Personality types, tests, and honest answers
Ten posts on the same question, taken seriously and not oversold. Interview answers, the frameworks worth knowing, and an honest read on what a name-based test can and cannot tell you (including the bit where we tell you to go take a different test).
How to Answer "What Type of Person Are You?" in an Interview
Give one trait, one piece of evidence, and one trade-off. Name the trait, prove it with something you actually did, then say what it costs you. The trade-off is the part almost nobody offers, and it is the part the interviewer remembers.
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Personality Test by Name: What It Can Actually Tell You
A personality test by name gives you a type from your first name alone, in about ten seconds. It is entertainment rather than measurement: it cannot know anything about you, so anything accurate in the result came from you recognising yourself in it.
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What Your Name Says About Your Personality
Your name says almost nothing about your personality and a great deal about how strangers will guess at it. People reliably infer traits from the sounds in a name, and those inferences are reliably wrong. The real effects of a name land on how others treat you.
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Introvert or Extrovert? The One Question That Settles It
Ask yourself one thing: after three hours with people, do you feel charged up or wrung out? Extroverts gain energy from stimulation and other people. Introverts spend it and need quiet to get it back. It is about your battery, not how talkative you are.
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Type A Personality Traits: The List, and the Catch
Type A personality traits are competitiveness, urgency about time, drive, impatience, and difficulty switching off. The label came from 1950s cardiology rather than psychology, which is why it is so widely used and so lightly evidenced as a personality measure.
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Big Five vs Myers-Briggs: Which One Should You Trust?
The Big Five scores you on five continuous traits and has the strongest research support. Myers-Briggs sorts you into one of sixteen types and is far more popular. If you want evidence, use the Big Five. If you want a shared vocabulary for a team, Myers-Briggs is easier to say out loud.
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Enneagram vs Myers-Briggs: What Each One Is Good At
Myers-Briggs describes how you process information and make decisions, and gives you one of sixteen types. The Enneagram describes the fear or desire underneath your behaviour, and gives you one of nine. Neither has the research support of the Big Five, and they are answering different questions.
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Describe Your Personality in Three Words: 30 That Work
Pick three words that are specific, provable, and could plausibly be false about someone else. Say the word, give one sentence of evidence, and connect it to the work. Avoid words everyone claims: hard-working, passionate, dedicated, motivated.
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What Type of Friend Are You? The Five Kinds
Most people are one of five kinds of friend: the Anchor, the Spark, the Confidant, the Truth-teller or the Fixer. Each is genuinely valuable and each has one failure mode. The type you are shows up in what people come to you for, not in what you would like to be known for.
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Can Your Personality Change? What the Research Shows
Yes. Personality traits shift gradually across adulthood, at roughly a tenth of a standard deviation per decade. Conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to rise with age, while neuroticism, extraversion and openness tend to drift down. Big life events and deliberate effort can both speed it up.
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