Is the Scientology Personality Test Scientific?

[CommunicatorIC]

Is the Scientology Personality Test Scientific?

The article is by Carrie Poppy, the co-host of the investigations podcast Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

CSICOP / Skeptical Inquirer: Is the Scientology Personality Test Scientific?

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/is_the_scientology_personality_test_scientific

* * * * * BEGIN CONCLUSION * * * * *

The test itself appears to have no peer-reviewed research behind it, before or since its inception, and has been criticized widely by psychologists. In one UK government report titled “Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology” (or “The Foster Report” for short), Sir John Foster reveals that his researchers took the tests themselves, giving a variety of different answers, but that no matter how the test was taken, the results showed that the taker had personality traits that scored in the “unacceptable” field and needed to be fixed with Scientology classes.

In a similar but far more cheeky experiment, Dr. David Delvin took the same test but chose “Don’t know” as the answer to every single question. The Scientology representative administering the test not only did not notice, but returned with a printout with the same kinds of wild variations seen on all the others and recommended all sorts of classes specifically geared to his new pupil.

The Foster Report goes on that psychological professionals nearly universally reject or ignore the OCA, and that its lack of any scientific standing presents “an extremely strong case for assuming it to be a device of no worth.”1

The OCA appears to be nothing but an attempt to get recruits in the door, and promise them success with the smell of science to back it up. But you’re far more likely to find satisfaction in that online quiz we mentioned before. Personally, I think I’m a Phoebe.


1 Dr. David Delvin in World Medicine, 1969. As reported in The Foster Report. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/audit/foster05.html#recruitment

* * * * * END CONCLUSION * * * * *

 

[Leon-2]

Probably not, but it is good enough to be useful.

 

[I told you I was trouble]

Probably not, but it is good enough to be useful.

To whom?

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

...

Originally Posted by Leon-2
Probably not, but it is good enough to be useful.

To whom?

I have no idea. But if I had to guess whom the OCA is useful to, I'd say....maybe children who are playing with an "Ultimate Easy Bake Oven". Lordy, it looks like an e-meter!

And maybe they get bored playing "housewife" or "cook" --or, just run out of those little cookie ingredient packages.

So, the OCA could be sold by Hasbro toy makers and little kids could play "psychologist" for a change.

It would give them the authentic feeling that they are really studying someone's mind and helping them (same as Scientologists).

Hasbro, Kenner or Mattel could also sell extras like authentic looking wall certificates that say "CLASS XII AUDITOR", "HUMANITARIAN" or "SCIENTIST". They'd have a pretty big and growing market, considering all the kids who like to pretend AND all the blowing Scientologists who get lonely for their beloved make-believe tech.

 

[Gizmo]

Probably not, but it is good enough to be useful.

For what ?

 

[Gizmo]

It might be scientific IF a scientist ate it.

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

True - it is a recruiting device that is weighted to find the person's ruin - but why in hell is it used by C/Ses to program a person's case?

I have done any number of those things while at flag when arriving , or at the end of an intensive. Occasionally I would be shown the resultant graph by the DofP and there might be some microscopic improvement but I never understood what the point of them was. They were really boring, so sometimes I would do questions 1,11, 21, 31 etc then 2, 12, 22 etc which made it a lot easier to do, since you answered all of the questions on ethics in one go, then the ones on being impulsive etc.

Somewhere in the Expanded Dianetics course there's HCOBs on using the OCA to C/S with, and I recall one auditor, in the LRH c/sed portion of the study materials, trying to figure out how to get one unmoving point on the graph changed.

So it was obvious they, Hubbard, C/Ses and Auditors believed it actually showed something of value about a person's case. It strikes me as an example of how Hubbard would cook up some bogus thing, and then end up believing in it.

I wonder if Amtrack still has timetable booklets I can peruse?

Mimsey

 

[Gizmo]

All I know is many CS's that I relied on believed that the OCA graph was the be-all do-all indicator of where a person was & it was what was used to "program" the case.

Saw comments like ' Graph not improving = wrong program ' & ' Graph not moving = NCG ' & Graph not moving = out ethics '

So, the " graph " told the CS what ever the CS wanted to hear.

But, as with all things in the cult, way too much weight put on whatever Hubbard said is the way to go & is is accepted as gospel - and nobody questions or inspects.

