Who Do You Think You Are? Find Out with Online Personality Tests
By Julie C. Roth, Executive Producer
Human beings share a universal craving to understand themselves. For millennia, we’ve tried to achieve that through astrology, I-Ching, tarot cards, palm reading, phrenology and other arcane studies. The modern age applied science to the endeavor and created personality and IQ tests; now the technology revolution has automated the process. You can find tests of every ilk on the Internet — variations on tests long administered by educators, psychologists and career counselors — and they’ll score your results in seconds. We may no longer step behind Madame Rosa’s curtain to pursue personal enlightenment, but we surely feel the same delight our ancestors did when we recognize ourselves defined on a glowing screen.
Should I Worry About Privacy?
There really isn’t any reason to worry about webmasters learning intimate information about you through online tests. Websites generally don’t collect the data that result from your test responses. The Body-Mind QueenDom site explains how its test technology protects readers’ privacy: “We receive your test results (answers to individual items, the final score, age and gender) in an anonymous e-mail (while the test is being scored, the CGI script sends us an e-mail, so the sender is Body-Mind QueenDom, not you),” according to the site. “Your anonymity is absolutely guaranteed — we don’t even have your e-mail. No information is extracted from your browser.”
Even so, “Cyberia Shrink,” pseudonymous psychologist and test developer of Body-Mind QueenDom, cautions that those sites that ask for your name probably keep test results with that contact information.
Are They True?
The personality tests you’ll find online aren’t as extensive or statistically validated as ones administered by professionals, which means they’re not as accurate. That’s why Steve Bond, president of Online Psych (AOL Keyword: OLP), recommends you “consult a trained and caring professional … when you are looking to address serious issues in your own life.” Even so, online tests can be useful in helping you get to know yourself better.
How do you tell which personality tests are reliable? According to Cyberia Shrink, reliable tests include details about the test’s percentiles, validity, etc., and a disclaimer that a test cannot replace professional treatment. Less reliable tests are those with fewer than 15 questions, or questions that are unclear or ambiguous or condescending, or answers that are so general they could apply to anyone. And, she says, you should beware the test that seems to be manipulating your responses or consistently leaving something out. Ultimately, Cyberia Shrink says, the most useful tests are the ones that explain your results.
Personality Tests
Keirsey Temperament and Character Web Site
This site offers a version of the most famous of the personality tests, the Myers-Briggs. The test asks you a long series of “which do you prefer” questions to determine whether you tend toward extroversion or introversion, intuition or sensing, thinking or feeling, and judgment or perception. Depending on your results, the site may label you an inventor type or a supervisor type or any of a number of other profiles. What this test said about me matched exactly the results of an offline Myers-Briggs test administered by my company.
Emotional IQ test
Emotional IQ measures our capacity to understand and deal with our own feelings and the feelings of others — a quality some researchers see as being just as crucial to success as intelligence. In this test made for the Utne Reader, author Daniel Goleman cautions that “there’s no single, well-validated paper-and-pencil test for emotional intelligence like an IQ test, but there are many situations in which the emotionally intelligent response is quantifiable” — presumably those situations described in his test. (For more information about EQ, see the Time magazine article on the topic.)
Enneagram Personality diagram
This is a lengthy test that determines what motivates you. It was introduced to the West by a Mediterranean mystic and addresses spiritual enlightenment as well as personal knowledge. More in-depth information on the Enneagram (including another test) can be found on the Enneagram Personality Dynamics page.
Body-Mind QueenDom Personality Tests
Psychologist “Cyberia Shrink” has designed several tests to help you get to know yourself better in many areas. Are you a Type-A personality? Are you a jealous person? How’s your self-esteem? You can find the answers to these and other questions at this terrific site. And for test junkies, there is an extensive list of additional tests on other sites.
Career Tests
What Career Is For You?
This test on the Job Search website asks 21 “which would you prefer” questions to determine what professions match your preferences. How accurate is it? The test provided me with a list of professions that included magazine editor.
CareerPro
Offering a shortened version of the Myers-Briggs test, this site matches your answers with a career profile that corresponds to your results. This test told me I should be an author.
(NetGuide originally posted this article on February 22, 1998.)
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