Are any personality tests accurate? (5 online free tests)

In this blog post, we will answer the following question: Are any personality tests accurate? We will also give you access to 5 online free personality tests that will help you discover more about your abilities, character, and will help you improve your relationships. 

Are any personality tests accurate?

Not all personality tests are accurate. Because the assessment industry is unregulated, many personality assessments on the market do not measure what they claim.

There are two main questions that determine whether a personality test can deliver accurate results:

1. Does it measure what it is designed to measure?
2. Do you measure it consistently? 

In summary, precision requires evidence of validity and reliability. There are many types of validity. Criterion validity is the best type of validity to use in personality tests. Criterion validity refers to the precision in predicting the desired outcome. Reliability refers to the consistency of the measurement. 

One way to assess this consistency is with test-retest reliability, which refers to the consistency of the measurement across multiple test administrations. For example, using a ruler to measure height will produce the same measurement each time. That’s because a ruler is a reliable measure of height. This must also be required for personality evaluations.

What exactly are personality tests?

Personality tests are standardized tests that allow the study of the character of a subject or the determination, on a psychiatric level, of his condition or of his pathological tendencies.

•  The Thematic Apperception Test (T.A.T.) uses drawings with images that aim to inspire the subject of the scenario, reactions related to the represented scenes.

• The little man’s test is addressed to small children. It consists of having the children draw a little man; by the age of 4, the “tadpole-man”, in which the head and body are in one piece, is replaced with a more differentiated representation that proves a normal psycho-affective development.

• Rorschach’s test consists of putting the subject to comment on a series of ink stains.

• MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or Minnesota test of multiphasic personality assessment) involves several questionnaires whose score highlights the character and deep emotional tendencies of the subject. In fact, symptom assessment scales are increasingly being used; the best known is the Hamilton scale, which assesses the degree of anxiety and depression.

The scope of the tests has become considerable. They are used in psychiatry, psychology, occupational medicine, as well as for selection and career guidance. However, personality tests are only complementary techniques and cannot replace the assessment of the individual during an interpersonal relationship.

Can people manipulate personality tests?

Despite their name, personality tests do not actually test but rather an assessment of an individual’s personality. This means that there are no right or wrong answers, so pretending is extremely difficult, as they have to do with your likes, preferences, aversions, motivations, etc. 

When an individual answers a personality question, it is actually a job setting consideration and there is no point in answering something different.

Another important thing to consider is what the experimental studies on counterfeiting claim. When people are instructed to deliberately falsify an evaluation for a job, they get different scores than they would have obtained by answering honestly. 

But in the real world, when someone is actually trying to apply for a particular position, the forgery has no impact on the person’s overall scores. That is, the person will not get better job adjustment scores. In fact, studies by Hogan have found that people who try to fake it on personality assessments often get worse job adjustment scores than they would have gotten more naturally.

Additionally, in Hogan’s evaluations, there are valid questions that are scattered throughout the personality test, which allow us to show if the person is answering honestly, if he is understanding the questions or if he is answering in a distracting way. In short, it is very difficult to try to manipulate them to obtain better results that fit with your profile.

The fact that it is hard to manipulate personality tests is what makes a lot of career aptitude tests very much worth it.

Accurate psychological tests you can do online

On the internet you can find all kinds of interesting tests – from the nice ones, which show you in which house at Hogwarts you fit, to the really bizarre ones, which tell you what kind of pizza you would be depending on your musical choices. The results are a bit like a horoscope – vague enough to fit anyone, but with something that mimics the idea of ​​specificity.

However, there are also psychological tests on the internet, the results of which you can take seriously. They can reveal fascinating things about how your mentality works and about your relationship with your own emotions. It doesn’t take as long as those tests we talked about at the beginning, but the results are worth dedicating those 10 minutes (or, in some cases, a little more).

Personality tests could answer questions such as “Am I manipulative?“, “Am I intelligent” etc

Below you will find a list of the most interesting psychological tests that you can do on the internet without giving any money.

Jung Typology Test

This test is based on the theory of personality patterns developed by Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers. It is perhaps the most interesting and complex personality test that you can do on the internet without giving any money. After a fairly long and specific questionnaire, you receive a combination of 4 letters that represent the type of your personality, along with a description to clarify. 