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

All I know is many CS's that I relied on believed that the OCA graph was the be-all do-all indicator of where a person was & it was what was used to "program" the case.

Saw comments like ' Graph not improving = wrong program ' & ' Graph not moving = NCG ' & Graph not moving = out ethics '

So, the " graph " told the CS what ever the CS wanted to hear.

But, as with all things in the cult, way too much weight put on whatever Hubbard said is the way to go & is is accepted as gospel - and nobody questions or inspects.

Yeah - the business that if it was down on one side he was psycho - I don't recall which each side being up or down meant, but I agree, they believed it utterly. Mimsey

 

[George Layton]

To whom?

Everyone still making money off the scam.

 

[Udarnik]

[snip]I wonder if Amtrack still has timetable booklets I can peruse?

Mimsey

They do, and they're also online. Either version bears about as much relationship to the actual arrival and departure times as the OCA does to a human being's real personality.

 

[Leon-2]

All I know is many CS's that I relied on believed that the OCA graph was the be-all do-all indicator of where a person was & it was what was used to "program" the case.

Saw comments like ' Graph not improving = wrong program ' & ' Graph not moving = NCG ' & Graph not moving = out ethics '

So, the " graph " told the CS what ever the CS wanted to hear.

But, as with all things in the cult, way too much weight put on whatever Hubbard said is the way to go & is is accepted as gospel - and nobody questions or inspects.

Lazy C/Sing. Too busy with bullshit and not, as you say, questioning or inspecting.

 

[Gizmo]

Lazy C/Sing. Too busy with bullshit and not, as you say, questioning or inspecting.

And, I know at least 3 or 4 CSs that if you told them to their face they were lazy would leave you with punched out teeth.

But, I doubt you have the nerve to do direct comment to some one in person..

 

[I told you I was trouble]

Everyone still making money off the scam.

Exactly.

I didn't once hear of anyone being dragged in to have their personality assessed/evaluated/judged/appraised (and analysed ... for free!) then being told with a big smile "you're OK ... you need no adjustments to your personality, you are great just as you are. Off you go now. Have a lovely life".



Statistically there must be one person out there wandering the streets who is absolutely fine and needs no assistance at all from tubs hubbard and scientology (or the scruffy, unfortunate, 14 year old doing the "testing").

I assumed everyone (in the cult) knew that the OCA (cult personality test) was a div 6 tool to be used on "raw meat" to suck em in, flog em a book and begin the harassment process due to having got the persons contact details ... and later (if the person found themselves in auditing) a tool to keep them worried about the state they have been told they are in and paying for more, more, more.

After a while I suspect most of us worked out that the only way to win (and move on) was to ensure the OCA results improved, so ... answering differently, ticking the "correct" boxes was required, that way everyone was suddenly happy (and especially so if you timed things so it was a Thursday morning).



It seems to me that tehk staff are the most indoctrinated of all, they have to work so incredibly hard to become trained and they would have to believe it all to tolerate what they go through daily, and it never ends ... if they make a decision themselves (perish the thought) or "slip up" ... wham ... they are booted into qual and put through more hell until they do exactly as they are told. It would certainly be easier to just absorb all the indoctrination and become a trained robot from day one.

The OCA is step one (of many steps) on the road to full indoctrination, anyone who believes otherwise is either lying or still very much in the grip of the indoctrination.

 

[arcxcauseblows]

I guess it's up to scientists if it's scientific

personality is pretty subjective

the personality of scientologists is the personality hubbard orders them to have, and it's pretty gross from what I've seen

 

[Leon-2]

And, I know at least 3 or 4 CSs that if you told them to their face they were lazy would leave you with punched out teeth.

But, I doubt you have the nerve to do direct comment to some one in person..

Hah! You don't know me.

 

[oneonewasaracecar]

Too busy with bullshit and not, as you say, questioning or inspecting.

I had no idea you were capable of such self criticism and insights into the fz.

 

[Anonycat]

Is the Scientology Personality Test Scientific?

The article is by Carrie Poppy, the co-host of the investigations podcast Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

CSICOP / Skeptical Inquirer: Is the Scientology Personality Test Scientific?

