I just completed my PersonalDNA - a fun, free and eerily accurate personality test. According to the DNA test results, I’m a considerate creator which is explained a bit more in the personalDNA map below. The map can be read by moving your mouse over any part of the box or strip to learn more about the traits that the colors represent. For those who prefer words, the full report can be found here.
Not only can you share you tests with others but you can also invite them to assess your personality. Click here if you’d like to asses me - I’m curious to see different assessments and if they match up at all. I must admit, all of the traits seem rather positive so it’s hard to go wrong however you answer. There is no obligation from either myself or the system to share the test once completed, and I’d be happy to return the favour. I?��Ǩ�Ѣd also like to see how other people did on the test, so feel free to post links your own assessments in the comments section.
In addition to being a pretty darn accurate personality test and a fun way to get to know others, the test itself has a pretty cool interface. Instead of using your standard checkboxes and radio buttons, the interface was designed with sliding scales and animations. Having a range of values makes the questions a lot easier to answer as you aren’t stuck in the “yes/no” or “yes/maybe/no” trap. My favourite was the glass animation where you had to “pour” your answers into a glass. I don’t know if these features make the results more accurate, but they sure do make writing the test all the more fun.
Update: I had a few friends asses me and it turns out that in addition to being a Considerate Creator, I’m a Dynamic Inventor, Animated Creator, and a Benevolent Creator x 2. Thanks to everyone who helped out - it was a lot of fun!
Very interesting. Seems like a mix of the AMPM and the Myers Briggs. For what it’s worth, I’m a benevolent creator. And of course that seem right, to me at least - but, well, of course it would: I took the test! So what’s nice about this is the ability of friends to cross-evaluate a subject, hopefully yielding a more interesting picture of the subject.
One small critical comment: as with most of these instruments, it assumes that ‘oppossing’ traits are rare, or can be quantitifed by a 2-order matix relationship. Suppose someone really is both calm and hot-temperred, and also both happy and tempted to inflamed moments of fill with a sense of injustice at the world. Given only the possibilty to select one of these traits at a time (or, even less useful, some middle ground between them) precludes the accurate representation of such a person in the test. So a methodological assumption made with these tests is that such trait distribution is rare. It seems like a reasonable assumption, but, interestingly, it would be interesting how they could measure the prevelence of such trait combinations - for they certainly couldn’t use this test!
Another more fun worry, one sustained by the more Freudian sides of psychology, is that agents are terrible at self-assesment. Their own opinion of their selves may be flawed, or built out of some domininant ideology or archetype (think of gender), and thus possibly not reflective of their own ‘authentic’ nature. Probably this kind of thinking isn’t right; but it sure would be cool to be an online personality test that had some way of engaging in the ‘hermunetics of suspicion’, in order to ‘uncover more authentic modes of being.’ That would be one hell of a flash animation!
Thanks for the comments. I agree with you that it doesn’t handle opposing traits very well. This was something that came up while doing my own test as well as the test for others so I’m not sure how rare it is. Or perhaps I’ve been exposed to a unique sample of the population. ;)
I agree with you that self-assement is a difficult thing to do, however, I do have trouble with the notion that others can provide a more authentic view of the self. Certainly I have learnt a lot from how others have assesed me, but I would say that what I have learnt has to more to do with their opinions of me and less to do with my ‘authentic’ self. Perhaps another way to look at it would be that their assement has shed light on my public self which is a part of the authetic self, along with my private self, etc.
Regardless, I think that we are all in agreement in that persoanlity tests such as this act as a vehicle for limited yet entertaining self-discovery, and provide a good excuse to play around with cool animations and interfaces. ;)