Fundamental critique
As Emeritus Professor of Psychometrics Paul Kline concludes (2000) that the problem with both personality tests is not the reliability but their validity, that is to say the degree to which the measurement actually reflects the temperamental dimensions or traits accounting for how we do things. The problem is, as Funder (2007) states: How does anyone know what intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness or socialibility ‘really’ are?
Furthermore how we do things doesn’t explain anything about the emotions and drives that cause our behaviour. For predicting human behaviour and understand what will cause real commitment the emotional traits, accounting for why we do things, need to be measured. (Tinbergen, 1951)
Because most existing methods use written questionnaires and/or feed-back, they are unable to draw up an inventory of the specific emotions behind specific behavior. Even tests using visual stimuli ask people to describe in words a stimulus that should reflect something about themselves.
The main problem is that people are not capable of putting into words what their real emotions, needs and drives are. Forensic clinical psychologist David Shapiro suggested (1965) that studying what people do is a much more accurate system of projecting their goals than asking people what they want. These goals proceed from people’s drives or motivation.
Another underlying problem, however, is that drive or motivation is still a poorly understood behavioural mechanism by traditional psychology. Most generally known is the work of Abraham Maslow who developed a model of human needs or motivation in the 1940’s that is still being quoted and used. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in traditional psychology proposed by Maslow in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’. According to Maslow a person’s ultimate need or motive is selfactualisation. First , people require food, safety, comfort and sex. Only when those basic desires are satisfied, people turn to the quest for self-actualization. Maslow’s theory is often applied to issues of employee motivation.
According to Kline (2000) personality questionnaires are concerned with temperament and it is customary to label projective tests as personality tests, although some of these projective based methods also claim to measure all aspects of personality including dynamics i.e. motivations and interests. Even some objective tests claim to measure motivation too. Thus, to some extent, the distinction between personality and motivation tests is somewhat arbitrary. The essential difference is that temperamental dimensions or traits are the variables measured by personality questionnaires that account for the differences how we do things. Motivational traits, on the other hand, reflect the dynamics of behavior accounting for why we do things.
As mentioned above, according to Kline, tests of interest and motivation have largely been the concern of occupational and vocational psychologists rather than theorist of motivation, and for this reason the majority of tests are empirical and non-theoretical. When there is no theoretical clarity a test can only be made through factor analysis, such the Motivation Analysis Test (MAT, 1970), by Cattell, Horn and Sweney and the newer Vocational Interest Measure (VIM, 1980) by Sweney and Cattell. Both objective tests based on factor analysis. Kline concludes that the theoretical basis of interest and motivation tests urgently requires further research since there is no clear agreement in this area of testing as to what this theoretical basis should be.
Kline does not mention or take into consideration any evolutionary psychological basis but our research shows that of the principles of all methods used for both personality tests and motivation test none are based on the insights about human behavior as developed within the realm of evolutionary psychology. Neither do they take into account how evolution shaped behaviour of human as an ultra-social animal (Berendson, 2000) in a process of both natural and sexual selection and adaptation. Therefore none of these methods focus on human beings as social primates that have an innate need to be perceived within their social environment.