Know Yourself Better with These Free Personality Tests

Personality tests are always popular on social media sites. I think it’s because they focus, at least initially, on us as individuals. And who doesn’t like to spend time thinking about yourself? However, they can also be a powerful tool to help us work with our teammates more effectively.

Before we jump into the quizzes, let’s discuss the elephant in the room: validity. While I have found that most of these personality tests provide me with what I consider to be a clear and accurate picture of myself, they should all be taken with a grain of salt. For one thing, your personality type may be different the next time you take the quiz as our moods and our responses to the world change over time. Secondly, if you don’t like the personality the test assigns you, please don’t be upset. It is not 100% scientific, just a rough approximation of who you are based on the answers to a few simple questions.

Getting the Best Results from These Tests

The key to getting an “accurate” result is to answer the questions honestly. Sometimes we tend to answer them in terms of how we would like to see ourselves instead of how we actually are, or have been in the past. So tell the truth about yourself even it if hurts. And keep in mind that no test in the world should be allowed to define who you are and how you interact with others.

Now let’s take a look at some free personality tests and how they might be used by both adults and students.

My Creative Type

Adobe provides this first test. Their viewpoint is that everyone has a creative type. “The Creative Types test is an exploration of the many faces of the creative personality. Based in psychology research, the test assesses your basic habits and tendencies—how you think, how you act, how you see the world—to help you better understand who you are as a creative.”

The quiz has 15 statements. Each statement has you pick one of you answers. From that, they can tell you your type, along with your creative traits and what other personality type you should pair up with for maximum efficienty. No registration, log in, or email is required. You can download your profile at the end or share it with others via a generic link about your type.

There are eight distinct personality types in this quiz.

• Adventurer
• Artist
• Dreamer
• Innovator
• Maker
• Producer
• Thinker
• Visionary

The titles of these alone are worth the time to take the quiz. (Think of the power of a student believing that he is an “innovator” or an “adventurer!”)

I really enjoyed this test. The animations between each question are amazing and I actually took the test again just to watch them. My type came out to be Producer, which was no surprise to me. (It fits in with my types in other tests I’ve taken.) This activity would seem to be a great one for the start of a campus inservice or the beginning of a new school year. It would also be a fantastic kickoff to a unit of learning that has a creative side.

Eclectic Energies Enneagram Tests

This test is somewhat offputting from the start, simply due to its name. “The Enneagram is a personality typing system that consists of nine different types… The nine types (or ‘enneatypes,’ ‘ennea’ means ‘nine”‘) are universally identified by the numbers 1 to 9.” The nine personality types are then placed on a symbol as shown below.

The Classical Enneagram Test starts with nine questions per personality, asking fewer questions as you go along and the test is able to begin to hone in on your distinct personality. If you don’t want to spend that much time, you can take the Enneagram Test with Instinctual Variant (what???), which gives you pairs of character traits to rate. It is quicker than the other test, and indicates your instinctual subtype as well. If you’re into statistics, you might want to read this section about how they tried to make the test as reliable as possible.

This test has tons of information and articles on the web, if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

One Last Personality Test to Take

Finally, if you want one more personality quiz to take, check out my past blog on the 16 Personalities test and compare your results. What have you learned about yourself now?