According to an article published by the New York Times, 6 of the “best online psychology tests” have been identified on the PsychCentral website. Some of you may have already come across this site. The website includes numerous articles about disorders like ADHD, PTSD, autism, depression, OCD and schizophrenia. It also includes a vast amount of information about drug safety, possible research opportunities and how individuals who are suffering from mental illness can find help in their communities. Furthermore, a plethora of quizzes and tests are available for individuals to take. A wide range is available from tests about ADHD to sexual addiction screening tests. Now that you know a little more about PsychCentral, I’ll demonstrate six of the best online psychology tests.
Tara Parker-Pope, a writer for the New York Times’ Well blog, identifies six online tests as PsychCentral’s best. However, I will discuss the two tests that I find most interesting. First, she talks about one that we’ve all come across in our psychology courses at McGill…Of course, it’s the Stroop Test! For those of you who don’t know what the Stroop Test is, I’ll provide you with a brief explanation. The Stroop Test will demonstrate a word to the participant. This word will signify a color like RED, GREEN etc… However, the word will be printed in colored ink. As a result, you can have the word “GREEN” but it will be printed in red ink. The task is to identify the ink color of the word and NOT to read the word itself. It’s used to measure a number of things like selective attention capacity, processing ability and executive processing abilities. For those of you who would like to try this test, it can be found on the PsychCentral website. Second, a link is given in this New York Times article about the “personal biases” tests. Clicking on the link will redirect you to a list of possible tests. These tests can project your implicit biases about a multitude of topics like religion, sexuality, age, gender-career, weight and race. The link to these tests is labeled as “Personal Biases” in Tara Parker-Pope’s Well blog.
I encourage everyone to try the Stroop Test because a) it’s actually fun if you need a minor break from your studies and b) it’s incredible how one test can be used for the purpose of understanding several aspects of cognition. Furthermore, the study of personal biases fascinates me because it’s truly remarkable that psychological tests are capable of demonstrating implicit feelings and thoughts about particular topics.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/best-online-psychology-tests/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
