Estate Agents The Psychology of Estate Agents

Date Published:

28/05/2008

Psychologist Jon Gowlland uses Psychometric testing to help companies choose employees. Here he brings his skills to bear on the people trying to sell your house for you.

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Intro

Next time you are tempted to look down on an estate agent, remember this: the real truth is that estate agents look down on us. Think about it. They have full uncensored access to our intimate surroundings. If you accept that most people's interior life does not extend far beyond their interior design, it follows that their colour-coded sofas, stripped floorboards and artlessly positioned ornaments, are more than a clue, they are the embodiment of their psyche. As one of the perks of their job, estate agents have free entry to the essence of a life. They see everything, and drive back to their office with gleeful loathing in their hearts.

We psychometricians have only one way of assessing personality. While everyone else is out there in the world learning about people by talking to them, we stay hunched in our office with our questionnaires, our scales, our shoehorns and our pigeon holes. We don't do inference via interaction; we do deduction via inquisition.

We have two ways of assessing personality. The first is to dream up a list of supposedly vital traits, devise some apposite questions, and measure your score on each trait. And there, abandoned to your point on the scale, you are beached - for better or worse.

The Enneagram, on the other hand, decrees that while you are broadly one of 9 personality types, there is the possibility of progression or regression within your type. If you regress far enough, you might wake up and find you're an estate agent. Luckily there is still under a 50% chance of this happening. Only four of the nine types are temperamentally inclined to become an estate agent.

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