So, I'm an "Experimenter" (big shock!)--along with 5% of the world's pop--and these wise words were offered:
"Don't despair. You're really a good person at heart."
Fortuntately for me, I'm consoled by the fact that "Other EXPERIMENTERS from the entertainment world include: Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway in Contact, Christopher Lloyd as Doc in Back to the Future, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia".
Yes, I've always fancied myself the Indiana Jones of the Social Psychology world (uh, yeah) but when it comes to Christopher Lloyd, I feel more like Reverend Jim.
The test itself seems to be modeled on the Myers-Briggs personality inventory (introvert vs. extravert; sensing vs. perceiving; thinking vs. feeling; and there's one other I forgot). As far as I understand the Myers-Briggs is mostly used to try to place people into professions (like the Strong Interest Inventory where I learned I should be a teacher or an artist or a plumber; okay I can't remember but that was funny to write). From my view of personality theory, it isn't widely respected outside of counseling circles.
Now, as far as personality itself. Personality is all about consistency in behavior--do people express the same traits across situations? It was and is incredibly controversial because judging "consistency" is difficult (who do you ask? how many different situations? what "traits" do you assess?). As far as that last question, consensus has lately revolved around the Big Five (OCEAN is the acronym I use): Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These five "factors" were derived from an analysis of all the person-focused adjectives in the English dictionary. They hang together fairly well, seem to be predictive of behavior, and researchers are starting to demonstrate that they have some genetic component (in twins studies). Nevertheless, as a social psychologist, I'm required to state that personality dimensions almost always interact with situational features to produce behavior. Thus, when Theresa argues that there may be no such thing as personality, I'm cautiously inclined to agree--after all, people do tend to change in different situations and the consistency you think you see in your friends might be shaped by your presence. Of course, the consistency you think you see in yourself could be faulty too. Hence, the problem in self-report tests like the Family Wonder test I just took. I do take personality seriously, however, despite these caveats--I think there is some there there.
Posted by at February 21, 2001 05:37 PM