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/is_the_scientology_personality_test_scientific

* * * * * BEGIN CONCLUSION * * * * *

The test itself appears to have no peer-reviewed research behind it, before or since its inception, and has been criticized widely by psychologists. In one UK government report titled “Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology” (or “The Foster Report” for short), Sir John Foster reveals that his researchers took the tests themselves, giving a variety of different answers, but that no matter how the test was taken, the results showed that the taker had personality traits that scored in the “unacceptable” field and needed to be fixed with Scientology classes.

In a similar but far more cheeky experiment, Dr. David Delvin took the same test but chose “Don’t know” as the answer to every single question. The Scientology representative administering the test not only did not notice, but returned with a printout with the same kinds of wild variations seen on all the others and recommended all sorts of classes specifically geared to his new pupil.

The Foster Report goes on that psychological professionals nearly universally reject or ignore the OCA, and that its lack of any scientific standing presents “an extremely strong case for assuming it to be a device of no worth.”1

The OCA appears to be nothing but an attempt to get recruits in the door, and promise them success with the smell of science to back it up. But you’re far more likely to find satisfaction in that online quiz we mentioned before. Personally, I think I’m a Phoebe.


1 Dr. David Delvin in World Medicine, 1969. As reported in The Foster Report. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/audit/foster05.html#recruitment

* * * * * END CONCLUSION * * * * *

That was a nice read, thanks. My impression was, that it was a well-done bit of hands-on research into the topic, with a good mood writing style. It made it more pleasant to digest the horrible truth of scientology, and all that it encompasses.

Yes, they stole the word "Oxford" to give it the sound of credibility. Kind of like the war medals that LaFayette displayed, but did not himself earn. PhD, Nuclear Physicist, on and on ... just another lie in the multi-faceted cult of thought domination. A present day example would be the lawsuit against scientology/narconon for stealing a logo of an esteemed organization, and placing it on their websites, as if they had any association whatsoever. Back to the Personality Test.

Even before the Church of Scientology had fashioned its own test, founder L. Ron Hubbard made personality tests central to his religion. In his 1951 book Science of Survival, he recommended the use of existing psychometric exams, including the California Test for Mental Maturity.
In the mid-1950s, the project to create Hubbard's own test got underway. He commissioned a longtime follower, Julia Salman Lewis, to produce one.[SUP][8][/SUP] Her first effort, the American Personality Analysis (APA), failed to satisfy Hubbard. So in 1959 he asked a friend and fellow churchman, Ray Kemp, to broaden the scope of the test. Wrote Kemp:

Ron asked me whether it would be possible to write a test that was more general in nature, and would enable him to see in the test what he was looking for. He also wanted it to be in the same general format as the APA and if possible to have both tests interchangeable in the matter of what he wanted to see as information. Quite a task. As a result of quite a few months works, I eventually devised the Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA). Note that it did not test personality, but rather the capacity of any person with respect to various traits and syndromes.[SUP][9][/SUP]
​

The church first announced its test in an article by Kemp, who hailed the OCA in the pages of Certainty, the magazine of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists in London.[SUP][10][/SUP] Later, the church gave credit to Hubbard for the test and trademarked the terms "OCA" and "Oxford Capacity Analysis." [SUP][11][/SUP] The copyright holder is "L. Ron Hubbard Library," a business alias of the Church of Spiritual Technology.[SUP][12][/SUP]

Source: Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Capacity_Analysis

It is not scientific in the least, and the only people on this planet that even look at that crap, much less use it, is scientology. Yep, they had it created, and are the only people who use it. Because it's bullshit as presented, but in the sales tool arsenal.

Over-emphasized pretending is a crucial part of the indoctrination -- and serving to aide in retention of the indoctrinated -- and will serve the cult-think in all aspects of believing in any or all of scientology. You are presented with and taught false dilemmas, are hard-sold classes at a high price, to cure this imagined problem. And you'll be told all about the pretend cure for various problems. This, you are told, is more important than the wheel, or fire. So, this BS document is a joke!

To see the scam of this "Stress Test" is obvious. The sole goal is to make the pre-paid sale of a class and to sell a book on-the-spot. Two pages of easy reading, for educational or research use: https://www.mediafire.com/?deigvoinhq102

Note how LaFayette Hubbard typed HARDSELL in caps, on page 2.

 

[Gizmo]

Hah! You don't know me.

Not know you is one of the fortunate things of my life. I've already know enough koolaid drinking blowhards like you - and left 'em where they were mired..

 

[Leon-2]

Nasty nasty. Tut tut.