How many personality tests are there

It is used in twenty-six countries to assess employees, students, soldiers, and potential marriage partners. It is used by Fortune companies and universities, in self-improvement seminars and wellness retreats.

It was a long descent. Briggs and Myers were a mother-and-daughter team. They devoted their lives to their system, and they kept the faith for a very long time. If they had not, there would be no MBTI today. The mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, was born in When she died, in , the test she inspired was all but forgotten. The daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, was born in Since Katharine began studying personality differences when Isabel was four, this means that the two women persisted for almost eighty years before the MBTI became the commercial bonanza it is today.

According to Emre, personality testing has become a two-billion-dollar industry. But Briggs and Myers were not in the personality game for the money. They truly believed that they had discovered a way to make work more efficient and human beings less unhappy. Both books describe Briggs and Myers as intellectually driven women in an era when career opportunities for intellectually driven women were slim.

Neither one had any training in psychology or in psychiatry—or, for that matter, in testing—and neither ever worked in a laboratory or an academic institution. A third woman, Mary McCaulley, who came upon the test in , the year Katharine died, was a professor of psychology at the University of Florida.

But, essentially, the MBTI was home-cooked. It arose out of one of the most mundane domestic circumstances—the fact that the members of a family often differ in tiny but stubbornly irreducible ways. One spouse is a planner and the other is spur of the moment. One child has a million friends and another child is a loner. In the home, differences like these are magnified, because people are less self-conscious and because enforced intimacy generates friction. But at work, too, people have noticeably divergent ways of operating.

There is no better way to be—logical or emotional, spontaneous or organized, party bro or brooder. These are not imperfections to be corrected. Maybe I am not as empathetic as I thought I was…. Apparently the overwhelming majority of the 2. On the other hand, according to the author Annie Murphy Paul, as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested for a second time. She argues that the 16 distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no scientific basis whatsoever.

The only letter I felt really confident about was the last one, P, because I do prize spontaneity and flexibility. Unlike my husband and many of my colleagues who are Js, I'm not keen on plans and timetables. But if I were applying for a job where I knew they needed a good organiser, I might be tempted to answer differently. Employees often sense that management is looking for a particular type for a specific post.

A Sydney- based executive who used to work for an international bank, admitted to cheating on the test at the start of her career when she was desperate for promotion. But I was conscious that I was doing it.

The investigative writer and self-proclaimed "myth buster by trade" Barbara Ehrenreich, who has been a strong critic of personality testing for years, thinks employers have a greater tendency to worry about whether a candidate is I or E, than P or J. Even if what you are doing is looking at figures all day. They want everyone in the environment to be perky and positive and upbeat at all times. Yet these days more employees are expected to work in teams - to "groupthink" to use the jargon - and possibly communicate effectively with people on the other side of the world whom they have never met.

There is a perception that extroverts are better at this. The Myers Briggs Foundation discourages the use of the test for hiring and firing, seeing it primarily as a means of getting employees to think about how they interact with colleagues and work as a team.

But as my niece Andrea knows, personality tests are used to select staff, even waitresses and bookshelf stackers. Incidentally, she took neither of those jobs, opting for some paid research at university instead. But that reminds me of one of my own techniques for assessing personality - I find the way someone treats a waiter or waitress surprisingly revealing.

While this information may not immediately solve the problem and should never be used as an excuse for giving up on trying to get along, it can give you the tools you need to start handling the differences better or start some productive conversations with the problematic person.

It can help you identify which types of careers would be the best fit for you. It can help you understand what drains you and what energizes you. Have you ever wondered why some projects get you excited and full of energy while others seem to suck the life out of you? Finding out what fills you up and what creates extra stress for you can not only give you insight into why you enjoy the things you do, but it can also help you find more effective ways to refresh and recharge.

It can help you discover your leadership strengths. Our AI resume builder helps you write a compelling and relevant resume for the jobs you want.

Some are highly nuanced and detailed, while others are more general and intended to give you a broader understanding of how you operate. Build a professional resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. People who take this test receive their scores in each category to see how strong they are in each of them instead of just the one they score highest in. This is a popular test for team-building exercises , especially in corporate settings, because it shows which roles individuals will naturally fall into and their strengths in relation to the team.

This is one of the most popular personality tests because it can provide highly specific information about how you think and interact with others. This test gives you one of 16 personality types, and these types cover several factors about who you are:.

