There is fascination that I have with psychometric tests. It seems like the creators of these assessments have faced the impossible tasks of trying to capture complex aspects of personality with a series of phrases and sentences on which subjects must rate themselves. Recently I went through the somewhat tedious tasks of assessing myself and a friend who seems to be of very different temperament on a series of personality tests. It was tedious because I did all the scoring, carefully noting which items were to be reversed and checking twice to ensure accuracy.

Not surprisingly I tended to score higher in test of conscientiousness and process orientation behavior while my friend was higher in extroversion and ability to deal with people. However, the results of one test in particular interested me, the Friendliness Scale, created by John M. Reisman. Predictably, I turned out to be far less friendly than…