antioxy
What is the Personality Test?
The staple of modern Scientology recruitment is the Personality Test, or to give it its more formal name, the Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA). It also appears sometimes to be (or to have been) referred to as the American Personality Analysis or APA.
The OCA has been used as a recruiting tool by Scientology since 1953. What Is Scientology? (1992 edition) says of the test:
"This test accurately measures the preclear's estimation of ten different personality traits. These rise markedly in auditing, reflecting the preclear's gains. Preclears report being calmer, more stable, more energetic and more outgoing as a direct result of auditing and scores on the OCA furnish corroborative data [...]
A vital tool in Expanded Dianetics is the Oxford Capacity Analysis. An important use of this profile is to inprove specific personality traits with Expanded Dianetics procedures. The OCA helps locate deep-seated pockets of aberration which can then be addressed and erased with these precise auditing techniques."
[What Is Scientology? (1992), pp. 163, 220]
My experience of the Personality Test
In 1995 I decided to try the OCA for myself and see what happened. I was given a sheet on which were some 200 questions and told to answer "Yes", "No" or "Maybe" to each. The questions were plainly Hubbardian, although Hubbard's name didn't appear on the sheet - the OCA was credited to the Religious Technology Center, the body which holds the copyrights of all Scientology material (and so controls the Church of Scientology). In fact, Hubbard himself devised the OCA in 1953 for the specific purpose of recruitment; early versions of it, which seem to be pretty much identical to today's OCA, bear the words "© 1953 by L. RON HUBBARD - All rights reserved."
The questions on the OCA sheet are strangely reminiscent of the "Security Checks" which Scientologists have to do and, in several instances, share the oddity and leading nature of Security Check
The staple of modern Scientology recruitment is the Personality Test, or to give it its more formal name, the Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA). It also appears sometimes to be (or to have been) referred to as the American Personality Analysis or APA.
The OCA has been used as a recruiting tool by Scientology since 1953. What Is Scientology? (1992 edition) says of the test:
"This test accurately measures the preclear's estimation of ten different personality traits. These rise markedly in auditing, reflecting the preclear's gains. Preclears report being calmer, more stable, more energetic and more outgoing as a direct result of auditing and scores on the OCA furnish corroborative data [...]
A vital tool in Expanded Dianetics is the Oxford Capacity Analysis. An important use of this profile is to inprove specific personality traits with Expanded Dianetics procedures. The OCA helps locate deep-seated pockets of aberration which can then be addressed and erased with these precise auditing techniques."
[What Is Scientology? (1992), pp. 163, 220]
My experience of the Personality Test
In 1995 I decided to try the OCA for myself and see what happened. I was given a sheet on which were some 200 questions and told to answer "Yes", "No" or "Maybe" to each. The questions were plainly Hubbardian, although Hubbard's name didn't appear on the sheet - the OCA was credited to the Religious Technology Center, the body which holds the copyrights of all Scientology material (and so controls the Church of Scientology). In fact, Hubbard himself devised the OCA in 1953 for the specific purpose of recruitment; early versions of it, which seem to be pretty much identical to today's OCA, bear the words "© 1953 by L. RON HUBBARD - All rights reserved."
The questions on the OCA sheet are strangely reminiscent of the "Security Checks" which Scientologists have to do and, in several instances, share the oddity and leading nature of Security Check