Op-Art

By BEN SCHOTT

IN Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 film “The Parallax View,” the nefarious Parallax Corporation uses a questionnaire to recruit potential assassins. Sociopaths and psychopaths are weeded in with a battery of questions that expose their psychological strengths and weaknesses, secrets and predilections. At the opposite end of the moral spectrum, and with utterly benign intent, the General Social Survey has been performing a similar exploration of the American psyche for 34 years.