Do investment banks test for sociopathic traits?

I was taking this behavioural assessment by Nomura where you had to select between two statements which one you agree with more.

Now a lot of these statements seemed ridiculous, where you couldn’t disagree with both. One statement was ‘I am very messy and disorganised’ contrasted with the other one ‘I wouldn't mind faking an interest in something to make them like me more’ (not exact words, but along those lines). Anyway, in the test there were a lot of statements relating to pretending/faking a personality.

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Exactly I was thinking how odd it'd be if banks were testing for sociopathy, because well the industry is full of people with those traits.

I felt like if it was an honesty test, the statements would be like 'you uploaded something with an error that's gone unrecognised and you'd tell your boss.'  This test was weird in the sense that they included many statements in that you'd feel like a genuine sociopath as you're faking relationships to succeed. Nevertheless, perhaps they really are assessing for honesty rather than sociopathy maybe.

I'm applying from the EMEA region, so London banks place some emphasis on these tests in order to succeed to the next stage. Not that I'm truly bothered about these tests, I just found this sort of behavioural assessment unique and strangely odd.

 

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