ENTRY 9: Boxing You—Cattel 16PF and OCEAN
I normally enjoy taking personality tests and reading the results, but lately I realized something while reading my test results for the above mentioned inventories.
I realized that no matter how rigorously you study and revise a personality inventory, you will never be able to create a test that can sufficiently explain anyone’s personality. There will always be aspects in the test that will not fit the person. There will always be aspects lacking. And you will always be stereotyped and boxed by the results. Here’s a link to my results, in case you want to see them.
Not that I’m saying that they are useless and should be done away with—nothing can be farther from the truth. No one can deny the importance of describing one’s and other people’s personality because this helps us understand each other’s actions and way of thinking. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t take these descriptions too seriously. After all, personality traits are also subject to change despite being “stable over time and across situations”, so perfect adherence to the stereotypes in personality inventories will forever be impossible. And I’m thankful that it is so, because I cannot bear the thought of being stuck forever with traits that I’d rather do away with.
I might take these tests again soon and see whether anything has changed. :)
P.S.: I took the tests on the following sites:
Cattell 16PF
OCEAN