What does a personality test measure?
A personality test describes how you tend to think, feel and act in a stable way over time. It does not measure intelligence, worth or mental health: it describes styles. There are many models, but the one with the most research behind it is the Big Five, which sums up personality in five dimensions that have been replicated in numerous studies.
That is why this test uses the Big Five and not a system of closed “types”: each dimension is a continuum, and most people sit somewhere in the middle, not at an extreme.
The five dimensions
How much energy you get from social contact and action.
How much you prioritise cooperation, trust and empathy.
Organisation, consistency and goal orientation.
How intensely you react to stress and difficult emotions.
Curiosity, imagination and willingness to try the new.
How this test works
You will see 20 short statements and answer from “Not at all” to “Very much” according to how well they describe you. Each dimension is measured with four statements (some are worded in reverse, and we score them accordingly). At the end you will see your lower, middle or higher level on each, with an explanation of what that usually means.
The statements come from the Mini-IPIP scale (Donnellan et al., 2006), a short Big Five measure built from items of the International Personality Item Pool, which is in the public domain.
Is this personality test reliable?
The Big Five is the personality model with the most empirical support. The Mini-IPIP is a short version of an established measure (the 50-item IPIP) and showed acceptable psychometric properties in its validation studies (Donnellan et al., 2006; Martínez-Molina & Arias, 2018). With only four items per dimension, its precision at the individual level is limited. These are the specific limitations of this test:
- It has only 20 items: it is a rough estimate, not a full assessment.
- We do not compare you with the population, only with the midpoint of the scale, because we have no norms.
- It is a self-report: it reflects how you see yourself, which can differ from how others see you or from how you are in other contexts.
- It is not a diagnosis or a psychological assessment.
Use it to reflect. For hiring, clinical or educational decisions, use accredited instruments and professionals.
What about the MBTI or the enneagram?
The MBTI (16 types) is very popular, but research questions the reliability of splitting people into closed categories, which is why we do not use it here. The enneagram is a different model, focused on motivations rather than traits, useful for reflection though with less evidence. If you want to compare tools, we have a comparison of self-knowledge tests and an article on the difference between a personality test and a self-knowledge test.
After the test
Personality describes your usual style; it does not explain why you react the way you do in intimacy, under pressure or in conflict. For that there are other layers: your attachment style, your defences or your temperamental pattern. The full self-discovery test crosses them into a personalised report.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the personality test take?
Is it really free?
Are my answers saved?
What is the Big Five?
What does a high level of neuroticism mean?
Can my personality change?
Does this test replace a psychological assessment?
Scientific references and bibliography
- Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192–203.
- Martínez-Molina, A., & Arias, V. B. (2018). Balanced and positively worded personality short-forms: Mini-IPIP validity and cross-cultural invariance. PeerJ, 6, e5542. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5542
- Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26–42.
- McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90.
- International Personality Item Pool. A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality Traits and Other Individual Differences. ipip.ori.org.