On the one hand, you have integrity. In the other, you have some stolen stationery. Photo: Shutterstock

Friday 22nd May 2015

Saint or sinner?

How will you fare in our integrity quiz?

Like star signs and phrenology, polygraph testing is a debunked method of working things out about people. You may not know that polygraph, or lie-detector tests, were once popular in the US, not just for hard-boiled detectives on murder cases, but as an employee screening method.

You can imagine the appeal. No more worrying about dodgy CVs and little porkies flying under the radar. It must have been exciting too, the whole sweating candidate in a small windowless cubicle while wired up to a machine as you read scribbles on reams of paper and shook your head dramatically.

For some reason though, it was scrapped. We have no idea why that could be, but we do know that companies were keen for a replacement — a new shortcut to determining a person’s honesty that didn’t involve coming in one day and finding the new hire and all of your furniture mysteriously absent.

The solution that was landed upon was “integrity testing”. Bare bones, this is just another form of personality testing, but angled specifically towards identifying the qualities of a dependable and morally upright person.

We know, we know… everybody loves to take tests. That’s why we’ve collated a few of the more interesting integrity measuring questions for you.

So, are you a saint or sinner?

About the author

Jerome Langford

Jerome is a graduate in Philosophy from St Andrews, who alternately spends time writing about HR and staring wistfully out of windows, thinking about life’s bigger questions: Why are we here? How much lunch is too much lunch? What do you mean exactly by ‘final warning’?