tail

Here is your professional development for the day: www.16personalities.com

(that test is a little harder to fool than most and seems to be lacking the necessary accommodations to situational personality, but it’s still one of the rare fun ones)

Yeah, there’s a (I’m sure calculated but also reductive) tendency in personality tests to make things that are non-binary very binary.

Would I rather see my kid as kind or smart? Yes.

That one stood out to me. Knowing my kid is kind in spades, I leaned a bit towards smart. Also: interesting UX choice to make the bubbles grow the further from neutral they got.

Yeah, good but subtle representation of intensity

The “logic or heart is more important in decisions” question always comes up on these, and it’s one of the worst either/ors.

I need to know the question, dammit

Amen!

I mean, indubitably

“Everyone’s views should be respected regardless of factual support”—um, define “respected”.

Exactly. Opinions are dumb. Real views are rare enough to be nurtured.

And maybe acknowledged as worth engaging, if not respected

Exactly. As with all of these questions , there’s not just a continuum of response, but a continuum of contexts in which to respond that helps govern the response.

I can “respect” Christian views all day. I probably won’t “respect” them in regard to science education or social policy.

And that doesn’t even get into the particular Christian espousing the view.

Bullseye. I’ve been reading C. S. Lewis’ nonfiction again and I absolutely respect the care and development of his arguments, even if I don’t espouse his fundamental beliefs.

Yes. This is a better than average test though, if got no other reason than presentation.

My results are slightly different than usual for a Meyers-Briggs type test, that’s interesting. Although I haven’t taken one for years so maybe it’s just personality drift.

Or “personal growth”, ha

Way to personally grow! I got Debater, what did you get?

“Mediator”

(I’m precisely 79% extraverted and 64% assertive)

We can form a debate club

Interesting. Did you see the celebrities you might resemble?

Not yet, still reading my results

68% introvert, 63% assertive

First four celebs: Shakespeare, Tolkien, Björk, Johnny Depp

Damn, that’s spot on. Especially the Bjork.

I got Weird Al, The Joker, Jack Sparrow, and Jim Halpert from the Office. Ooh, and Mark Twain.

I’m obviously most proud of Weird Al.

Oh yeah the fictional characters: Frodo, Anne of Green Gables, Fox Mulder and Amelie

Weird Al is the badge of pride. Mark Twain and the Joker, also good.

The only dissonant note in the write-up so far is the frequent mention of my optimism and “rosy outlook”.

Maybe you’re optimistic and rosy but just don’t know it.

Or maybe you express it, um, differently [EMOJI]

Apparently my career path is freelance because I don’t like managing or being managed.

They also tell me that I consider thinking to be working, and nobody else does. That’s spot on.

Oh yes, very much so. Both that you think that and that it’s actual work.

The career and workplace sections of the test results were surprisingly accurate.

Now I’m looking at the write-ups for the type I tested as previously and the type that shares all the same letters except the one where my answers were the most in the middle. For fun.

Oooh, let me know how that one goes.

(and yes, the workplace bits were spot on for me as well—basically, worklife is gonna be hella hard and I stand a good chance of being a solid failure with a good sense of humor)

By the way, I’m going to start referring to you as a cross between Lisa Kudrow and Fox Mulder. Seems about right [EMOJI]

Also: looking at the “adjacent” personality types was interesting. My result was INFP, with the T/F spectrum almost even. The INTP type had lots of resonances, as did the INTJ, which is the type I’ve gotten on Meyers-Briggs tests in the past. I guess that’s all at least pseudoscientifically consistent.

The insight of the career/workplace sections probably comes at least in part from the job-oriented context of the test as a whole. Workplace dynamics (and people’s interactions and comfort with those dynamics) are a lot more quantifiable than personality itself.

Long ago, my Meyers-Briggs results were pretty consistently INFP, but then again, I tended to answer questions according to how I wanted to be at the time or in such a way as to be “neutral” on every spectrum.

Obviously the letters aren’t either/or, but it’s hard for me to imagine you getting an introvert score without actively gaming the system. Not a criticism, just an observation.

Of course, I think, since the questions are based in behavior and response, an unchanging type diagnosis would indicate impoverished personal growth regardless of how your answer changed.

I mean introvert/extrovert is semi-scientific and probably relatively consistent, but the rest are pretty hard to reliably pin down.

I wonder, though, how much personalities are even self-noticed by people except when they’re called up in conflicts or in artificial situations like this. And regarding personal growth, I wonder if personalities are limits and growth is the means that are taken within those limits. I might be an introvert when I want to be (when it is advantageous) but that doesn’t alter my fundamental predilections.

This could get very “mind-explody” real quick, but: I’d say that personality is only a viable concept if in practice it’s inherently not conscious. Doesn’t mean it’s static or that it has no conscious components, but most of one’s self has to be background tasks (for lack of a better term), otherwise no predictable “self” would cohere. An actively curated self is affectation, which other people seem to be able to recognize pretty easily, perhaps because of the effort involved in keeping up the affectation.

So on one level I agree that personality is a limit, but I don’t think that it’s a limit to growth. “Growing as a person” is typically seen as becoming something you currently aren’t (or strengthening a weak trait), which implies that your personality can take on new aspects. The process of maturity kind of assumes this.

So I’d say that when you “choose to be an introvert”, it’s pure adoption of convenient behaviors and not in the realm of personality at all.

The whole subject gets a bit sticky since identity is in a basic way entirely performative in a combination of conscious and unconscious choices, and as you said, most people don’t think about their selves at all until they’re taking a quiz.

I’m mostly with you. I’ve been a personality agnostic (probably skeptic is more accurate) for a long time (probably started during another phase of self-de-romanticization), but haven’t exactly worked hard to define personality. I wouldn’t say personality is a limit on growth, just that it’s the lawn you were given to play in. You can venture out to other meadows, but you always tend to return and cultivate it according to what you learned. Totally agree about the convenient behaviors.

Alright, we’ve settled that: the self is a lie.

Just two of our many masks!