Last semester, I enlisted Anthro 182—Culture and Personality or, as my prof insisted was a better title for the course, “Psychological Anthropology”.It was lots of fun. It was the perfect blend for me because I was interested in both Psychology and Anthropology—not to mention that my prof is a cool person who makes the subject even more interesting than it already is.

                One of our most unforgettable and usable lessons is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Profiling. It consists of categorizing people under the different types given in this personality inventory. It was really fun because placing people under categories made me feel…professional. Like I knew enough to be able to tell a person’s personality just by observing them.

                Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Almost all of the time I judge someone as Type this but when I make them take the test, it turns out that their type is something else. Like one time, I judged someone as ENFP but the test revealed that she was ISFJ. And another time, I profiled two characters in a movie but found that I got none of it right. It hurts that I rarely get more than one letter right. It’s like telling me that I have little to no profiling skills at all.

                But there is hope for me I guess. Practice makes better after all. Maybe I’ll profile some more people, read more about MBTI, study more about the profiling process. I might finally get it right one day if I just work harder.

I normally enjoy taking personality tests and reading the results, but lately I realized something while reading my test results for the above mentioned inventories.

                I realized that no matter how rigorously you study and revise a personality inventory, you will never be able to create a test that can sufficiently explain anyone’s personality. There will always be aspects in the test that will not fit the person. There will always be aspects lacking. And you will always be stereotyped and boxed by the results. Here’s a link to my results, in case you want to see them.

                Not that I’m saying that they are useless and should be done away with—nothing can be farther from the truth.  No one can deny the importance of describing one’s and other people’s personality because this helps us understand each other’s actions and way of thinking. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t take these descriptions too seriously. After all, personality traits are also subject to change despite being “stable over time and across situations”, so perfect adherence to the stereotypes in personality inventories will forever be impossible. And I’m thankful that it is so, because I cannot bear the thought of being stuck forever with traits that I’d rather do away with.

                I might take these tests again soon and see whether anything has changed. :)

P.S.: I took the tests on the following sites:

Cattell 16PF

It’s still kinda weird when I see the citation Costa & McRae, because Costa is almost the same as Costo. I might interchange them, haha.

Anyway, I took the Big Five test and it told me that I was low in openness. It said that I was not creative. I was not creative!? Fyi, I can do a LOT of things:

Draw traditionally and digitally

Play the violin, guitar, and piano

Sing and beatbox

Code websites and games

Create interactive modules with electronics and codes

Do tricks on a yoyo

Braid hair in four different styles and string in many ways

Crochet and knitting

And I’m most certain that I’m creative. Not to be boastful but I can’t really accept the test telling me that I’m not creative at all.

I was formally introduced to the Big Five traits when I was in my first year. Back then, the idea was so like psychology, and I felt like such a legitimate psychology major that I didn't really think much about what the existence of the test really entailed. Now I can think better about it, think more clearly about it.

The Big Five are comprised of the following: Openness (to Experience), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. In my first year, we were tasked to take a personality test and report our grade per facet. I remember getting Low in Openness, Very High in Conscientiousness, Moderate Extraversion, High Agreeableness, and Low Neuroticism. I was amenable to some of these results, but I thought the others were inaccurate and used incorrect or unreliable indicators for the facets. I'm actually a huge worrier, for example, but I just try to keep it in check, which is why manifestations don't really apply to me. Despite keeping it in check though, I am almost always in a state of worry over one thing or another, but the way it's being measured will never reveal such about me.

Some problems I had with the test were not really the "fault" of the test, per se, either. It was more to do with how I compartmentalize (as I've written about before) my life. I scored very high in Conscientiousness, but if you ask any of the people I live with, they will swear on their life that I'm one of the most disorganized people ever. I misplace earrings, I forget where I put money, I ask where my glasses are when they're on my head, I plop my things down on any available surface when I get home, and I pretty depend on our househelp for a lot of things. But when it comes to school work, org work, or official business, I'm very obsessive-compulsive; I'm a perfectionist. I am currently the publicity head of our organization, and I spend hours making publicity materials look their best and look beautiful. I make reviewers for my subjects, I dislike getting low grades (as I've also said before) - and this is the side of me that usually gets measured in personality tests, or at least, this is the side I think of first when I'm asked about organization.

I suppose that's one more weakness of personality tests in general - they assume that a person is self-aware enough that they can answer a test about themselves accurately, not taking into account that some people might be deluding themselves into thinking they act one way, when they're really acting in another. I've met some people like this, and I wonder if they are able to answer such inventories effectively.