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One inaccuracy factor about this test is how it equates legality to morality. If the test taker does not think legality is equal to morality, then some thoughts
by novok 5y ago
One inaccuracy factor about this test is how it equates legality to morality. If the test taker does not think legality is equal to morality, then some thoughts they will have would be marked as dark when they are not.
If a person is helping slaves escape an underground railroad, despite it being illegal, are their answers about their opinions of legality correct? If someone ignores segregation laws and sits on an empty seat that they are not allowed to on the bus, are they dark for 'disregarding the law' to 'get ahead'? They get to sit on the bus sooner after all!
If they think the law is wrong, is that different than them thinking the law it correct and doing it anyway to get ahead? Need to tease that out in their question set, or avoid questions having to do with the law.
Another commenter said that the test came from northern europe where there is more trust in institutions and government. I bet they will get higher 'dark' scores where people do not trust their governments, and inaccurately so.
EDIT: And since 2 of them are in germany, you have a fairly accepted cultural reference of law gone wrong in recent german history too!
- rex_lupi 5y agoJust took the test and was thinking exactly the same
- kstenerud 5y agoProbably a good idea to alert them to this flaw. If this test were ever to be used as an official tool, we'd have a lot of trouble since people tend to turn off their brains once they have a tool to do their thinking for them.
- mjfl 5y agoI also thought that agreeing with the item that was something like "it is wise to break the law to achieve your goals" is more of a sign of stupidity than 'darkness'.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoadmitting such beliefs to the authorities is certainly a sign of stupidity! Though maybe that's what the test is actually intended to measure. If I were running a large organization I'd want a way to identify 'low-neuroticism rule followers' more urgently than 'moral actors'.
- kstenerud 5y agoThe problem is that answers to such questions cannot give meaningful information without context. Is it wise to break the law by running a bunch of red lights to achieve your goals? Yes if your goal is to get your wife to the hospital before she bleeds out, no if your goal is to get to the game on time. Making the context unambiguous is extremely important in this field, so much so that entire industries have arisen for it.
- wruza 5y agoNarrowing the context narrows the relevancy for different people at different times. E.g. Which of my wives are talking about? What’s the game price? Which country I’m at? But they could frame it as “if in a hard situation that you could realistically get into in your life once in a couple of years, in a usual environment”.
- AstralStorm 5y agoThe question should be about frequency then. How often do you actually do this kind of behavior for light or typical transgressions, whether you care if anyone is looking and whether you care about scale of punishment. Rare situations are bit of a problem, people are notoriusly bad at predicting what they will do in rare circumstances.
- tempAcct323 5y ago