This article will look at the personality test that is considered the most accurate and discuss what it entails. The article will also shed light on some other personality tests or systems that are quite popular and in use.
What Is The Most Accurate Personality Test?
The most accurate personality test is the Big Five Personality Test because not only is it reliable but also scientifically validated. The test is used by a number of people that include professionals from mental health fields like counselors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists as well as other types of people that include career counselors, company personnel and ordinary individuals who are just curious about their personality.
The Big Five Personality Test – The Most Popular Inventory
The Big Five Personality Test is indeed one of the most widely used tests to determine what sort of personality a person has; it has 5 scales that measure how a person behaves in 5 broad areas that we will discuss in the upcoming section. These broad areas can be further divided into 30 subscales that give a deeper look into one’s personality.
What the scales tell you is whether or not you have a certain trait in you; it is simple to understand because you can either be high, moderate or low in a certain trait. For example, in the Big Five Personality Test there is a measure known as being ‘Agreeable’. If a person is high in this then they have certain traits that include not being too choosy, conflict avoidant, cooperative and easy going.
In the upcoming section, we will take a look at what the Big Five Personality Test measures!
What The Big Five Personality Test Measures – The 5 Scales
Here are the 5 traits that the personality test measures:
- Conscientiousness
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
- Openness
- Extraversion
Let us take a look at each of them now!
Conscientiousness
When you possess conscientiousness, you are aware of not only yourself but your surroundings and others too hence people who have this trait are organized and mindful of others; they know if they are late for a meeting then it will definitely affect others in a bad way. Such people are great at impulse control and can easily engage in self control. They are also oriented towards goal directed behaviours.
- Prefers a structure and routine in life
- Do not make a mess out of things
- Pay attention to details
- Avoid falling behind on tasks
Agreeableness
People who are agreeable are cooperative and like to work with others in a productive and calm manner. They are altruistic and engage in prosocial behaviours. They will do things for others and not just focus on their own self interests.
- Not Manipulative
- Interested in the wellbeing of others
- Empathetic
- Like making others happy.
- Assists others who need help
Neuroticism
People who score high in neuroticism are emotionally unstable and hence will experience mood swings, irritability, sadness and become easily upset even at small things.
- Experience stress and easily worried
- Anxiety
- Resilience is low
- Quite often depressed or sad
Openness
People who are open are literally open; this means they are fine with new experiences, meeting new people and trying out things they have never done before. This makes them more risky, creative and fun loving as well as adventurous.
- Good at solving new or complex problems
- Like to try new things
- Like change
What Is The Test Like?
The test has you choose options from a likert scale where you can strongly agree or strongly disagree with a statement and not a question. The test has 120 statements that you must go through and these statements reflect the 5 scales that were discussed above.
The statements help determine your score on each scale and in the end you can either be high or low on a certain trait.
Other Personality Systems
In this section we will take a look at other personality systems that exist.
What is the Myer Briggs Type Indicator?
Are you familiar with an INTJ or an ETSP? Do you have any idea what they mean or who they could possibly describe? These are not some secret codes but terms that are used to describe the personality types of people who have taken the Myer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
The Myer Briggs Type Indicator is a self-report questionnaire based on Carl Jung’s theory that individuals experience the world using four psychological functions namely sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking with either one of these being the dominant factor. The personality test determines which of these functions best describes a person hence detailing their personality, strengths and attitudes; it assigns one of the 16 personality types (just like INTJ or ETSP) to the individual taking the test.
Why is the Myer Briggs Type Indicator Not Accurate?
The Myer Briggs Type Indicator is inaccurate because of its design and the basis upon which it was formulated! Here is a list of the various issues with the MBTI:
- It lacks reliability
- It is used by non professionals
- It is not valid
- It adopts a reductionist approach
- The developers of the scale are not formally trained in psychology
- Carl Jung’s theories are debatable
- It’s widely accessible
According to the Myer Briggs Company, more than 1 million people take the MBTI online every year and an estimated 80% of fortune 500 companies use it in their human resource practices. Not to mention that the test is so popular that it is actively used on dating sites, university campuses and numerous websites where people are just trying to make sense of who they are.
How is it that something so popular can be so meaningless? Keeping in mind the reasons mentioned above, we will explore in depth why the scale has turned out to be nothing but meaningless! Before we take a deep dive into the topic, let’s take a quick look at what the MBTI exactly does.
What Are Enneagrams?
The enneagram is a typology system which describes human behaviour as a set of interrelated parts with each part having unique characteristics and behaviours or a set of defining traits that distinguish it from other parts in the system. This typology has a total of 9 parts of enneagrams that have different personalities and hence titles. For example, there is the enneagram type 1 which is also known as the Reformer and they have unique traits such as strong moral values, strive for integrity and may at times be judgemental.
At the same time, this personality system assumes and believes that no one person is of a single type – that is they cannot be a type 1 or type 9 purely but will be influenced by other adjacent types that are also known as wings. These wings influence but do not change the overall personality type.
Are Enneagrams Real?
Enneagrams are not backed by any scientific evidence nor has extensive research been done on them. Despite this, they have been gaining widespread popularity and people use them everyday to study their own selves and others too. The popularity this personality system has gained shows that it accurately defines people and their traits and behaviours.
Not much is known about its history and it is rumoured to pull its roots from a number of traditions. A philosopher as well as mystic known by the name of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff has been identified and given recognition for bringing the Enneagram figure to the attention of the world, although he did not use it to categorize personality types. Oscar Ichazo, the founder of a school for human potential and self-development, assigned different personality types to each of the nine positions in the Enneagram diagram.
Later, psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo expanded the theory to expand the nine types in psychological terms.
Despite the clouded mystery of where this personality system came from, it has gained much worldwide popularity to the extent that it is used frequently by people all over the world!
Conclusion
This article took a look at what the most accurate personality test is and described it in quite some detail. The article also looked at other personality tests and why they are not considered accurate despite their popular use.
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