[Article relates to psychological personality tests]
Recently I decided to take a personality test, more out of curiosity than anything else. When I was younger I used to enjoy the results from a personality test I did, and as I am always trying to figure out what is going on inside people’s minds, I thought something new would be exciting. I ended up with the MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator). As I am not familiar with a lot of personality tests, this one seemed rather popular, plus they provided a free online test.
Findings and Frustrations
When I did some research on the online wiki (Wikipedia) page, they seemed to have some interesting points, especially on the way and order people prefer to use and express their psychological functions, which you can read about for yourself at the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator. After getting my test results, and paying a little closer attention to the scoring system, I was frustrated to find that I could easily fit into not one but four of the sixteen possible categories.
At first I thought I made a mistake with the test, but on reading some of the resulting pages I found that all four descriptions seems to fit with me in some way or another. This was not mentioned by the test result page, so my guess is that most people would not even have noticed it. (On hindsight, I have discovered my most dominant category, but I still lean towards these other groups).
The wiki page mentioned above has a rather negative “Criticism” section, but from my own observation I realised the fatal assumption: The test results assumes you have a high percentage score on each of the four tested dichotomies (that is, four opposite pairs of scoring). In my mind, for each dichotomy where you do not have a high result, (where high > 60% and medium > 30%), it doubles the amount of resulting types a person could potentially fall in. This would explain the rather low retest value as mentioned on the wiki page.
Test Suggestions
Even though they have some great ideas, I think the MBTI is trying to be too general. So, here are a few suggestions on what I would like to see in a proper personality test.
1. Lines, not blocks
When you work with lines/dots on a graph it is easier for the user to interpret the intensity of the score. When you put someone in a block/box, you are also subconsciously limiting their potential.
Consider the simple attached picture. Let’s say the two black lines represent two dichotomies, and the coloured lines are the actual test results of three different people. The lines are drawn by connecting the dots of the resulting score from the test.
Although these three people all belong to the same dominant personality type, which is labelled “III”, they really are very different people. Person “A” is the only one that can be said to truly belong to this group. There are times, like in a less familiar environment or among less familiar people, where person “B” and “C” might appear to those around them as very different people, belonging to “IV” and “II” respectively. This is because, as they do not perfectly fit into “III”, they sometimes fall over into the secondary personality. If the test result only told them they all belonged to “III”, then person “B” and “C” might be confused as to why certain elements of “IV” and “II” still apply to them.
A popular example would be the DiSC assessment, which gives the results as dots on a graph.
2. Beauty in simplicity
If I had to choose a motto in life, this one, namely “beauty in simplicity”, would be second on the list. (The first is “better late than never”, but that is a whole different topic altogether). Over-complicating things just makes it harder to figure out, and it is too difficult to spot the mistakes. A complicated system might impress the crowds, but the little things give the quality away. Further more, a complicated test has got a longer list of questions, and nobody wants to fill out a thousand-line questionnaire for a silly personality test.
Another popular yet simple test is the four temperaments, as originated from the Greek doctor Hippocrates. I just noticed that my definition of the four temperaments differs slightly from that found on the wiki page, but it has been around for so long that it is expected to have more than one interpretation.
As a side note, an interesting topic for future research regarding the “middle grounds” might be the fifth temperament, as mentioned in the following wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supine_(Temperament).
Final Comments
Personality tests are wonderful tools of self-knowledge, but due to incorrect usage a lot of people end up avoiding or even hating them. As no test will ever be a 100% complete, one must always remember the following points:
- The test is meant as a starting point of knowing yourself, not as an end point of who/what you can or can not be.
- The focus must be growth, not closure. This sounds simple, but it is rather common for people to mistakenly say things like: “this is who I am, you just have to get used to my weaknesses”.
Even though test results show strength or preference, I strongly believe that with enough practice and determination, and willingness to get up after falling, a person can be whatever he wants to be.
Jonas is your typical manual labour, but he specializes in painting. Not only does he enjoy it, he’s also rather good at it. One day Jonas gets a job at a house in need of painting, however, he is asked to cut the grass instead. Every month when Jonas asks about painting the walls he is told that the grass takes priority, and every month the grass grows back again.