After the Wakefield shootings

Trying to predict workplace violence

December 29, 2000
Web posted at: 8:58 a.m. EST (1358 GMT)

In this story:

This is a test

Avoiding the obvious

Sense and security

'No quick and easy way'

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By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer

(CNN) -- Tuesday's killings of seven employees at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Massachusetts, have again raised questions about whether companies can screen for potentially violent employees during the hiring process.

Michael McIntyre thinks so. The University of Tennessee professor and a colleague recently finished designing a test they say reliably reveals aggressive tendencies in potential hires.

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Can testing job applicants before they're hired reveal those who have tendencies toward workplace violence?
Yes, a well-designed and subtly administered test can uncover violent tendencies.
It's hard to say. I like to think there's a way to detect these tendencies, but I'm not sure a test can do it.
No. Personality testing is only as good as the moment a test is given. Later, if things go sour, so may a personality.
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"It was designed to identify and hopefully stop these sorts of events," says McIntyre in reference to the Wakefield shootings. McIntyre is a professor of industrial psychology at UT's College of Business Administration in Knoxville.

"Any psychologist will tell you it's impossible to predict human behavior," counters Mark Braverman, founder of CMG Associates in Newton, Massachusetts -- about 25 miles from Wakefield. CMG Associates is a consulting firm to employers on issues including stress and workplace violence.

"The problem is," Braverman adds, "that employers, like anyone else, are looking for an answer that will make them feel more comfortable."

This is a test

Employers have been trying for years, of course, to filter out potential malcontents -- or worse -- during job-applicant interviews, using various tests. In a recent survey conducted for the Society for Human Resource Professionals, 22 percent of HR managers said they administer personality tests to job aspirants.

"I think it's definitely a growing trend right now," says Angela Georgallis, a spokeswoman for the group. "There's a lot of talk about it."

Personality tests range from written exams to group interviews and team-building exercises and other sessions geared toward gauging how a job candidate might work with others, Georgallis says.

An incident with wages "may have been the final event that precipitated this outburst. But (the assailant at Edgewater) was an aggressive person who probably showed more subtle signs of aggression. He was predisposed to act aggressively and finally acted out. Are there non-aggressive people who commit crimes? Probably. But the people we're talking about tend to seek out and create these situations."

-- Michael McIntyre, University of Tennessee College of Business Administration

It's debatable whether these tests truly reveal a person's more troublesome tendencies.

"The typical (written) tests are direct tests where the applicant knows generally that personality is being measured," McIntyre says. "It's fairly obvious. Examples of questions are, 'I often get angry at the way people treat me' and 'I feel bitter and resentful.'

"There are a couple of problems. There's an obvious 'right' answer. And aggressive people might not see themselves as aggressive. They think their aggressive behavior is rational and appropriate, and therefore they may not give the answers you'd expect them to give on this sort of test."

For the past five years, McIntyre and Larry James, a fellow professor in the same department at the University of Tennessee, have been conducting trials of the test they designed. Thousands of newly hired workers at a dozen companies were administered the test. The responses of 5 to 10 percent of them indicated a propensity to be problem employees -- which was later proven to be true 90 percent of the time, McIntyre says.

These were workers who walked off the job or engaged in frequent arguments with colleagues -- "more mild forms of aggression, but aggression nonetheless," McIntyre says.

"We're not talking about assertiveness, forcefulness, that sort of thing. We're talking about hostility. We're identifying a personality type that does, in extreme, what you saw in Massachusetts. People who feel like victims, who feel they've been mistreated and exploited and abused and feel the need to retaliate against their provoker."

Avoiding the obvious

McIntyre says his test differs from others given to potential employees because it's presented as a reasoning test. A person has to find what he or she thinks is the most logical conclusion to each of 25 questions. The test must be completed in 25 minutes.

TESTING FOR TEMPER

In Michael McIntyre and Larry James' test, developed at the University of Tennessee, job applicants aren't told what they're being screened for. Here are two of the test's questions and information on responses.

"People aren't being told they're taking an aggression test," McIntyre says. "People don't know what's being measured."

Braverman hasn't seen the test, but he says he's skeptical. "It may have some value in helping to identify certain traits in some people that may make them more prone to violent acting-out and aggressive behavior than other kinds of behavior," he says. "But it's not a test for violence.

"Violence is a behavior, and that comes as a result of many factors interacting. There could be people who look clean as a whistle on that test, and if you subject them to the right set of conditions over a period of time ... anybody can be violent under the right or wrong set of circumstances."

But McIntyre says he thinks that unless a person already is aggressive or hostile by nature, he's not going to become so unraveled by personal adversity as to kill.

