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9/18/23, 3:48 AMFinally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science | FiveThirtyEight

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What’s your personality, and what can it tell you about your true self? Those questions have launched a thousand online personality quizzes. But you can do better than those specious — yet irresistible — quizzes. You can take a personality quiz backed by science.

Meet the Big Five, the way most psychologists measure and test personality. It’s a system built on decades of research about how people describe one another and themselves. (You can read more about it in this article we published last year.) There are a couple of things that make it — and this quiz — different.

First, the Big Five doesn’t put people into neat personality “types,” because that’s not how personalities really work. Instead, the quiz gives you a score on five different traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,

PUBLISHED JAN. 16, 2019, AT 9:00 AM

Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. Take One That Isn’t.

Compare your results to those of your friends and family.

By Maggie Koerth and Julia Wolfe

9/18/23, 3:48 AMFinally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science | FiveThirtyEight

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negative emotionality and openness to experience. For each of those traits, you’re graded on a scale from 0 to 100, depending on how strongly you associate with that trait. So, for example, this quiz won’t tell you whether you’re an extravert or an introvert — instead, it tells you your propensity toward extraversion. Every trait is graded on a spectrum, with a few people far out on the extremes and a lot of people in the middle.

The other thing that makes the Big Five different is it lets you easily compare your score to others’. We’re going to show you how your personality compares with that of the average American. And once you get your results, you can invite friends and relatives to compare your personality to theirs. (In the meantime, you’ll be stuck comparing yourself to the average FiveThirtyEight staffer.)

So what are you waiting for? Find out who you really are — take the quiz for yourself!

YOUR BIG FIVE SCORES

Openness To experience

Ag re ea bl en es s

Conscientiousness Negative emotionality

Extraversion

252525

505050

757575

100100100

Your results How you compare

National average

FiveThirtyEight staffers

71 out of 100

79 out of 100

79 out of 100

38 out of 100

83 out of 100

Openness to experience

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Negative emotionality

Extraversion

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9/18/23, 3:48 AMFinally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science | FiveThirtyEight

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But wait — there’s more! Each of the Big Five traits has something different to tell you about your life, and all five break down into subtraits. For example, someone can be highly extraverted because they’re really social or because they’re super assertive. We’re going to show you those subtraits too. Although scientists generally agree on the Big Five traits, the specific subtraits are still being debated. We’re using the ones that have been identified by Christopher Soto, a professor of psychology at Colby College in Maine. Soto and his colleague Oliver John developed a major Big Five test, the BFI- 2. (You can read more about it on the website for Soto’s lab.) We’ve used questions from that quiz with their permission and consulted with Soto in the development of our quiz. Read on to see what each trait reveals about who you really are.

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE 71 out of 100

High openness to experience: You’ve probably tried on several personal styles and hobbies during your life, and your curious brain is actively seeking new things to explore. Your identity may be flexible and open to change, but you’re likely to find success in careers that value that — the arts, for instance. Don’t trap yourself in a “Theater Kid” box, though. People with high openness also do well in careers that involve investigation and discovery. They might become scientists, lawyers or investigative journalists — basically weaponizing their intellectual curiosity and willingness to try new things and explore new ideas. Be aware, though, that dangerous drugs are among the things you’re more likely to be willing to try. Substance use disorders are a serious risk.

AGREEABLENESS 79 out of 100

Aesthetic sensitivity

Creative imagination

Intellectual curiosity

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Your openness to experience subtraits How you compare

National average

FiveThirtyEight staffers

9/18/23, 3:48 AMFinally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science | FiveThirtyEight

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High agreeableness: You may feel a deep identification with the possibly-too-trusting, unfailingly polite and relentlessly helpful Ned Flanders. High agreeableness is associated with religiousness and with compassion. The highly agreeable aren’t merely the people feeding the hungry and building community — they’re often the ones leading the organizations that do those things. And the benefits of being agreeable start early. Highly agreeable kids are less likely to be bullied and are more likely to have strong relationships with peers. They do better in school. And some studies that have followed agreeable kids into adulthood found that their youthful good nature appears to be predictive of success in school, work and relationships. Things look pretty goodily-woodily for you, neighboreeno.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 79 out of 100

High conscientiousness: You are one of the organized, the responsible, the possibly just-a-wee- bit boring. The highly conscientious can be thought of as the carriers of tradition. They’re likely to be religious and join organized clubs like the Elks or the local bowling league. People like you work hard, and your boss probably loves your well-planned productivity. You’re likely politically conservative. And your sense of commitment and attention to the little details make you great to date and stable in marriage. If all of that fails to sell you to a potential partner, try this: Some research suggests that the spouses of highly conscientious people can end up with better health than they otherwise would have. Frankly, “hey, baby, I’ll increase your positive health outcomes” may well be the most “highly conscientious” pickup line imaginable.

Compassion

Respectfulness Trust

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Your agreeableness subtraits How you compare

National average

FiveThirtyEight staffers

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NEGATIVE EMOTIONALITY 38 out of 100

Moderate negative emotionality: You don’t exactly have a propensity toward sadness, anger and anxiety. But you also aren’t exactly lacking those tendencies, either. All the Big Five traits operate on a spectrum — the people in the middle tend to experience a little of what both poles feel to the extreme. And that means you’re also likely getting a taste of the outcomes correlated with both those poles, too. People who score high on negative emotionality have rocky relationships — maybe you’ve had one relationship that brought that side out more than others. The low negative emotionality folks will cheerfully work the same job for decades with no burnout — maybe you take a little longer to reach burnout stage (even if you eventually do). If you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey, doesn’t that just make me a normal human?” Well, statistically, yes, that would be how bell curves work, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry. There’s probably another personality trait where you’re more extreme.

Organization

Productiveness Responsibility

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The post Whats your personality, and what can it tell you about your true self? Those questions have launched a thousand online personality quizzes. first appeared on Writeden.