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Assertiveness
Inventory - Online test for assertiveness level.
Attitudes: Key to Health
and Longevity - Two free tests of wellbeing that predict future
health, and associated self-improvement email course.
3CS
Social Values Survey - Identifies one's personality as a consumer.
The
Desert Test - Personality test based on traditional Japanese
animal archetypes.
Elemental
Personality Assessment - A free online personality test based
on various classical ideologies of personality including astrology
and numerology.
Gray-Wheelwright
Test - This test was designed by Jungian analysts in the 1930's.
It produces a three-letter Jungian temperament type.
HumanMetrics - Focused
on relationships, personality and entrepreneurship testing.
Institute for Personality and
Ability Testing - Offers the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire
(16PFTM).
Know Your Own
Mind - A wide-ranging analysis of your personality on the
following dimensions: introversion/extraversion, emotional stability,
mastery/sympathy, sexuality, and social and political attitudes.
Locus
of Control and Attributional Style Inventory
The Luck Project -
Prof Richard Wiseman explores why some people live such charmed
lives. Includes an online personality test and details of his
book The Luck Factor.
Mindwave
Brain Balance Quiz - A quiz to help reveal whether you are
a right or left brain person.
OD-Online
Personality Profiler - Generates a free summary report of
your personality. Nominal charge for a full report.
Optimism/Pessimism
Inventory - Designed to evaluate your take on the world and
your life in general.
The ORA Personality Profiler
- Offers for a fee an online comprehensive analysis of not only
Psychological Type, but also Temperament, Trait, and the Five-Factor
Model of Personality in one assessment
Paragon Learning Style
Inventory - A self-administered survey that provides an indication
of learning style and cognitive preference. It uses the four Jungian
dimensions used by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Murphy Meisgeir
Type Indicator, and the Keirsey-Bates Temperament Sorter.
Personality
Disorder Test - Indicates whether you have a personality disorder.
Personality
Profile Test - Determine whether you are a Hedonist, Rationalist,
Idealist, or a Traditionalist.
Personality Reality
- Free online tests for individuals and those in relationships.
Helps you interpret the five personality languages, denominated
by punctuation marks.
Picture
Identification Test - A psychological instrument based on
the Murray need system that uses multidimensional scaling to provide
a motivation analysis for individuals or groups.
The Platinum
Rule - Your Behavioral Profile - Informal survey designed
to determine how you usually interact with others in everyday
situations. The purpose of this questionnaire is to get a clear
description of how you see yourself. You must provide your email
address to get test results.
Profiler Personality
Assessment - Online personality test analyzing lifestyle,
love style, work style and career choice.
The Purpose
Quiz - Discover your purpose in life.
QueenDom - Offers hundreds
of on-line psychological tests, including intelligence personality,
and relationship tests. Puzzles, live chat, free counseling, polls
and articles about sexuality and mental health.
The Room - Personality
test based on how you would organize your room.
Rorschach Inkblot Test
- The Original Rorschach Page History, Humor, Bookstore, and Discussion
Group
Self-Esteem
Inventory - This screening will determine whether you need
to work on your self-image.
Self-Monitoring:
Do You Censor What You Say? - A test to determine how much
you change your personality in different contexts.
Social
Anxiety Test - Test designed to assess how comfortable you
are when interacting with other people.
Social Quotient - Short
online test to evaluate your social skills.
Type
A Personality Test for Teens - Find out how balanced you are;
for teens and students.
Values,
Attitudes, and LifeStyes (VALS) Survey - SRI-developed test
that relates personality characteristics to purchase behaviors.
Personality tests - information
A personality test aims to describe aspects of a person's character
that remain stable throughout a person's lifetime, the individual's
character pattern of behavior, thoughts, and feelings. An early
model of personality was posited by Greek philosopher/physician
Hippocrates. The 20th century heralded a new interest in defining
and identifying separate personality types, in close correlation
with the emergence of the field of psychology. As such, several
distinct tests emerged; some attempt to identify specific characteristics,
while others attempt to identify personality as a whole.
History
Hippocrates recorded the first known personality model, postulating
that one's persona is based upon four separate temperaments. Another
Greek physician, Galen, extended Hippocrates' theory by applying
a body fluid to each temperament: blood, mucus, black bile and
yellow bile, respectively. The fluid which was dominant was said
to be the person's "humor".
The four humors theory was to become a prevalent medical theory
for over a millennium after Galen's death. The theory experienced
widespread popularity throughout the Middle Ages and was eventually
termed humorism (also humoralism). Humoral practitioners actively
used the theory to explain many illnesses of the time. Use of
various remedies became commonplace, especially when a person
was considered to have too much of a particular fluid. For example,
blood letting from veins was performed when certain conditions
were reported.
By the 18th century, medicine was advancing rapidly. The discoveries
of the functions of the circulatory, respiratory and digestive
systems served to discount the four humors theory as a realistic
practice of medicine. However, it remained important in terms
of designating personality. Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar
Lavater used the four humors to advance four specific persona
types as dictated by their respective facial structures, expressions
and colorations. Lavater also assigned certain characteristics,
such as jollity, generosity and kindness to some types, while
brooding, introspection and contemplation were assigned to others.
He referred to the four temperaments as the sanguine, choleric,
melancholic and phlegmatic, preserving the etymology of these
terms having their origins in antiquity.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant popularized these ideas by organizing
the constructs along two axes: "feelings" and "activity".
He also summed up the four types in his writings. For the sanguine
type he noted:
"...the sanguine person is carefree and full of hope;
attributes great importance to whatever he may be dealing
with at the moment, but may have forgotten about it the next.