Website: DiscProfile. Introduced by Walter Clark in , the DiSC personality profile was designed to measure dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. The questionnaire was created predominantly for organizational use and can be used for leadership and executive development, management training, sales training, conflict management, team building , customer services, communication and job coaching.

The DiSC assessment contains 28 questions, where the participant picks a word that is most like them, and a word that is least like them for each question. The DiSC assessment is designed to be easy to use, easy to administer and to be delivered by anyone. Prices for this assessment range depending on the type of tests, the size and type of team it is being applied to and the number of people.

For more information, visit the DiSC website. This test is also included in a WorkStyle profile. Website: OpenPsychometrics. The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire 16PF was first published by Cattle, Tatsuoka, and Eber in , however, since then there have been more additions. This questionnaire is based on Allports proposed personality traits, which Cattle Narrowed down to , and then later down to 16, to design the tool. The questionnaire is designed to measure normal behaviors and can bed used for career development, employees selection, marital help, and counseling; but it does have some clinical reference.

It measures: warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, tension. Website: Hexaco. The HEXACO model was constructed in the year to assess some of the personality dimensions, and theoretical interpretations, that had been outlined in earlier studies. The model measures six major personality dimensions, namely: Honesty-Humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience.

The inventory is comprised of questions for the full-length assessment or questions for the half-length assessment. Website: Acer. Developed by Costa and McCrae in the 's and later finalized in , the Revised NEO Personality Inventory NEO-PI-R was designed to measure and test the Big-5 personality traits that are outlined in the five-factor model - namely: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

The inventory also has six subcategories of each of the five traits, for instance, neuroticism is comprised of anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability to stress. Whereas extraversion is comprised of the subcategories of warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking and positive emotion.

The inventory can be used for counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, and doctors, it has also been increasingly used in organizations over the years. Pricing varies depending on what version you buy and how you administer it. For more information on the product, how to administer it and how to buy it, visit this website. Website: Myersbriggs.

The test is based upon an earlier theory that was introduced by Carl Jung - a theory that humans experience the world using four psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking. The MBTI measures whether an individual is extroverted or introverted, whether they have a sensing preference or an intuitive preference when it comes to processing information, whether they prefer to make decisions by thinking or feeling and whether they have a judging or perceiving preference about how they do things.

The results from the questionnaire then place the person onto one of 16 personalities, each has their own strengths and weaknesses, such as the ENJF personality type.

The MBTI can be used for individual development, employee development, team development, team productivity and to increase team effectiveness. The questionnaire consists of 93 forced-choice questions, where the participant matches a word with a statement.

The pricing of this tool will vary depending on what type of Myer-briggs type indicator you buy and where you purchase it from. For more information on the MBTI, visit their website. This test is also included when you purchase a WorkStyle profile. Website: Iluguru. The Eysenck Personality Inventory measures personality on two independent dimensions: extroversion versus introversion and neuroticism versus stability. The questionnaire generates three scores, the 'E' score which indicates how extroverted you are, an 'N' score which measures how neurotic you are, and a 'lie' score, which measures how much you have lied on the questionnaire to be socially desirable.

The pricing of the questionnaire varies depending on the scoring system you use and whether it is administered online. Website: SimilarMinds. Not to be confused with the Eysenck Personality Inventory, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was later introduced by Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck to measure personality across three dimensions of temperament: extroversion versus introversion, neuroticism versus stability and psychoticism versus socialization.

This questionnaire isn't a particularly well know personality test so versions, and information on the questionnaire, are hard to find, however, there are some online versions available here.

Website: PearsonClinical. The inventory does have a high clinical reference and is often used to diagnose and assist treatment plans for mental illnesses. However, it can also be used in occupational settings to screen candidate - especially to measure the psychological stability of those in high-risk professions, such as the police force, pilots or the army. The MMPI has been changed and revised over the years, but the most recent version, the MMPI-2, contains true-false questions and takes between a 60 to 90 minutes to complete.

Website: Birkman. Introduced by Roger Birkman, the Birkman method is an online assessment that measures personality, social perception and occupational interests. The assessment is designed to provide insight into what specifically drives a person's behaviors in an occupational setting and social context.

The questionnaire has 32 scales altogether, 10 that describe occupational preferences, 11 that describe effective behaviors and 11 that describe interpersonal behaviours and environmental expectations.

The method can be used to assess personality in any setting, and is often used in organisational settings for leadership development, team building, career exploration, talent selection and to enhance sales and negotiation. The assessment consists of questions, of which are true-false questions and 48 of which are multiple-choice. This personality assessment takes around 30 minutes to complete online.