Personality tests — what are they about?

On the Internet, on many sites you can find various personality tests — some serious, others humorous. Why are we doing them? The idea is simple — get to know yourself better, and for a psychologist or psychotherapist — get to know the client better. depending on how many points you have scored, that person is tested, but require an in-depth analysis conducted by an experienced psychologist. After all, online personality tests can be useful for working on yourself.

Why take a personality test?

Free psychological tests are, in most cases, harmless, and sometimes useful, because they give you knowledge about certain aspects of your personality that we were not aware of. There are many reasons to take this online psychological test:

1. By doing this analysis, you have a chance to get to know yourself better, to find out where certain behaviors come from and how they affect us. Thanks to this, you can better prepare for certain situations, check which skills are leading and which ones need work and improvement. You can find your strengths and weaknesses and make some changes based on that knowledge.
2. By taking the Personality and Skills Test, you can make informed choices about your studies, career, and advancement. By knowing your strengths, you will be able to make more effective choices that will affect the future.
3. Personality and strengths tests can help you score better in job interviews, can help you connect with other people, and communicate better.
4. Another, no worse, motive is simply entertainment and the desire to find out something interesting about ourselves that we may not have known about. For the most part, this is harmless entertainment if we treat such tests casually and with a grain of salt.

Popular free personality tests

The biggest problem with free online personality and skill tests is that they aren’t perfect, and the large selection of them makes it hard to decide on anything in particular, especially when we need a fairly thorough analysis. The most important advice is not to take them too literally. They should be treated as an interesting experience and an opportunity to look inside yourself, and not as an oracle.

Since we already know that free personality tests are primarily used to better understand ourselves and should be considered psychological fun, let’s present three interesting versions.

1. The MBTI is the most common psychological indicator used to determine personality type, which divides people into introverts and extroverts and distinguishes between personality functions that make up perception-intuition, thinking-feeling, judgment-observation pairs. The test distinguishes 16 personality types, defined by a four-letter code. Each letter defines 4 personality aspects related to preferences and natural inclinations; are divided into a source of vital energy, a way of obtaining information, a way of making decisions and a way of life.
2. Ennegram is another very popular online personality test that distinguishes 9 main types: perfectionist, donor, conqueror, individualist, observer, loyalist, enthusiast, boss, conciliator. The system determines not only the personality types themselves, but also the relationships between them, which is why companies sometimes use Ennegram to create teams.
3. NEO-FFI is a popular free personality test and is considered the most reliable of the three. It contains up to 240 questions and is based on a 5 personality factor model (neurotoxicity, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness). You will learn more about yourself based on the percentage of each trait assigned to him.

What is the difference between online tests and tests with a psychologist?

Online personality tests should be considered illustrative and are not used to diagnose or solve problems. To conduct an in-depth personality analysis, you will need more than a free internet test. Only a qualified person who knows how to ask questions and interpret the results can give a fair and reliable assessment. This is especially important when it comes to tests for personality disorders, psychological tests required to perform certain professions or functions. The psychologist is able to evaluate not only the dry results themselves, but above all the person standing in front of him.

Reliable personality tests, proficiency tests, personality disorder tests, or other psychological and diagnostic tests must be administered by a psychologist. Having a reliable assessment and diagnosis, one can draw general conclusions and obtain comprehensive information about the further procedure, depending on the goal.