Personality Quizzes

You know those silly personality quizzes you see on Facebook or that pop as an advertisement when you're browsing the web? They say things like "What Disney Princess are you?" or "What does the way you clench your fist say about your personality type?" (I'm not making this up, I've taken quizzes like that when I'm bored.) They can be fun but they're generally pretty useless. So what's the point of them? Better yet why do people refer to them?

Have you ever had a conversation with someone when they say something like "Oh, have you taken this personality test?" and it's not something like "What flower are you?" but has a professional sounding name attached. So you shake your head and say no and they say, "Oh you should! It's so interesting."

Now these are intelligent people that we're talking about so where on earth are they coming from?

Well, believe it or not, there are companies who do crazy amounts of research to put some of these tests together. The serious ones that is. And other companies will have whole teams take the tests and restructure around the results. Crazy right? But what's crazier is it works! Some of those companies have amazing results!

So why do I know about this?

Well as you all know I'm a writer. And my current project is restructuring a book. One of the things I need to do is really find a way to bring my characters to life in more than just my own head. So I'm working on character profiles. A suggestion from a friend was to put the characters through a personality quiz.

By the way if you've ever taken a personality quiz (one of the serious ones) you know that some of the questions really make you think before you answer. So, now imagine doing that for someone else. It's not easy but I tried it for the first time yesterday and it was surprisingly helpful. It gave me insights into my character, Amy, that I hadn't had before.

There's a fun idea for your weekend, look up a recommended personality quiz online and see what results you get. Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't. If you're willing post a comment saying whether or not you agree with your results. I'd love to hear from you!