It shows you your strengths and preferences, as well as what style of communication and learning you have, suggests careers and occupations suitable for your personality, but also which famous people have the same type of personality as you. If you are curious, you can find the test HERE.

The Big Five Personality Test

This test can show you both things you already know about yourself and new ones. Basically, it shows you where you stand on a scale from 1 to 100 in terms of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to new experiences. It is one of the most popular psychological personality tests, so it is worth doing. You can do it HERE.

The O * Net Interest Profiler

Whether you finished high school some time ago or are still on the school benches, you probably know what it’s like to have no idea where you’re going and what career suits you. Whether you need career advice right now, or you’re just curious about what else you could have done with your life, this test is perfect. 

The test was designed by the Department of Labor to show people what job suits them based on their passions. In some schools, it is offered to students to help them in the process of choosing a career. It’s HERE if you want to do it.

The Five Love Languages

Many of the quarrels in the couple’s relationship occur because the partners express their love in very different ways. But there is a test meant to show you what language of love you have so that you can compare it with that of your partner. You can have one of the five languages – physical touch, quality time, services, words of confirmation, and receiving gifts. If you want to know, then you can enter HERE.

The test for schizophrenia

This test will not take more than 20 seconds. Start this video. In the first seconds, you will see the face of a mask with Charlie Chaplin – everything is normal so far. It’s just that this mask rotates, so you can see his back. But here’s the trick. 

If you do not have schizophrenia and you have not recently taken drugs, then it will seem to you that the back of the mask is convex, as if it were in relief (although it is not, and the fault is an optical illusion). However, people who suffer from schizophrenia are not fooled, so they see the back of the mask as concave and bare, they can not see any face in relief.

If you’re facing this, it may be a good idea to seek the help of a therapist or other mental health professional. You can find a therapist at BetterHelp who can help you learn how to cope and address it.

The importance of psychological testing

Psychological testing helps to provide important information for understanding individual characteristics and abilities, by collecting and interpreting information about a person. In addition to tests, there are other sources of information available, such as interviews with spectators, behavioral observations, interviews with other close people, such as family members, friends, teachers, etc.

Psychological testing should not be seen as an exam in which a person should get a score with a high mark, but rather should be seen as a tool used by specialists to identify a specific cause and develop an action plan, or treatment. Psychological tests can assess whether a person is experiencing various emotional disorders.

At the same time, it sometimes happens that the underlying cause of some problems is not clear so that psychological tests can prove useful. For example, a child who has problems with certain subjects at school may actually have a serious condition such as dyslexia or ADHD. 

Such tests allow a psychologist to understand the nature of the child’s problem, to figure out what is the best way to approach the problem, and to devise an appropriate treatment.

Principles of psychological testing

Psychological tests must be performed in accordance with certain principles:

Standardization: all procedures and all steps must be followed regardless of the context so that the tested persons have the chance to achieve the same performance;

Objectivity: subjective judgments must be minimized so that, in the case of examining a person, the results obtained are the same, regardless of the examiner;

Testing rules: refers to the average score of tests in a large group of people in which a person’s performance can be compared to other people’s results, by establishing a frame of reference;

Authenticity: obtaining the same result after several tests, in the case of a single person;

Validity: refers to the accuracy and precision of the information measured, and the type of test administered must measure exactly what is to be measured, in order to meet the purpose of the test.

However, cultural or language differences between the test person and the examiner may affect the accuracy of the answers and may lead to inaccurate test results. That is why it is recommended that any aspect that could influence the test results to be discussed beforehand, in order to find solutions.

Final thoughts

Psychological tests were created because it is easier to get information from tests than through an interview, for example. There is a possibility that most people do not want to talk about the problems encountered, not even in front of specialists, so it is more useful for psychologists to administer a test than to take an interview.

In addition, the information from the tests is more scientifically valuable than the information from an interview in order to make a clinical diagnosis.

Also, certain tests are designed so that the person being tested cannot easily change their choice of the answer – the same questions, from which the same answer is expected, can be asked in different ways so that the respondent is determined to maintain his answer, otherwise, the lack of sincerity will be identified and the test becomes inconclusive.

If you have any questions or comments on the content, please let us know!

FAQ on Are any personality tests accurate?

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References

Psychologicalscience.org

Sciencedirect.com