He means to keep his promises but fails to do so because he
never considered deeply enough beforehand whether he would
be able to keep them. He is good natured enough to help others
but is a bad debtor and constantly asks for time to pay. He
is very sociable, given to pranks, contented, does not take
anything very seriously and has many, many friends. He is
not vicious but difficult to convert from his sins. He may
repent but this contrition (which never becomes a feeling
of guilt) is soon forgotten. He is easily fatigued and bored
by work but is constantly engaged in mere games -- these carry
with them constant change, and persistence is not his forte."
Late 19th/early 20th century physiologist Wilhelm Wundt expounded
on the theory further in 1879. He was the first person to separate
personality from human body functions. Further, he theorized that
temperaments could not simply be limited to the bodily fluids.
He believed that no individual was completely of one temperament;
rather that everyone typically has varying proportions of two
or more. He believed that all four temperaments were basic dimensions
of the human personality and that the temperaments fell along
axes of "changability" and "emotionality".
The rapid growth of the field of psychology beginning in the
early 20th century led to increased interest regarding individual
personality. Notably, Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung categorized
mental functioning into sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling.
In the 1920s and 1930s German-American psychiatrist Karen Horney
organized persons into personality types according to a theory
of neurosis. In her theory the neurotic individual expresses a
more refined form of persona by way of his or her individual needs.
She described ten specific needs, and in turn split these into
three distinct categories: the Compliant type, the Aggressive
type, and the Withdrawing type. Horney noted that these characteristics
could be expressed in ordinary, non-neurotic human beings, albeit
in a less extreme fashion.
Some personality tests
- The first
modern personality test was the Woodworth Personal data sheet,
which was first used in 1919. It was designed to help the United
States Army screen out recruits who might be susceptible to
shell shock.
- The Rorschach
inkblot test was introduced in 1921 as a way to determine personality
by the interpretation of abstract inkblots.
- The Thematic
Apperception Test was commissioned by the Office of Strategic
Services (O.S.S.) in the 1930s to identify personalities that
might be susceptible to being turned by enemy intelligence.
- The Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory was published in 1942 as a
way to aid in assessing psychopathology in a clinical setting.
- The Insights
Discovery Test based on Carl Jung's psychiatry and an update
of Hippocrates' "four Humours".
- Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator is a 16-type indicator of Carl Jung's Psychological
Types, developed during World War II.
- The 16
Personality Factors (16PF) test was developed in 1946 by Raymond
Cattell and has become popular in business. In 1963 W.T. Norman
suggested that only five factors would be sufficient. In 1981
a group reviewing available personality tests decided that most
of the tests which held any promise seemed to measure a subset
of five common factors, as Norman had previously claimed. These
Big Five personality traits (commonly referred to as "Big
Five" or "the five-factor model") are very common
in business-oriented personality tests in use today.
Other personality tests include the Oxford Capacity Analysis,
Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire,
and the Abika Test.
Criticism and controversy
Critics have raised issues about the ethics of administering
personality tests, especially for non-clinical uses. By the 1960s,
tests like the MMPI were being given by companies to employees
and applicants as often as to psychiatric patients. Sociologist
William H. Whyte was among those who saw the tests as helping
to create and perpetuate the oppressive groupthink of the "organization
man" mid-20th century corporate capitalistic mentality.
Some cognitive psychologists have dismissed the whole idea of
personality, considering much behaviour to be content specific.
Theorists developed the concept of cognitive styles or Meta programs
on this basis, leading to metaprogram tests such as iWAM.
Use of personality testing
Research published by David Dunning of Cornell University, Chip
Heath of Stanford University and Jerry M. Suls of the University
of Iowa reveals that observers who are not involved in any type
of relationship with an individual are better judges of the individual's
relationships and abilities. These workers have studied a large
body of investigations into self-evaluation, indicating that individuals
may have flawed views about themselves and their social relationships,
sometimes leading to decisions that can impact negatively on other
persons' lives and/or their own.
Psychological factors can also have an influence on the stock
market. A person's perception of fundamental and technical factors
can be influenced by many things including money. Some investors'
perceptions are frequently adjusted by economic news, earnings
reports, economic data, and political events. This perception
of the details of the stock marker depends a great deal on the
psychological profiles of investors, in particular their temperaments
and their willingness to incur risk. Psychological testing could
assist in the accumulation of a collective personal profiles of
investors.
The how-to-get-rich strategies of Donald Trump include comments
on the importance of personality in making business deals. He
discusses how the knowledge of the personalities of people involved
in his deals has contributed to his success. Despite dismissing
the relevance of psychological factors in earlier life, he now
regards Carl Jung's work as "important to financial success."
He has stated that Jung had been a "help in my business as
well as in my personal life ...reading Jung will give you insights
into yourself and the ways in which you and other people operate."
A study by American Management Association reveals that 39 percent
of companies surveyed use personality testing as part of their
hiring process. More people are using personality testing to evaluate
their business partners, their dates and their spouses. Salespeople
are using personality testing to better understand the needs of
their customers and to gain a competitive edge in the closing
of deals. College students have started to use personality testing
to evaluate their roommates. Lawyers are beginning to use personality
testing for criminal behavior analysis, litigation profiling,
witness examination and jury selection.
Source: This is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia
article Personality
tests.
Personality tests - history and information
A
brief history of personality tests
Eysenck
Personality Questionnaire (in German, with a focus on the German
version)
Personality
testing through data mining
A
brief history and advice on the "DiSC" personality test
Personality
Type study of an orthodox Christian theological psychology
Test
by Simon Baron-Cohen to determine empathizing and systemizing
quotient
Personality
Test for Children
Free
Personality Test for Children
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