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Object Lessons
Questionnaire
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Questionnaires are we fill them out at doctors' offices and at job interviews, to express ourselves and to advance knowledge, to find love and to kill time. But where did they come from, and why have they proliferated? Evan Kindley's Questionnaire investigates the history of “the form as form,” from the Victorian confession album to the BuzzFeed quiz. By asking questions about the questions we ask ourselves, Kindley uncovers surprising connections between literature and science, psychology and business, and journalism and surveillance.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic .
Questionnaires are we fill them out at doctors' offices and at job interviews, to express ourselves and to advance knowledge, to find love and to kill time. But where did they come from, and why have they proliferated? Evan Kindley's Questionnaire investigates the history of “the form as form,” from the Victorian confession album to the BuzzFeed quiz. By asking questions about the questions we ask ourselves, Kindley uncovers surprising connections between literature and science, psychology and business, and journalism and surveillance.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic .
- GenresNonfiction
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
3 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Evan Kindley
5 books3 followersEvan Kindley is a literary scholar, critic, senior humanities editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, and visiting assistant professor at Claremont McKenna College.
His writing has appeared in Bookforum, Critical Inquiry, English Literary History, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, NewYorker.com, n+1, and PMLA, among other venues.
His writing has appeared in Bookforum, Critical Inquiry, English Literary History, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, NewYorker.com, n+1, and PMLA, among other venues.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 30, 2020
Are you familiar with the Proust questionnaire? Do you cordially recommend forgery? Are instantaneous effects invariably rapid? Is an infinitesimal titanic bulk possible? You won’t find a Myers–Briggs Type Indicator tucked into Questionnaire by Evan Kindley, but you will take a deep dive into the history of such inventories and learn, among other things, how a “radical leftist could, with the best of intentions, help craft a new instrument of fascist control, while a social conservative might well create a machine for feminist liberation.” Inquire within.
April 8, 2023
The humble questionnaire: whether at the doctor's office or while wasting time on Buzzfeed, we've all been subject to our fair share. Here, although he discusses a range of questionnaires, Kindley zeroes in on those designed to look at personality...for various reasons, and with various results.
This is part of Objects Lessons, a Bloomsbury Academic series investigating the lives and histories of ordinary objects. The first I read from the series, Pregnancy Test, was largely straightforward—history plus cultural context—and this is largely similar in setup (...history plus cultural context...) but ends up feeling as though it has had to take a more targeted direction. These are short books, and there's a limit to how many types of questionnaire, and how many of the surrounding concerns and things to think about, Kindley could cover.
By and large, I found the first half of this book more interesting than the second, as the development of different questionnaires and what scientists have made of the results is...engaging, to say the least. (Let's just say that the idea of scientific rigour has changed over the years.) Towards the end, Kindley dates the book badly by zeroing in on Buzzfeed quizzes and privacy concerns—privacy concerns are definitely not a dated concept, and Buzzfeed is still alive and kicking, but it's also taken a kicking or two since this book was published. There are some terrifically funny details throughout the book (apparently, on OkCupid, "the answer to the question 'Do you like the taste of beer?' is more predictive than any other of whether you're willing to have sex on a first date" (94)—god, the data people at OkCupid must be able to run such weird and interesting data through all sorts of things), but I found myself wishing that I'd read this when Buzzfeed still felt current.
This is part of Objects Lessons, a Bloomsbury Academic series investigating the lives and histories of ordinary objects. The first I read from the series, Pregnancy Test, was largely straightforward—history plus cultural context—and this is largely similar in setup (...history plus cultural context...) but ends up feeling as though it has had to take a more targeted direction. These are short books, and there's a limit to how many types of questionnaire, and how many of the surrounding concerns and things to think about, Kindley could cover.
By and large, I found the first half of this book more interesting than the second, as the development of different questionnaires and what scientists have made of the results is...engaging, to say the least. (Let's just say that the idea of scientific rigour has changed over the years.) Towards the end, Kindley dates the book badly by zeroing in on Buzzfeed quizzes and privacy concerns—privacy concerns are definitely not a dated concept, and Buzzfeed is still alive and kicking, but it's also taken a kicking or two since this book was published. There are some terrifically funny details throughout the book (apparently, on OkCupid, "the answer to the question 'Do you like the taste of beer?' is more predictive than any other of whether you're willing to have sex on a first date" (94)—god, the data people at OkCupid must be able to run such weird and interesting data through all sorts of things), but I found myself wishing that I'd read this when Buzzfeed still felt current.
