Psycho?

15 Jul 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

Today was another step in the police officer application process: the psychological examination.

This was perhaps the part about which I knew the least; I did not know what to expect at all. Looking back on it, nothing was particularly surprising, but there were definitely elements that were strange.

The festivities kicked off this morning at 10:00. It began with the part that surprised me most: an objective test of problem-solving abilities. (In my mind, “objectivity” and “psychology” are generally contradictory terms. Fortunately, these words were not a pair selected for the problem-solving test.) The test had 50 questions, ordered by increasing difficulty, and I was allotted 15 minutes to answer them. I didn’t manage to finish (I think I got 43 or so done), but the doctor said that no one does. The questions were fairly basic until right near the end, consisting of things such as the following (working from memory; these are not likely exact):

• ILLUSTRATE and ILLUSTRIOUS: Is the meaning of these two words: 1) similar 2) contradictory 3) neither similar nor contradictory
• What is the next number in the sequence: 54 51 48 45 …
• If a roof is supported by 7 rafters and each rafter is 6.5 feet long, and rafters cost $.70 per linear foot, how much did the roof’s rafters cost?
• Which word is different from the rest? quiet murmur still silence hush
• Arrange the following words so that they form a true sentence. Write the last letter of the last word as your answer. never rains it pours but it
• Three of the following five shapes can be arranged to form a triangle. The shapes must not overlap. Which three? (series of shapes)
• Arrange the following words so that they form a statement. As your answer, write in whether the statement is true or false. is planet Mars a

And so on and so forth. The difficulty, obviously, arises from the fact that if you want to answer every single question, you can only spend 18 seconds per question at most. I cannot recall many of the later, more difficult questions, because later in the test I knew time was getting short and I was focusing on a bunch of calculations. I think the above questions capture the general types fairly comprehensively, however. This was the most entertaining and interesting part of the day.

Next came a computerized multiple-choice personality test consisting of 185 questions, some 170 or so of which had “no wrong answer” (unless you want a job as a police officer, presumably). These seemed to center around about two or three basic questions, attempting to determine whether I am 1) an airy-fairy sort of person or a down-to-earth pragmatic individual; 2) an introvert or an extrovert; and 3) an authoritarian or a hippie. As with all of the other tests of the day, I didn’t get a score. The last few questions on this test were more of the objective sort (a screen warned me that the next questions really did have right and wrong answers), and consisted of things similar to the earlier timed test:

• What is the next letter in the sequence: A B D G
• Which word is not like the others: cat near sun

Next up was a two-hundred-some question written test that seemed to focus mainly on three questions:

• Are you suicidal?
• Are you depressed?
• Are you a drug addict or alcoholic?

Possible answers include: “False”, “Somewhat True”, “Mainly True”, and “Very True”. The results of this test (and answers to particular questions) were to be discussed later on in the 1.5-hour interview with the psychic. I mean psychiatrist. Or psychologist. I still don’t quite know the difference, and I’m wishing I’d remembered to ask.

Interesting questions on that test (apart from eight flavors of “Are you suicidal”) included:

• “I have ideas that others think are strange.” (Very True. This one came up in the interview, and the…doctor expressed surprise that I thought other people might think Christianity is strange, being that “the majority of people are Christian”. I explained that the majority of people consider themselves Christians if they darken the threshold of a church twice a year at Easter and Christmas, and I actually believe in strange things like absolute morality or consequences for your actions or actually reading–and obeying–the Bible.)
• “My favorite poet is Raymond Kertezc.” (Uhhh….false? This one baffled me, because Raymond didn’t seem like a poet’s name at the time. Turns out that Google denies his existence, which makes sense.)
• “My favorite event to watch on television is the high jump.” (Huh.)

Mostly they were boring, however. There are only so many ways you can ask whether someone’s a junkie.

Following that was the STAXI, a brief sort of test focusing entirely on anger and the management thereof. What amused me about this test is that it had three parts: 1) How I feel right now, 2) How I feel generally, and 3) How I manage my anger. The first part amused me greatly, because I was imagining what sort of dim bulb gets this far into an application process to become a police officer and then answers “Very much True” to questions like (true examples):

• I am infuriated.
• I feel like cursing out loud.
• I feel like hitting something.

Parts 2 and 3, however, were heavily discussed in the interview, because I admitted that I “Sometimes” get angry. And, lo! “Sometimes” I am “more irritated than the people around me think.” sigh Can’t win.

Then there was a test that I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it existed, because there was a series of three things in a bunch. Perhaps I’ll think of it later.

The third thing in that bunch was writing myself a two-page autobiography, into which religion factored significantly. Apart from the fact that religion is in fact a very significant and central part of my life and deserves to be included in any two-page autobiography of myself, I derive certain amusement from dropping discrimination-law-protected things into job applications and interviews, just to see what the reaction will be. (I am not generally in favor of such laws and would never prosecute someone even if I could prove that they’d unlawfully discriminated against me on the basis of religion, but that doesn’t stop me from having fun with the law.) This makes the fourth time I’ve managed it in this application process alone (fifth, if you count the whole “Strange Ideas == Very True” incident separately), and it still isn’t old. Obnoxious, I know.

Lastly came the interview with the psyche doctor, which began about 1:15 or so. I think they design it this way, so that you come in mid-morning and spend your lunchtime writing down inane answers, and then they can see how your psyche behaves on an empty stomach. The interview consisted mostly of reviewing crazy answers I’d put down on any of the previous tests, discussing my anger and conflict management abilities and shortcomings at length, and generally asking the same sorts of things that had been asked twice before during the background investigation. (I guess they don’t trust the polygraph quite that much.) I had the opportunity to inform the doctor that failing to obtain a building permit is a misdemeanor, and that yes, indeed Richland does require a permit to replace a window. The interview lasted until 2:45, at which point I was released from bondage.

Looking back on it, I can see how a well-adjusted person might “fail” this test. It likely depends greatly upon how the department interprets the report, since really the psychologist only makes a recommendation to them on how well-suited the applicant is for the job. Since the psychologist’s client was KPD and not me, she didn’t tell me any of the results, but she said that her report would be in the hands of HR by tomorrow or Thursday.

If I fail this one, perhaps I’m going to have to go practice taking personality tests. Interestingly, one of the most difficult questions to answer was: “Describe your personality.” I mean, how do you go about describing so personable a person as myself? The possibilities are endless. It was a chore narrowing the description down to a succinct few words.

One point of reassurance that I was on the right path (or at least the honest one) was when I came home and told my wife about it. A question during the interview was: “If your wife had to choose three words to describe your personality, what would she pick?” I got two out of three right, and we both had to think a long time for the third one (which we answered differently, but not dramatically so).

So from my perspective, the jury is still out on the question of whether I am a psycho. Ah well. For better or for worse, one more battery of tests is behind me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 21:09 and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.