Student Resources
Personality Tests
You rarely find personality tests online. Of course you do find some, not so serious, but definitely entertaining ones. We are not talking about them. We are talking of the standardized and accepted personality tests. You do not find them online. This is because certain tests must be administered in controlled conditions and then scored and interpreted by trained professionals. Most personality tests fall into this category. You would not want an unskilled person to look at your X-ray and treat you for a fracture. Would you? The same thing applies to psychological tests. Only a trained professional can interpret the results correctly.
Personality tests attempt to measure an individual's personal traits scientifically. Some standardized personality tests consist of lists of personal questions requiring yes or no answers. The answers can be analyzed for various characteristics. For example, a person might score high in social introversion, which would indicate a strong preference for being alone. Such a person might find scientific research more satisfying as a career than teaching science in a classroom.
Another type of personality test, the projective test , requires individuals to tell what certain images mean to them. In a Rorschach test, for example, a person describes what he or she sees in a number of standardized inkblots. A trained counsellor can often recognize behavioural tendencies in these descriptions. Psychologists use personality tests as clues for further study of an individual. They do not regard them as conclusive evidence about the individual's personality.
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