they provide, at best, only a contrived representation of our intangible being. Yet he delivers a serious blow to his contention that tests are unsound when he faults testing for foiling our attempts at impression management: Testing thwarts privileged access, intruding unchaperoned into the private realm formerly controlled by the self as gatekeeper and monitor of information . . . . Production and presentation of knowledge about the self comes under the control of test givers. The self is no longer able, in a test situation, to temper or embellish it. (p. 305)
If, as Hanson has argued, tests do not capture our true essence, then why should we worry that they allow others to know us? He alludes here, nevertheless, to a second key aspect of testing: intrusiveness. Indeed, his whole notion of the controlling nature of tests speaks to their intrusiveness, that is, the extent to which the information yielded about the test-taker should not be disclosed. It is odd, then, that he condones the administration of authenticity tests in situations when an in-
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dividual is under reasonable suspicion. Others have argued against such for-cause testing on the grounds that individual privacy should be protected. According to Caste (1992) and DesJardins and Duska (1987), if an employee cannot perform adequately, an employer may rightfully exercise sanctions, but the cause of the problem performance is not job-related and therefore need not be revealed. Besides, regardless of the privacy concerns of a test, it would still need to be valid, a stipulation Hanson does not make. In conclusion, Hanson's anthropological critique provides some fresh and fascinating insights into testing, but at the same time, his arguments lose some potency for the very reason that he is exploring territory outside his discipline. In particular, he does not clearly differentiate between the validity of a test and whether the test is invasive of privacy. Researchers and practitioners are urged to attend to both validity and privacy when constructing and/or implementing tests. As urged by Jackson and Kovacheff (1993), personnel selection tests must follow a thorough job analysis, use valid scales that measure job-relevant performance, and avoid sensitive intrusive questions. Such guidance will inform other matters of employee assessment, such as testing applicants and incumbents for AIDS or for their predisposition to genetic diseases. Debra R. Comer
Department of Management Hofstra University Hempstead, New York 11550
REFERENCES Atwater, L. E. (1992). Beyond cognitive ability: Improving the prediction of performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(1), 27-44. Axel, H. (1990). Corporate Experiences with Drug Testing Programs, Research Report No. 941. New York: Conference Board. Bolton, B., & Brookings, J. B. (1993). Prediction of job satisfactoriness for workers with severe handicaps from aptitudes, personality, and training ratings. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(3), 359-366. Caste, N. J. (1992). Drug testing and productivity. Journal of Business Ethics, 11, 301-306. Crant, J. M., & Bateman, T. S. (1990). An experimental test of the impact of drug-testing programs on potential job applicants' attitudes and intentions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(2), 127-131. Dahlstrom, W. G. (1993). Tests: Small samples, large consequences. American Psychologist, 48(4), 393-399. DesJardins, J., & Duska, R. (1987). Drug testing in employment. Business & Professional Ethics Journal, 6(3), 3-21. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind." The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Gomez-Meija, L. R., & Balkin, D. B. (1987). Dimensions and characteristics of personnel manager perceptions of effective drug-testing programs. Personnel Psychology, 40, 745-763. Hanson, F. A. (1988). Some social implications of drug testing, The University of Kansas Law Review, 36(4), 899-917. Jackson, D. N., & Kovacheff, J. D. (1993). Personality questionnaires in selection: Privacy issues and the Soroka case. The Industrial~Organizational Psychologist, 30(4), 45-50. Konovsky, M. A., & Cropanzano, R. (1991). Perceived fairness of employee drug testing as a predictor of employee attitudes and job performance, lournal of Applied Psychology, 76(5), 698-707. Landy, F. J. (1992). (Ed.). Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(2).
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Landy, E J. (1993). (Ed.). Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(4). Lundberger, G. (1986). Mandatory unindicated urine drug screening: Still chemical McCarthyism.Journal of the American Medical Association, 256, 3003-3004. Morgan, J. P. (1987). Urine testing for abused drugs: Technology and problems. In Kramer, S. G. (Ed.), AIDS and Drug Abuse in the Work Place, 63-67. New York: Prentice-Hall. Murphy, K. R., Thornton, G. C., & Prue, K. (1991). Influence of job characteristics on the acceptability of employee drug testing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(3), 447-453. Murphy, K. R., Thornton, G. C., & Reynolds, D. H. (1990). College students' attitudes toward employee drug testing programs. Personnel Psychology, 43, 615-631. Rynes, S. L, & Connerley, M. L. (1993). Applicant reactions to alternative selection procedures. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(3), 261-272. Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stone, D. L., & Kotch, D. A. (1989). Individuals' attitudes toward organizational drug testing policies and practices. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(3), 518-521.
