A quick search of Google will present you with a variety of on-line personality tests. They’re all similar and employ questions of preference to determine your personality types. A strongly agree to strongly disagree format. The Myers Briggs test is a good example. All of the tests will give you an end result that supposedly analyses your traits and tendencies. At least as well as any test can evaluate a person without any direct contact. I’ve had to deal with the more extensive version of these, when someone in H.R. decided that it would be a great idea if all the alpha personalities in the office were forced to endure some self examination.
I’m not convinced the tests are accurate. I think that they highlight behavior that people favor because that behavior is easier or more comfortable. I don’t believe the tests are applicable to every situation, but they probably satisfy Vegas odds where six out of ten times the person tested will behave as the test results suggest.
I thought that today I would conduct an experiment with one of these tests. So, I found one and I answered the questions as honestly as I could. I then saved the results and went and found my wife to see if she had a few free minutes. She did, but for some reason was suspicious of what I wanted and why. After some assurances that my request of her was purely an intellectual exercise, she agreed to take the test as well.
But there was a twist.
I asked her to answer the questions for me, about me, but from her perspective. I expected that there would be some minor differences in our responses, but I’ve got to admit that I was surprised by the disparity of our results.
In fact, when I saw the two evaluations side by side my response was holy shit! That reaction caused my wife to immediately get defensive and remark to me that her initial take the test suspicion was validated. So, I needed to reassure her that my feeling wasn’t hurt. Instead of being insulted, I was intrigued at how the person I spend the most time with on the planet, had a very different assessment of me that I had of myself.
I should mention that my wife didn’t put me in the prick category. Maybe because there was no prick category. The rating system included levels of judgement vs empathy, intuitive vs researched and extrovert vs introvert. There were other sub-categories of personality types, but I wasn’t too concerned about them. What I found interesting was the difference in the results.
Those differences led to a kitchen table discussion that ended up being kind of illuminating. One remark that my wife made has lodged itself in my head and shall require further reflection. She felt as if I had answered the questions based on how I used to be, and she answered the questions based on my current state. She pointed out that I have become much more reflective and less social, now that I don’t have to compete in a shark infested work environment. She added that I somehow have retained my empathy but have diminished my sympathy. Translated, I think her last observation means that I understand the myriad of predicaments that people endure, but I only care about some of them.
So, now I have to try to comprehend why my view of myself is so different from my wife’s observations. I think that a gradual change over time is easy to miss if the change is happening to you. It could very well be true, that an alteration in how a person behaves is easier to recognize if you’re on the outside looking in. Which means that I’m going to spend some introspection time sorting out which of my behavioral tendencies were environmentally driven as opposed to inherent.
Did I adapt to compete and survive, but those adaptations were an anathema to my natural state? Am I shedding all of my disguises now that they’re no longer necessary?
And how the hell does a person retain empathy while diminishing sympathy? My head hurts a bit even thinking about the concept.
Regardless of a little bit of cranial annoyance, I think the exercise my wife and I went through with this test has value. I recommend that everyone grab a partner that’s close to them and replicate our experiment.
At the very least it should generate some good dinner conversation and maybe, just maybe provide an insight or two with an outside chance at an epiphany.
Worst case scenario, nothing of note refashions your understanding of your true identity. But you still get to talk about yourself and almost everyone likes that.