Being deceived by a psychological test can inoculate people against trusting test results.

Evidence

Finally, I made the point before leaving that while psychological tests sometimes can assess groups of people validly, no scale can make foolproof individual diagnoses. If they had been buoyed or deflated by their fake self-esteem score, I hoped that would inoculate them against someday putting too much credence in any such test result. I would like to think this insight made the experience worthwhile for the students. (But that may just be a further example of a motivated self-delusion.) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1854

Categorization

• XREF: The inoculation framing echoes persuasion research (McGuire’s inoculation theory) and connects to the book’s broader study of authority and belief rigidity. — connects to: Disputing a method can serve to deny the phenomenon the method reveals. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2043
• CANDY: The parenthetical aside admitting his hope may itself be a motivated self-delusion is a light, memorable self-aware joke any psychology enthusiast would enjoy.