Can Personality Tests Help Us To Know Ourselves Better?
The cult of the personality test is a big business, and it’s at its most effective when we are feeling down and out.
This week I retook the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to check whether I’m an INTJ or an INTP and that I’m still compatible with my INFP partner.
I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding uncomfortable feelings by reading about my love languages, attachment styles and neuroticism level.
I’ve also turned to Astrology to see how the Total Solar Eclipse, Mercury Retrograde and Super Moon will affect my career and to the odd tarot card shuffle hoping that the Ten of Swords I recently pulled will eventually become an Ace.
Whether the personality test you’re taking claims to be scientific or spiritual, they all claim to deliver the same thing — insight into ourselves. But how helpful are the answers these tests provide?
What is personality?
Your personality is the unique combination of qualities and characteristics that form your character. It is who and what you present to the world and also the parts you choose not to.
The parts of your personality that you choose to hide away or unconsciously avoid are known in psychology as your shadow side. This is the stuff that you’d rather not have other people see but it still exists internally.
Personality is shaped by our biological traits as they mix with different environments over time. When you change where you live, what you do, and who you surround yourself with, your personality will likely change too.
What is self-concept?
Self-concept is how we feel about who and what we are, our personality. It’s something that fluctuates through the highs and lows of life.
If you are confident in who you are, including your strengths and weaknesses, you probably have a high self-concept. If you’re questioning who you are, you may have done a personality test or few.
American psychologist Carl Rogers held that there are 3 parts of self-concept; self-image, self-esteem and the ideal self. In other words, how you see yourself, how much you value yourself and what you wish to achieve.
This is not easy to figure out and it can take years to build self-concept.
The good news is that it gets easier to do as we age and gain more confidence to do the things in life that genuinely suit us.
What is an existential crisis?
An existential crisis happens when our awareness of mortality makes us question how we are living.
Also known as a crisis of meaning, it can be triggered by stressful life events, including death, redundancy, relationship breakdowns or when you are actively working to change your self-concept.
When an existential crisis happens, it can leave us feeling unsatisfied, uneasy and searching for meaning, greater freedom and living authentically.
Sitting with how you feel during these times can provide some great insight into your personality. Working through an existential crisis is a step towards building self-concept as it forces you to see what isn’t working in your life and explore ways to change it.
My first existential crisis showed me that I needed to work more on my relationships and self-care and less on my career to find balance. It taught me that prioritising the closest people in my life is more valuable than work and money.
That reads like a horoscope because it’s a basic human experience that most of us will be confronted with at some point.
How personality tests can be useful
Personality tests are like the comforting hand that points us in a direction when we’re unsure of where to go next.
If you’re lying awake at night questioning over and over who you are, there’s nothing wrong with Googling a love or career quiz for a bit of reassurance and light relief in a dark time.
Taking a personality test, checking your horoscope or reading tarot cards can be positive affirmations as you work on discovering who you are and what you want. They can also help to flag the parts that might need work if you pay attention to how the results make you feel.
For example, if you take a relationship attachment style quiz and get a result that you don’t like, it could be an opportunity to work on your own style to be a better partner in future.
Or if you are unsatisfied with work and take a career test, it might dish up job opportunities you never considered before.
If the results spark your intuition it’s important to let it take over and do the rest, as only you truly know what’s right for you.
The problem with personality tests
Personality tests become problematic when the results get in the way of your intuition and stop you from doing something that you want to do.
If you want to be a musician because you love playing the guitar, don’t give up on that just because an MBTI or a career test suggests you’d be better at law.
Mercury Retrograde isn’t a good reason to decline a job opportunity if you really want it, and being Aquarius shouldn’t stop you from dating a Taurus if you feel it’s a good match.
The Big Five is said to be the most scientific personality test. The results indicate your dominant personality traits and can predict how likely you are to respond to situations.
It’s also known as the OCEAN as it can tell you how Open, Conscientious, Extroverted, Agreeable and Neurotic you are.
It relies on honesty in rating yourself accurately, so it isn’t hard to lie if you’re a disagreeable and unconscientious person.
A problem with the Big Five is that it puts your personality in a box filled with a bunch of labels. But personality needs to be open to the possibility that the person you are now may not be the same later.
Self-concept and experiencing existential crises can lead a closed-off person to become more open and a neurotic person to be more content.
While taking personality tests and keeping up with Astrology is perfectly normal behaviour that’s accepted in popular culture. It can become a problem if we pay too much attention to the results and advice these provide and give not enough weight to our intuition.
By doing this we risk losing the opportunity to know ourselves, falling out of sync with our self-concept and failing life’s biggest test — to act authentically.