Authorities say Michael McDermott -- the 42-year-old Edgewater employee who was arraigned Wednesday on seven counts of first-degree murder in the Wakefield killings of his co-workers -- may have been upset because the Internal Revenue Service wanted to garnishee his wages to collect delinquent taxes.

The Associated Press has reported that McDermott had an angry outburst in the company's accounting department over the prospect of losing some of his pay to the IRS. Most of the victims -- for whom a memorial service was held Thursday night in Wakefield -- worked in the company's accounting or human-resources departments.

"One thing I've learned about workplace violence is that it's not about predicting who's going to be violent, it's about what kind of environment you're creating for human beings in your workplace, both in terms of the kind of stress that creates violence, and in terms of whether people who are impaired and breaking down get the kind of attention and care that they need."

— Mark Braverman, "Preventing Workplace Violence"

"There are hundreds of thousands of people that have stressful experiences with the IRS," McIntyre says. "It's the rare person who pulls out an AK-47 in response."

Wakefield authorities say McDermott, when arrested Tuesday shortly after the shooting, had a semi-automatic AK-47 assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun. He also had a bag with four 30-round magazines for the AK-47 and ammunition for the shotgun and the pistol.

An incident with wages "may have been the final event that precipitated this outburst," says McIntyre. "But (the assailant at Edgewater) was an aggressive person who probably showed more subtle signs of aggression. He was predisposed to act aggressively and finally acted out.

"Are there non-aggressive people who commit crimes? Probably. But the people we're talking about tend to seek out and create these situations."

That sort of personality, McIntyre argues, will be made evident by the test he and James have devised -- so employers can then avoid hiring such potentially difficult people.

Sense and security

"The problem with this sort of thing is it may give some people a feeling of false security," says Braverman, who wrote "Preventing Workplace Violence" (Sage Publications, 1999) and, with Richard V. Denenberg, "The Violent-Prone Workplace" (Cornell University Press, 1999).

"They'll put all their eggs in that basket and don't do what I think is most important to do, which is to have policies and procedures in place that will allow them to catch the early warning signs so they can do something about them when they start to appear.

Stresses at work such as a demotion, a promotion or an unexpected change in a job can sink an employee into despair, Braverman says. So can outside pressures -- financial losses, kids in trouble, divorce.

One of the best policies companies can have in place is an employee-assistance program, Braverman says, in which workers can get free, confidential counseling if they want. "Basically, it's a safety net," Braverman says.

Sometimes, of course, troubled workers may ignore the net or fall through it. "My experience is that there are always warning signs," Braverman says. "It may not be somebody standing up in the middle of a room and saying, 'I'm going to shoot my boss' or 'I'm going to kill myself.' It may not be that obvious."

Some workers on the brink let their work suffer, but others perform better than ever because their job is the one thing they can still focus on in their turbulent lives, Braverman says. They may start looking disheveled at work. Almost certainly they'll be more irritable or depressed.

"The old saying 'an eye for an eye' means that if someone hurts you, then you should hurt that person back. If you are hit, then you should hit back; if someone burns your house, then you should burn that person's house. Which of the following is the biggest problem with the 'eye for an eye' plan?"

-- One of 25 questions in Michael McIntyre and Larry James' test for job applicants

"The best predictor for somebody who's going to become violent is somebody who tends to blame the world for their problems and doesn't take responsibility for the consequences of their behavior," Braverman says, echoing McIntyre on this point. "That's a personality trait. People are that way from childhood.

"Under certain kinds of stress, the condition will get worse," he says. "It may start to look (to the employee) like people are conspiring against them. 'The boss is setting me up to fire me.' 'People are talking about me behind my back.' "I should have gotten that promotion, but the other guy got it because he's sleeping with the boss.' Someone who becomes increasingly angry at being slighted or passed over or mistreated -- especially if it's irrational -- that, I think is a real major sign."

'No quick and easy way'

Alertness, not pre-employment screening, is what best can insulate companies from violence, Braverman says.

"Violence is the last step in somebody feeling alienated, cut off, unheard and unseen. If you intervene at any point in that process and say to the person, 'Tell me what's going on,' 'tell me your story,' you're going to interrupt that process.

"In most cases, you're going to be able to avert that risk because most people don't want to go through with it. They do it as a last straw because they feel like it's the only way they're going to be able to get anyone to pay attention to them."

McIntyre suggests that both pre-employment personality testing and the steps that Braverman favors, may be the best answer. "I'm encouraging a holistic approach, I guess," he says. "Find out as much as you can about applicants at the front end, and then do all these other things at the back end."

Doing so, of course, doesn't guarantee an employer can avoid the sort of event that rocked Wakefield on Tuesday, says Braverman.

"There's no quick and easy way to prevent workplace violence."