When you think of a person and try to describe that person to another person, you automatically group them into different subgroups, such as how tall he/she is, what color hair he/she has, what type of personality traits that person have, etc. All this is a way of sorting people in one or other group. So, why do we try to categorize everyone? Does that mean we, ourselves, like to be categorized also?

Interestingly, people will agree to the notion that they would like to be in a “part of” something. Being part of a social community service group, student organization, “popular” group in your class, all points to the fact that people desire to be in a “part of” this or that. Why would you be interested in joining a social community service group? Why a stduent organization? When you think about it, all of those groups, even just the “popular” group in your class, needs a lot of effort and some type of constant training. You need to know how to promote yourself to get into the group, and need to be or even act out to be outgoing/extroverted in order to fulfill the given tasks to be a part of such group.

In my opinion, even though there are various obstacles and burden in keeping oneself in this a group, people still try to be in it, because they want to be accepted. Human beings like to feel that they are accepted by others, and being part of a symbolized group, you are proving that you have some aspect of qualities and so you should be treated, looked at in such a way. For example, if you are in a student organization, it means that you are deliberate, hard-working, a possible-A-student, very social, responsible, and that you communicate well with others. In respect of the expectations of these qualities, you will be looking forward for people seeking you for help, especially problems regarding student life at campus, for example. By helping that person, you are acknowledging to others that you care about others so you help them, with all the above mentioned qualities you have. By then, people accept you as a nice, deliberate, hard-working, responsible person.

Furthermore, people nowadays are frantic about online psychology tests. Just by typing in ‘a subject of your own interest + psychology test,’ the internet will give you thousands of results. For example, I like listening to music, and I would like to know what kind of personality I have. Let me simply type in ‘music + personality + tests,’ and I will literally receive about 13,900,000 results, just from Google. Of course, not every link suggested will be directly related to what I’d like to look for, but that link being there tells us it has something to do with either music, personality, or tests.

These tests, they help one categorize into one type. It asks you to answer several questions, then BOOM, you get what type of person you are, what category you fit in. “The Do-Re-Mi’s of Personality” tells me that I enjoy reflexive and complex music the most (78%), followed by energetic and upbeat music (75%). Below are the kind of results you get from taking these tests.

It says that being in such a category tells that I like such kinds of music, and people with high scores on this type tend to be, and tend to act in a specific but broad ways. What I mean by specific but broad is that these results seem like they give you specific results, but when you think of it a little closer, you will be able to find out that they are just categorizing you into one of the Big Five traits. Big Five traits is one of the leading personality tests used in psychological tests, grouping people’s personalities in five dimensions/domains, which are Openness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Generally, however, you will be able to get more, and quality results on these Big 5 traits through other psychological tests.

Though people say they are different individuals and they are unique, they tend to look for psychological tests in search of what ‘type’ of person he/she is. Let’s admit it, we like to categorize ourselves. It makes us feel accepted to the society, and more than interested in knowing where we belong, even if it’s just for pleasure and time-killing.