We’ve been reading a lot lately about racial profiling, i.e., making assumptions about the behavior and motivations of our fellow citizens based on appearance, particularly skin color.
\nIn spite of the gamut of non-discrimination in employment laws, there are some “professionals” out there who nonetheless want to train job interviewers to reject or accept candidates based on physical characteristics: in this case, body type.
\nI received an email today from an outfit in Texas that claims to be “a human resources company dedicated to helping employers attract, then screen applicants for job fit.”
\nTheir seminar on “Interviewing – the Behavioral Approach” includes a section on Somatotyping<\/i>, a self-described “invaluable” technique “to identify behavioral traits in the applicant that can impact job performance”.
\nSomatotyping was developed by a Harvard psychologist, William Sheldon (1898-1977), who used photographs of naked Ivy League undergraduates to classify human bodies into the three physical types that have become part of our daily vocabulary: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph.<\/p>
We’ve been reading a lot lately about racial profiling, i.e., making assumptions about the behavior and motivations of our fellow citizens based on appearance, particularly skin color. In spite of the gamut of non-discrimination in employment laws, there are some … Continue reading
\nSheldon attempted to make a statistical correlation between personality and body type, and it’s on this basis that the so-called HR experts in Texas have developed their “invaluable” somatotyping techniques.
\nAccording to Sheldon’s theory<\/a>, ectomorphs (small-boned) people tend to extreme privacy, high self-awareness and social restraint; mesomorphs (large, bony, muscular) people like physical activity and athletic competition; and endomorphs (rounded, fleshy) people are very social and enjoy leisure activities.
\nTranslating these to occupational success, one would then predict that a successful physicist would be built like a fashion model and all good salespeople would look like the Teletubbies.
\nProblem is, Sheldon was never able to prove his theory, and his books on this subject at this point are out of print.
\nFurthermore, the photographs, which were the basis of his so-called research, became a national scandal<\/a> in the 1970’s because they were taken without informed consent. Many schools burned the photos, although there is speculation that some still remain.
\nThis is but one more example of why the HR “profession” has discredited itself by relying on yet another pseudo scientific attempt to explain and predict human behavior.
\nIt certainly does provide an excellent motivation for entrepreneurship as opposed to the dismal alternative of working in companies that have created entire departments of twittery to promulgate such nonsense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"