August 20, 2022
Satisfied my inner history nerd and my inner sociology nerd. Prescient and timely. A more interesting history than I expected, told in chronological order. Not much discussion of what makes a questionnaire accurate or biased. The pandora’s checklist chapter is especially interesting.
Science discredited personality tests in the 1960s. People change over time and behave inconsistently; so all attempts to test for personality are based on a fundamental fallacy about human nature. This is why personality test have lost their hold in the realms of employment, the military, and law; while at the same time personality testing grew in churches, cults, and popular culture. (Churches, cults, and popular culture: where reality doesn’t matter!)
What I learned: The “black peoples love us” website was made by the later founder of BuzzFeed and his sister comedian Chelsea Perretti. Francis Galton (the eugenics guy) invented the baby book. Gallup rose to fame by successfully predicting the 1936 election. First time I heard about the “red shoes” fairy tale.
Science discredited personality tests in the 1960s. People change over time and behave inconsistently; so all attempts to test for personality are based on a fundamental fallacy about human nature. This is why personality test have lost their hold in the realms of employment, the military, and law; while at the same time personality testing grew in churches, cults, and popular culture. (Churches, cults, and popular culture: where reality doesn’t matter!)
What I learned: The “black peoples love us” website was made by the later founder of BuzzFeed and his sister comedian Chelsea Perretti. Francis Galton (the eugenics guy) invented the baby book. Gallup rose to fame by successfully predicting the 1936 election. First time I heard about the “red shoes” fairy tale.
June 16, 2025
It's a neat little dive into the history and sociology of the questionnaire. Of particular interest is the way that the idea of 'objective' measurement has been carefully constructed and curated with questionnaires over the years.
I concur with another reviewer's take that the first half of the book is more gripping than the second - the more contemporary examples, while certainly on-topic for 2016, haven't really aged that well in an age where the Internet is both more insidious with capturing our data and perhaps less 'quirky' than it used to be (OKCupid is all but dead in 2025). I wonder what a modern-day update may focus on... algorithms, perhaps.
It was my first foray into the Object Lessons series and I found it enjoyable enough to carry on with a few other deep dives.
I concur with another reviewer's take that the first half of the book is more gripping than the second - the more contemporary examples, while certainly on-topic for 2016, haven't really aged that well in an age where the Internet is both more insidious with capturing our data and perhaps less 'quirky' than it used to be (OKCupid is all but dead in 2025). I wonder what a modern-day update may focus on... algorithms, perhaps.
It was my first foray into the Object Lessons series and I found it enjoyable enough to carry on with a few other deep dives.
January 19, 2019
A quick but thorough examination. Looks at the subject chronologically which gives historical context to each new chapter. Was not as playful in tone and language as Sock, but there was still a voice that came through.
What I learned: Those MySpace questionnaires were just a new take on the 19th-century trend of “confession albums.” The current iteration of the so-called Proust survey has nothing in common with the one he originally helped popularize. "Pollster” began as a mocking epithet modeled after “huckster.” The founder of BuzzFeed is Chelsea Peretti’s brother and he’s a the guy who wrote that viral “Sweatshop” custom Nike email I read back in 2001!
What I learned: Those MySpace questionnaires were just a new take on the 19th-century trend of “confession albums.” The current iteration of the so-called Proust survey has nothing in common with the one he originally helped popularize. "Pollster” began as a mocking epithet modeled after “huckster.” The founder of BuzzFeed is Chelsea Peretti’s brother and he’s a the guy who wrote that viral “Sweatshop” custom Nike email I read back in 2001!
February 5, 2021
Surprisingly fascinating and draws you into the subject.
September 24, 2016
I've found all the titles I've read in the Object Lessons series to be totally engaging and fascinating. This one is no different.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews