Is there a "personality test" you've done you found helpful?

HootinNHollerin, 28 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

Strengths Finder was scary accurate for me

newbeni, 25 days ago

I had to do that one and it was no where close. It’s funny how that stuff works.

TheKMAP, 26 days ago

MBTI, DISC, and love languages work well together. Even if there’s no hard proof, it at least gets your thinking about the fact that other people think differently. It’s very easy to live in your own head and make assumptions, so getting exposed to these concepts in a formal way can be really effective in building relationships of all kinds.

Acamon, 26 days ago

I really got a lot out of the Myres Briggs when I was younger. I know its not scientifically valid, and it’s stupid of folks take it too seriously, but it really helped young me understand that other people weren’t wrong/dumb/weird for approaching things differently. And it helped me understand some of the axis on which difference can lie in a helpful way.

I think in the post internet age people are very aware of different categories and identities, but growing up in the previous millenium it wasn’t something that we talked about much. The introvert / extrovert division is overblown and overly simplistic nowadays, but before people use to just criticise each other for being “too shy” or “too loud” like there was a “normal” way to be that everyone should get.

The big five is certainly more reliable and scientifically supported, but I never found that it helped me understand a coworker or friend better. Partly I think conscientiousness and neuroticism sound a little too value laden. People can happily self describe as “detail orientated” (Sensing) or “big picture types” (Intuitive) but nobody really wants to say “I’m closed-off and unconscientious”. And I think that’s why MB has been popular in business / organisation worlds, because it’s a useful way to get people discussing themselves and how they approach problems. It doesn’t matter that in reality my level of extraversion varies depending on the context, or I’m Judging in certain tasks but Perceiving in others.

dominiquec, 27 days ago

I enjoy the D&D alignment chart.

amio, 27 days ago

It's not like that's a worse metric than MBTI

boredtortoise, 26 days ago

I should’ve just said my result is “Chaotic Good” at that corporation “team-building” personality test workshop

SkyeHarith, 27 days ago

Big 5 personality test

IonAddis, 26 days ago

The Big 5 is the only “personality” test used in actual scientific studies, if I recall correctly.

beefbot, 27 days ago

BIG. FIVE.

it’s the only one not named after anyone because it wasn’t just ONE person or duo who came up with it.

IT’S THE ONLY ONE SUPPORTED BY >100 INDEPENDENT STUDIES. All caps here bc it’s kinda important that these things be more than just one researcher reinventing astrology*

*COUGH meyers briggs pile of bullshit COUGH

RizzRustbolt, 27 days ago

All personality tests are silly.

Codifying human behavior into distinct categories is reductive and stupid.

So why not see which ninja turtle you are the most alike?

Katrisia, 27 days ago

OCEAN is useful.

For fun but also interesting because it is a piece of history? The four temperaments (Hippocrates).

beefbot, 27 days ago

Agreed!
Also: OCEAN and the Big Five are the same idea

Artyom, 27 days ago

I used to have a job that was really into the Core Value Index. I thought it was pretty awesome because their categories were really simple and there are only 4 so you can really wrap your head around the whole thing at once.

It’s not a full personality test, it’s more focused on trying to answer the question “How do you want ideas presented to you?” And. “How do you prefer to interpret ideas?” I found myself making meanful changes in how I worked with coworkers where I knew their results, which isn’t something anyone can manage with more complicated tests.

bremen15, 27 days ago

I did the Luxx test and found it useful in helping me to understand myself more clearly.

The test is based on empirically found foundational motivations everyone has more or less strongly.

OpenStars, 28 days ago

None really work, generally, but all try to make you think about the various factors involved and how other people might approach things differently from you, which is why they can be helpful:-).

Usernameblankface, 28 days ago

So they’re helpful but they don’t work?

Bizarroland, 28 days ago

Most personality tests will not tell you anything about yourself that you didn't already know, it will not give you any insights into the correct way to live your life or what is going to work for you.

However, it can help you frame things about yourself in a new light or to help you come to understand the way that you work inside of a larger social picture.

So they don't work to tell you who you are, but they help you be who you can be.

OpenStars, 28 days ago

The other responder already had some good points, but I will add: not so much directly but yeah, indirectly they can help you especially to relate to other people.

e.g. let’s say that you are an extrovert (except this is Lemmy so uh…:-P) let’s say that you are an introvert, and wherever you fall on that spectrum, some extrovert sees a confused look on your face and just won’t shut the fuq up about the matter - they are relentless too, and you just want to walk away. THEY need to learn that when talking to an introvert, they need to shut the hell up, and allow the other person to digest what has already been said. Repetition, even using different words/scenarios/analogies/etc. makes the matter worse, not better.

While YOU as the introvert here may benefit from knowing that they legit were trying to help - that’s how they are, when they get confused, they talk MORE, rather than less (insert Unix CLI pun here:-D). It’s just their natural bent, reinforced over time in however they were raised, and not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, b/c when directed at another fellow extrovert it could be fantastic. This may give you the freedom to say SHUT UP AND LET ME THINK - which ironically the other person, being an extrovert, may likely love how you are thus being so open about your needs.

Either way, it’s good to know about this dynamic of how relationships work, across the varying spectrums of the different aspects of personality traits. Knowledge is Power - use it wisely:-).

stoy, 27 days ago

That is just understanding the different types of personalities, personallity tests claim to detect what type of a personallity a person has, quite different.

The former is very useful, the latter is just plain crap

OpenStars, 27 days ago

Usually, unless you happen to be really strong on some aspect. It’s like how Google will “find things” - sometimes it does, as it tries to sell crap:-D.

mac, 27 days ago

I found this one to be the most accurate, with both times I took it providing fairly accurate results I agreed with for the most part. It also has nice artwork and descriptions. It’s based on Myers Brigg’s system.

bitwaba, 27 days ago

I’m kind of a fan of the True Colors system but not because I “believe it”. More so that I just like that it makes you stop and consider how other people you’re interacting with might consider your behaviors and vice versa.

• green: independent thinkers (logic driven, efficient, analytical)
• gold: pragmatic planners (organized, responsible, respect rules and authority)
• orange: action-oriented (short term changes, adventurous, impulsive)
• blue: people-oriented (sympathetic, emotion driven, seeks harmony in groups)

Our exercise at work first required you to classify yourself, then everyone else voted to classify you. So you could get a picture of how you can see yourself compared to how others see you.

I think what helps the most for facilitating the conversation is that it groups traits that are similar under a single color, so you can quickly say “I’m gold, I think this other person is green”, then start diving into how one set of actions might be perceived by the other, etc. We didn’t take a personality test. We just went straight in with “here’s what I think I am”, so there’s no questionnaire pigeonholing you into something you might not identify with.

It helped me interact with my co-worker (and close friend outside of work), because he’s very impulse driven and constantly spitting out 200 line proof-of-concept things. But they’re messy and buggy and don’t have any safety rails and all kinds of other things. Where as I’m much more analytical, filing code changes to him for things like considering null inputs in fields, or to fix spelling mistakes (that one is more anal than analytical, but whatev).

By doing this classification exercise, we were able to see beyond “dude wtf are you doing you look at all this wrong stuff” and we’re able to consider how each of us worked was causing stress for the other. By realizing that and incorporating it to our work we were able to stop getting bogged down in arguments of really specific things and could stay focused on the general problem we were trying to solve.

My favorite part of the whole exercise when we did it at work was all of our managers said that they are Blue (considerate of others feelings, etc) where as everyone that reported to them said they were Gold (organized, respect authority), like ruthlessly Gold, and sometimes with a hint of Orange because they change focus of the team every time a new “issue” comes up before we’d finished resolving the open ones. It made me realize that management isn’t intentionally shitty. They’re just delusional to the point that they don’t even see how their actions are nothing like their intentions.

AnalogyAddict, 27 days ago

I hate them because when I try to take personality tests, there are rarely answers that fit me.

surewhynotlem, 27 days ago

An ADHD diagnosis test. Does that count?

deezbutts, 27 days ago

openpsychometrics.org/tests/characters/